Once you have secured profitable employment, and with it, some degree of wealth, the question before you will be what to do with your growing stash of cash. You could just reinvest your savings in construction, prospecting, or peddling, or whatever traditional line of business you found your way into and thus presumably understand. You won’t starve if you do so, and if you are one of those timid souls who are willing to settle for comfortable mediocrity, I could understand why you might choose to take such a course. But I advise against it. Because if you wish to make a really serious fortune, the smart move for you is to cut loose, move on, and invest all of your spare funds as quickly as possible in Mars’s potentially vast new growth industries.
You must not hold back. If you do, you will miss out. The enterprises that will shape the human future forever are taking off on Mars today. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor, and play a part in scoring the biggest score ever on the bottom line.
I do not exaggerate in the slightest. The new businesses will yield super profits, and between them, Mars will achieve a position of unmatched dominance in the three key areas of energy, thought, and space itself.
Let me explain each of these in turn, and then you can decide for yourself where you want to put your money.
In energy, we’ve got it made, because Earth is shifting to fusion reactors, and we’ve got an unbeatable advantage as a supplier of the stuff that makes them go.
Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, occurs as only 166 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Earth but comprises 833 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Mars. In other words, we’ve got a five-to-one advantage in this wonderful material, which not only is the fuel for fusion reactors, but can also be used to make heavy water, and if you have that, you can make fission reactors work without the need for any uranium fuel enrichment. Thus poor little countries that have been denied the right to self-defense as a result of unfair restrictions on international trade in uranium-enrichment technology can achieve their fondest aspirations via the plutonium route if they can just get enough deuterium. This makes the stuff very valuable.
The problem, however, is that you have to electrolyze 30 tonnes of ordinary terrestrial “light” water to produce enough hydrogen to make one kilogram of deuterium, and unless you have a lot of very low-cost power to burn, which nobody on Earth does anymore, the process is prohibitively expensive. Even with cheap power, deuterium is very expensive; back in the late twentieth century, its market price on Earth was already about $10,000 per kilogram in then-current dollars, roughly fifty times as valuable as silver or 70 percent as valuable as gold. That was in a prefusion economy. Since fusion reactors have gone into widespread use Earthside, deuterium prices have gone up tenfold relative to other commodities.
But on Mars, we constantly have to use most of our power in water electrolysis to drive our various life support and chemical synthesis systems. This means we can accomplish deuterium production here for zero or marginal additional electrolysis cost.
So, for example, if we apply a deuterium/hydrogen separation stage to the hydrogen produced by the electrolysis prior to recirculating the hydrogen back into a settlement’s RWGS reactors, then every 6 tonnes of Martian water we electrolyze will yield about one kilogram of deuterium as a by-product. Now, every Martian personally requires about 2 tonnes of water electrolyzed per terrestrial year for life support, and roughly double this is typically used to support materials-processing operations. Thus, a New Plymouth–sized settlement of 300,000 people will typically electrolyze about 1,800,000 tonnes of water per terrestrial year. Once we add our deuterium separators, this will result in the production of 300,000 kilograms of deuterium per terrestrial year, enough to produce 4 terawatts (tW) of electricity, roughly one-third of what the entire human race consumed at the end of the twentieth century (or about 2 percent of what Earth uses today). At current Earthside deuterium prices, this represents an annual export income potential equal in value to two million kilograms of gold, or 7 kilograms of gold-equivalent income for each of the 300,000 inhabitants of the settlement in question. At today’s quoted terrestrial average rate of $8.23 per kWh for electricity, the sales value of the power generated on Earth as a result would total nearly $290 trillion per year.
Are you starting to get my drift here? We’re talking about serious money.
Generating energy is going to big business for Mars, but generating thought could be even bigger.
