Saturday, February 16, 2013

Industry

One thing I've learned as a professional computer programmer [past tense] is that the most complicated things are made up of the simplest thing. Things so simple that they are too simple for most people to contemplate.

This is why I use DIY home videos to demonstrate potential mars industries. Most examples are on too small a scale to be very useful for anyone. While examples of large scale industry makes it seem too out of reach for our martian colonists. The thing that's important to understand is that the first step to larger scale industry is showing it can be done on a small scale.

There is a huge gap between being able to do something and not. The gap between a guy in his garage and a giant mill is nothing in comparison (although certainly still something.)

Those large machines you see in large scale industry don't come by magic. They are made up of parts that are assembled together by mechanics and technicians. Some of the martian colonists will come from people that have had years of this experience on earth. On mars, the machines will simply start out a little smaller with less production, [hand waving alert] but as the mars colony grows they will demonstrate advantages that those left on earth will envy. Trent has admonished me not to leave it at that, so I will not.

In many of the videos you may see some guy adding handfuls of dirt and chemicals to flower pots with the intention of producing some liquid metal. There are better ways. More industrial ways. But clay pots are pretty cheap and easy to make so one intermediate step is to make really big clay pots and shovel bags of dirt and chemicals in. Once you have enough metal you hand it off to a black smith or machinist who knows how to manufacture stuff from it. Including the machines to manufacture stuff from it. You've seen a blacksmith work... he heats it and hammers it. Although possibly useful after that, hand that rough item to a machinist and he will grind it and drill it and perform other machinist tricks to produce anything you can imagine. Which will include rollers so they can make sheet metal and extruders so that can make any shape of beam. They will need a lathe to make rollers. All that takes is an electric motor (ok, and other stuff but the motor is the most important.) A single extruder can make many shapes simply by changing a die. That die is a simple thing for the machinist to make. They will have to because thing wear and break and will have to be replaced (a universal truth, literally.)

Where do the bags of chemicals come from? From chemists and rock and dirt and air. You may think of chemists using test tubes which isn't an industrial process. But that's not reality. Where there is a need (basic economics) production can easily be scaled up. The only thing that could prevent that is if the raw materials were not available. On mars they are. Well, there is a power requirement, but where enough power is not available they can use less efficient methods that don't have the same power requirement. My blog posts are full of examples (The linked example uses a less efficient exothermic method and even the wrong ore. But it is an ore they don't have to look for, it's everywhere in the dirt. While it only produces a nugget, it's a nugget of titanium and the process is easily scaled as I've noted above.) Iron on mars is going to be cheap, cheap, cheap (pardon the fowl language.)

Everything complicated is made from simple stuff. The martian frontier will guarantee they do. [This is summarizing, not hand waving.]

Update: I just realized there is something missing that I must add. Everything needs to first be designed. Mars will need designers which provides incentive for people with such skills to be among the martian colonists. Many things are simple designs that require lesser skill designers (almost anyone.) Many designs are public domain. Some things are so common among certain trades that they don't realize they are designing in the process of making them.

Then there is earth. The cheapest thing to send to mars will be data which, once a colony is on mars, people on earth will compete to do for free. It will be a whole new subculture. O.S.E. is an example. Blogs are another. University students will get class credit.

Update: One of the things about industry is it's efficiency which happens as a result of simple economic laws. This reveals another type of invisible can't do attitude. It's the attitude that less efficient methods can't be done which is of course ridiculous. In the process of scaling up you may have to choose less efficient methods to get there.

[Waving hands furiously and fanatically] They can do.

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