I wondered the other day - what would the cost of a roll of duct tape on Mars be?
In the near term - there would be no price because in reality - all the equipment would be company property and brought to Mars via Starship transport. SpaceX, as the front runner in the trans-planetary vehicle stakes, will likely take on the cost of all resources needed for an all-inclusive first waves of colonists to Mars.
Your Local Mars Hardware store - here for all your maintenance and cleaning supply needs.
By taking on board all the costs - there are always costs - SpaceX will prevent the need for a market for goods and services on Mars. In this sense, all resources are shared. Food, clothing, duct-tape. If one crew member was in need, the others would help out. In the first few cycles. The strong risk of mortal peril will likely bond the crew members together closer than family.
NASA did recently put out a press release about an experiment they want to conduct to test this theory. By placing eager candidates out in remote Russia in a sealed simulation habitat on earth, NASA hopes to replicate - with greater success - previous missions which had been undertaken with just such an aim in mind: to understand and observe in a 'safe' environment - just how cooperative or restive can an isolated, remote, confined crew become over an 8 month journey in space. Similarly - how can they cope on a ground-based habitat.
However, later after say, 5 cycles of Martian crew transfers - there will be offers similar to the SpaceX Falcon 9 ridesharing service. This service will offer space to non-SpaceX operators in exchange for revenue. Because populating and colonising Mars in a sustainable fashion will require a lot of capital resources, collaboration on this will be key to funding the endeavour.
Participants of NASA's 4 month isolation mission. Credit: NASA
Cost of goods on Earth
Before we consider the cost of specific items, and how we can consider for Mars. Let us take Earth based supply chains as a model and undertake a mental exercise.
On Earth, what are the drivers for the cost of goods?
Spoiler: It's the aspects that you would think of:
Raw Material cost
Maintenance Cost (of the manufacturing equipment)
Transportation cost (with pricing scaling to the criticality and size of delivery order - if you want 1 roll of duck tape tomorrow - you pay for both speed and small order size).
Proximity plays a big role in this - you may get a better deal by walking down to your local store, instead of ordering one from the next state, or cross-country.
Regularity of sales operations (sizes of order - read economy of scale)
Inventory (underplayed factor - many firms are moving to DDMRP - Demand Driven Planning mechanism - this, coupled with
So that single roll of duct tape you pick up at the local hardware store - takes into account these costs. We could use this model - and adapt it to account for the costs leading to its supply and price at a Martian store.
With a roll this big - you're at the level of fabricating roof plates out of duct tape
Cost of goods on Mars
How does this differ to the model from Earth?
Of course on Earth, we compare the cost base above between different suppliers. One supplier may have a much cheaper raw material cost going into their more efficient manufacturing equipment.
However on Mars, there is no competition initially, and so the self-made option is not there. In the case of sundry items like Duct Tape, it is likely to be the case for some time. In this case, we can consider the Mars-made cost of a roll of Duct Tape as infinite - it is unattainable locally.
So what if we order one from www.Amazon.mars?
Firstly, the transportation cost is much greater. And is made up of the propellant CH4 and liquid oxygen oxidiser. We can discount the role and cost of the human crew for now. This is because - if we assume restock and resupply missions - these could be accomplished by the transport of an unmanned 'truck' starship. In any case, manned or unmanned, the starships will likely fly themselves at all times, taking advantage of the machine learning advances made by SpaceX during testing and development.
Superheavy stats - including the 3400 tons of propellant - O2 and CH4 together. Credit: SpaceX
When we consider that each starship orbital launch consumes (in the ratio Oxygen / CH4 of 3.6).
So for each kg of fuel consumed, 3.6 kg of oxygen is consumed.
From the SpaceX website, Starship contains 1200 tons of propellant, with Superheavy containing 3 times that with 3400 tons. A total of 4600 tons. If we split those in the stoichiometry of 3.6 : 1 as above, we arrive at:
1 / (1 + 3.6) x 4600 tons = 1000 tons of CH4 fuel
3.6 / (1 + 3.6) x 4600 tons = 3600 tons of oxygen
for Superheavy - stage 1, and for Starship - stage 2 total.
Let us assume that ahead of drilling their own gas well, SpaceX pays market rates for LNG.
Spot price for LNG in Texas is approximately 8 $ / Mcf (or MMSCF).
We know that Natural gas MMSCF converts to LNG tons at the rate of approx. 1000 MMSCF = 20,000 tons.
So we only need 50 MMSCF of gas to reach 1016, rounded to 1000 tons.
Starhopper stands guard at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: The Verge
Multiplying up:
50 MMSCF x 8 $ = 400 $
This seems a very low cost of fuel. Much lower than Hydrazine for the shuttle which needed to be manufactured.
Consider next the much higher cost of high quality liquid oxygen, typically 99.5 % oxygen or higher.
On a per m3 basis - this stuff is produced through on-site plant, likely leased or bought from an industrial gases supplier, such as Linde, Air Liquid, etc.
Linde Investors Promotional pack - oxygen cost per ton projection. Dated to 2012- but likely cost is lower. Let us consider $0.4 /ton of liquid oxygen. Credit: Linde
From this chart in their promotional pack - dated to 2012, we can see an O2 index cost which hovers around 0.4 $ / ton O2 at 2012 prices. Let us take this as our cost estimate. Likely at this point in 2021, the cost is much lower.
0.4 $ / ton x 3600 tons Oxygen = 1440 $
Total cost of propellant $ 1940.
This is in contrast to the cost of each starship istelf at approximately $216 million for each of these stainless beasts.
Consider payload capacity of the Starship is 100 tons.
When we divide this cost by the 100 tons payload of Starship - if operated in 'unmanned truck' mode
$ 216,001,940 / 100 tons = $ 2,160,019 of (propellant cost + starship cost) per ton of material sent to orbit.
Elon Musk made public comments around SpaceX reusability of the space vehicles, put at 1000 x reuses - lower than, but on the order of magnitude of aircraft reuse.
If we divide this figure by 1000, we arrive at approximately 2160 $/ ton to get stuff to orbit. Consider a little more fuel to get the Starship truck to Mars - negligible in this context.
Our standard duct tape has a mass of approximately 400 g - call it 0.5 kg.
So shipping cost of 1 roll of duct tape = (0.5 kg x 2160 $/ton ) / 1000 kg/ ton = $ 1.08 shipping to get the duct tape to Mars on a Starship.
Going round again
How does this Martian economic behaviour map to previous iterations of human colonisation across the planet?
A good model could be a compare and contrast look at the successive waves of colonisation of the Eastern American seaboard from European states during the 1700s.
You can reach me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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