Consider this: We’re a frontier society. Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and nineteenth-century America drove the “Yankee ingenuity” flood of inventions, so the combination of our own extreme labor shortage and our practical technological culture has already led us to produce one invention after another in energy production, automation and robotics, and biotechnology. And this is just the beginning. The anti-innovation movement may be a disaster for Earth, but it is going to be a bonanza for us, because no one here is willing to entertain such nonsense for a minute. Just imagine: They’ve banned hypercrop research on Earth because the crazies there were panicked by the threat that experimental megatomatoes might escape from the lab and overrun the planet! Well, look what’s growing in the Ares Botanicals greenhouse in New Plymouth—megatomatoes—and not flaky alpha-test types, but real, viable, proven crops. Do you have any idea what the patent for that strain is going to be worth when we license it on Earth? I’d say at least $100 trillion—and that’s just one crop. Ares Botanicals has dozens of equally valuable new strains under development, with several key varieties nearing full marketability even as we go to press. It’s obvious that everyone who invests their savings in Ares Botanicals is going to make a fortune. Why shouldn’t you be one of them?
Straight Talk
In the interest of full disclosure, I will state for the record that I am one of the founding partners of Ares Botanicals, and hold 1.6 million shares, or 11 percent of the stock of the company. That said, it should be clear that there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to the malicious claims of our competition that I have been using this book to boost the stock for personal profit. Far from it. Rather, as a favor to you, dear reader, I am offering inside information about AB’s imminent prospects to allow you to share in my good fortune. You may ignore it if you like, but you do so at your own peril.
Botanicals, of course, are just the beginning. As a result of fear-driven reactionary technophobic regulation limiting the scope of scientific investigations that can be legally conducted on Earth, we now have the opportunity to make good use of our Martian ingenuity to take the lead in metarobotics, nanotechnology, antimatter, cryonics, autocloning, cryptoweaponry, cyberstimulation, Jovio-pharmaceuticals, and practically every other field of modern, cutting-edge, progressive research.
The inventions we create in our centers of unfettered inquiry will revolutionize and advance human living standards everywhere, as forcefully and wonderfully as nineteenth-century American ingenuity changed Europe and ultimately the rest of the world as well. But more to the point, the licenses for those inventions, registered in the patent office on Earth, promise to yield an unlimited fountain of wealth forever to all of those smart enough to get in on the action today. And starting with your investment in Ares Botanicals, you can be one of them.
Beyond cashing in on energy and thought, we Martians now have the opportunity to access nearly infinite riches through securing control of the ultimate resource, which is to say the practical entirety of the physical universe, starting with the asteroids.
The asteroid belt contains vast supplies of very high-grade metal ore in a low-gravity environment that should make it easy to export to Earth. For example, let’s consider a single small run-of-the-mill asteroid just 1 km in diameter. Such a body typically has a mass of around 2 billion tonnes, of which 200 million tonnes is iron, 30 million tonnes high-quality nickel, 1.5 million tonnes the strategic metal cobalt, and 7,500 tonnes a mixture of platinum-group metals whose average value is twice that of gold. There has never been doubt about this—since the nineteenth century people have examined thousands of samples of asteroids in the form of meteorites. As a rule, meteoritic iron contains between 6 and 30 percent nickel, between 0.5 and 1 percent cobalt, and platinum-group metal concentrations at least ten times the best terrestrial ore. Furthermore, since the asteroids also contain a good deal of carbon and oxygen, all of these materials can be separated from the asteroid and from each other using variations of the carbon monoxide-based chemistry we use for refining metals every day on Mars.
There are about 10,000 asteroids known today, of which about 99 percent are in the “Main Belt,” lying between Mars and Jupiter, with an average distance from the sun of about 2.7 Astronomical Units (AU). The Main Belt group includes all the known asteroids residing within the orbit of Jupiter with diameters greater than 10 km. The remaining 1 percent, all small, are the Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs. The 1 percent figure, however, greatly overstates the proportion of NEOs to Main Belters, because their relative closeness to Earth and the sun makes them much easier for the overfunded loafers who infest the ranks of the terrestrial astronomical community to see. Of the Near-Earth asteroids, about 90 percent orbit closer to Mars than to Earth. Of the Main Belters, there are probably at least a hundred small objects remaining to be found for every big one the somnolent Terran nightwatchers have bothered to find.
