Quote from: funkenstein on February 02, 2017, 06:18:25 PM

Quote from: criptix on February 02, 2017, 05:01:30 PM

Quote from: funkenstein on February 01, 2017, 02:39:30 PM

Quote from: criptix on January 31, 2017, 01:18:35 PM

Quote from: funkenstein on January 30, 2017, 10:08:48 PM

Take a look at the costs, you'll find it's absurd.

Going up and down the gravity well is expensive as all hell. You'll never make that back no matter what you find on Ceres or the Moon. Even if it were already stacked in refined bars waiting for you to pick them up!!

OK as a fully subsidized mission with no profitability other than a technology subsidy, sure. But as a proper business? No way.

At least not until we get that space elevator built Wink

There are several projects to build a space elevator until 2050.
I think cost estimates were around 50-100 billion $ with usage of graphene or similar super materials.

It's hard to put a cost estimate on something that doesn't exist. No material has been found which has anywhere near the required strength to weight ratio.

This is wrong. Super materials that have a a high enough tensile strength already exist.
One of them is graphen. With a taper ratio of 1 and at GEO (around 36.000 km) the burden on graphen would only reach 87% of its tensile strength.

Edit the energy balance sheet of a space elevator doesnt have to be negative.
You could use gravity on the way to back to earth to recollect the energy needed to move the elevator upwards.

Graphene ribbons might do the trick, sure. Might. But do you know how to make them? Can you make them well enough to do so - to deploy them from a geostationary platform? 5000 miles of ribbon and have it hold not only its own weight but all the friction of the atmospheric drag? I don't think we are to the point yet where a cost could be put on this. That fact that people are trying to put "dollar" figures on the costs here kinda proves this point - they aren't talking sense.

All true but continued, steady funding for R&D on space elevators, that's like something everyone could agree on. Those funding amounts would be very tiny compared to any estimates of costs for something like Mars projects.