As should be clear, these asteroids collectively represent enormous economic potential. The Near-Earth Object group is of some interest for future use in the service of planetary blackmail, but for mining purposes, the real action is going to be in the Main Belt, where millions of 1-km-class (7,500-tonne-platinum class!) objects undoubtedly reside.
If the Main Belt is filled with mountains of such high-value material for cash export, why has it remained uncolonized? The answer is simple: There is nothing there to eat. While water and carbonaceous material can readily be found among the asteroids (making them as a group far richer than Earth’s moon), it is not necessarily the case that such frozen volatiles can be found on those asteroids that are most rich in exportable metals. Quite the contrary, the valuable metal-rich type M asteroids are nearly volatile-free. Moreover, while many of the Main Belt asteroids contain all the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen needed to support agriculture, nitrogen is generally rare. Moreover, sunlight in the Main Belt is too dim to support agriculture, which means that plants there have to be grown by artificially generated light, which is completely impractical as a method of producing food. Finally, while collectively the asteroids might someday possess a significant mining workforce, it is unlikely that any one asteroid will ever have a large enough population to develop the division of labor necessary for real industrial development.
So while the riches of the Main Belt have beckoned for over a century, the establishment of mining bases there has proven impossible because of the need to support asteroid prospectors and miners with supplies delivered at excessive cost from Earth. But now that we Martians are ready to get into the game, everything is about to change. Because, as explained in clear, compelling prose in the Ares Asteroidal business plan (the relevant section of which I have reproduced for your education as a technical note at the end of this chapter), cargo payloads can be delivered from Mars to the Main Belt for one-fiftieth of the launch mass, and thus the cost, that is required to ship them from Earth.
In other words, we here on Mars have an unbeatable positional edge for reaching the vast mineral wealth of the asteroid belt. And now that the Ares Asteroidal company has been launched, including as it does an unmatched and highly trustworthy managerial team with a proven track record of start-up business success (it goes without saying that I am involved), we will soon have all the necessary ships and supporting infrastructure in place to exploit that advantage.
But that’s just the beginning. When the time comes to make use of the resources of the outer planets, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, and the stars, we will be in position to get a lock on that business too.
Can you think of a better investment? Of course not.
So don’t miss out. Ares Asteroidal stock is the best deal since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 (about $62 billion in modern currency).
Put your money down now.
With an unbeatable positional advantage against its terrestrial competition for Main Belt mining, Ares Asteroidal offers potentially unlimited profits. (List of Illustrations 12.1)
Technical Note (WARNING: High Science Content) The Mathematics of Main Belt Asteroid Logistics
Ares Asteroidal will enjoy an overwhelming positional advantage over our would-be terrestrial competitors in conducting trade to the Main Belt asteroids. We have the edge because our Mars-based rockets need to generate much smaller velocity changes (?Vs) to reach the asteroid belt than are needed by those leaving Earth, and as a result, we’ll need to use much less propellant. Just how much less can be seen in table 1, where we compare the mass ratio (the ratio of the mass of the spacecraft including its propellant, to that of the spacecraft with its propellant tanks empty) required of our spacecraft leaving Mars with that of our Earthling competition.
Table 1: The AA Technical Edge: Minimized Transportation Requirements to Anywhere
In table 1, we’ve chosen Ceres as a typical destination, as it is the largest asteroid and positioned right in the heart of the riches of the Belt. You’ll notice, however, that we’ve also given Earth’s moon as a potential port of call. Despite the fact that it is much closer to Earth physically, we can see that from a propulsion point of view—which is what counts if you are counting the beans—it is much easier for us to reach for the moon than it is for the Earthers! That is, the required mass ratio is only 12.5 going from Mars to the moon, while it is 57.6 from Earth—a nearly fivefold advantage for us! And that is delivering to Earth’s own moon! Going to Ceres, our mass-ratio advantage is overwhelming: 152.5 to 11.1!
We’ve based all the entries in table 1 except the last two upon a transportation system using methane/oxygen (CH4/O2) engines with an exhaust velocity of 3.7 km/s and 
Vs appropriate for the best trajectories employing high-thrust chemical propulsion systems. We’ve made this choice because methane/oxygen is the highest performing space-storable chemical propellant, and it can be manufactured easily on Earth, Mars, or a carbonaceous asteroid. Hydrogen/oxygen bipropellant, while offering a higher exhaust velocity (4.5 km/s), is not storable for long periods in space. Moreover, it is an unsuitable propellant combination for a cheap reusable space transportation system, because its costs exceed methane/oxygen propellant by more than an order of magnitude and its bulk makes it very difficult to transport to orbit in any quantity using reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicles (thus ruling it out for any reliable, robust, low-cost, single-stage, readily reusable surface-to-orbit system of the kind that AA is developing). The last two entries in the table are based upon nuclear-electric propulsion (NEP) using argon propellant, available on either Earth or Mars, with an exhaust velocity of 50 km/s for in-space propulsion, with methane/oxygen used to reach low orbit from the planet’s surface. How anyone could imagine using ultra-expensive nukey ships to conduct profitable transport to the asteroids is beyond comprehension, but we include it for completeness to show that even if the possibility of such a fantastic concept is conceded, we still have a huge mass-ratio edge.
So, looking at the numbers in table 1, you can see that if we stick with the realistic assumption of basing our business strictly on cheap, proven, chemical propulsion systems, then the mass ratio required to deliver dry mass to the asteroid belt from Earth is 14 times greater than from Mars. But this implies a much greater ratio of payload to takeoff mass from Mars to Ceres than from Earth, because all the extra propellant burned during an Earth-Ceres journey requires massive tankage and larger caliber engines, all of which requires still more propellant, and therefore more tankage, and on and on. In fact, looking at table 1, we can safely say that useful trade between Earth and Ceres (or any other body in the Main Asteroid Belt) using chemical propulsion is probably impossible, while for AA’s ships operating from Mars, it will be easy.
So what about that fantasy nukey cargo ship scenario? Take a look at the table, and weep, oh Earthlings, weep. If nuclear-electric propulsion is introduced, Mars still has a sevenfold advantage in mass ratio over Earth as a port of departure for the Main Asteroid Belt, and that means they’ll need much bigger and heavier (and more expensive) nuclear-electric engines to do the mission, which will cut their useful delivered payload to the bone. If this is taken into account, our top scientists’ peer-reviewed calculations show, AA’s ships launching from Mars will have a payload-to-takeoff weight ratio at least fifty times higher than that of any Earth-launched competition.
But wait, there’s more: All this analysis so far assumes that the ships return from the asteroid belt without cargo. If the added burden of hauling enough propellant all the way out from Earth to return substantial amounts of asteroidal metal cargo without refueling at Mars is thrown into the mission requirement, then the prospects for our Earth-based competition become even more hopeless.
These numbers are irrefutable. Everything that needs to be sent to the asteroid belt that can be produced on Mars will be produced on Mars, not Earth, and AA is the company that will see that it gets there.
If you could not follow the preceding technical discussion, that’s OK. All you need to know is that now is the time to invest. By seizing this historic opportunity to buy AA stock at its current low initial private offering price, you can become one of the founders of an enterprise that will not only deliver unmatched profits to all involved but also open the way to further rapid expansion of nearly every vital sector of our great young planet’s growing economy.
Ares Asteroidal: Infinite Profits from Infinite Space.