This was an extremely interesting article, as I have been thinking about similar topics quite a bit over the past year or so.
Concerning the endowment, there are probably many viable ways to structure it. I’d go with roughly the following framework:
- a combination of several trusts/foundations based in best, most stable jurisdictions in the world. Channel Islands, Switzerland, Singapore, Cayman Islands (or some other Caribbean jurisdiction), Cook Islands, etc. are likely candidates here. It may be worthwhile to establish a change rule (or a supervisory board/committee that would review and rank the best jurisdictions), but it is unlikely that the changes would be necessary more often than every 25-50 years. Stable jurisdictions are stable.
- I don’t think any of the world’s governments would be looking at expropriating such money below $1T. Current best estimates for the amount of funds kept in the so-called offshore safe havens are around $20-30T.
- one of the best ways to invest the money would be a broad exposure to global stocks (equities). This is the best combination of safety (spreading funds across ~40 developed countries or 80 developed + developing) and capital appreciation. About 5% real increase annually can be reasonably assumed - about the average of past 120 years.
- payments to the colonists could be capped at these 5% annually (to keep the real value of endowment stable). A better option may be a larger payment: 6-8% of the endowment annually. The reasons are twofold: 1) the colony should develop much faster than the average of Earth-based economies and 2) it would be good to have a rule that spends down the endowment at perpetuity.
Another topic that I think is somewhat likely is the establishment of such endowments by the richest billionaires. I wish Elon all the best in his quest to create 1 million strong city on Mars. But if he does not succeed in this endeavour before he turns 80 or 90, I guess there’s a good (25-50%?) chance, he would donate his fortune to continue his life’s mission. Jeff Bezos seems to have similar interests, too, and I would be surprised if they were the only two billionaires with such a vision.
Thanks for this - these are the sort of details that would be needed to make the thing work.
High net worth individuals kicking off the endowment with a big sum makes things a lot easier, obviously. I can expect that will happen with Elon at least.
"The established members of the colony would work to enclose more volume, providing space for new colonists to live, work and grow crops. Newcomers would pay for this out of the allowance they get from their contribution to the endowment."
I'd be interested in seeing that expense (the marginal cost of adding habitable volume to the colony) accounted for in this analysis.
At some high enough closure rate, I suspect the high marginal mass/construction cost associated with the arrival of each new colonist will overwhelm the cost of the initial transportation and the cost of setting up the endowment to pay for the recurring cost of transportation. e.g. It may be the case that a 99.95% enclosure rate means each new family can support themselves indefinatelly for an endowment of $1M, but if acheiving 99.95% recycling means each family requires purchasing/building a $100M biome/farm/aquaponics Biosphere 2 style dome from the established members, then new arrivals would be much better off just accepting a 95% enclosure ISS+ISRU style system, and putting the money saved on habitat construction into the endowment to pay for the higher cargo transportation costs.
What I would be very interested in seeing is a chart of mass leverage vs. cost of transport, with isolines for some marginal person-habitat construction costs required to accommodate each new arrival. Seeing where the bottom of the curve is (the point where a higher closure rate isn't worth achieving due to higher marginal cost of each new arrival) would be very illustrative for discussing the different kinds of colony designs (say, a cheap to build but low closure space station, vs. an expensive to build but high closure O'Neill cylinder).
That would be interesting, and I’ll consider it in future discussion of this. For now I want to get the basic model in place.
What I envision is that colonists would make new habitable spaces with as few earth resources as possible, as this enables them to attract more colonists. They would then presumably get a cut of the new colonists endowment as rent, but wouldn’t want that to be too large so as not to deter arrivals.
I’m not sure there will ever be colonies in near earth orbit. Eventually a robot controlled by a person on the planet with a VR setup will be able to do anything that an on-site human could do. Colonies on Mars or elsewhere in the galaxy are a different matter.
Colonies in low Earth orbit provide the cheapest ticket price to space for ordinary people, which is the main strength. If teleoperation was the solution to all problems, it would already be deployed on Earth.
Perhaps I don’t understand your use of the term “colonies” in LEO. I think of a colony as a place where certain people live permanently, not as a way station to the other places. That’s what I’m saying, that no one will live their life in LEO.
I disagree. Living in LEO would remove barriers to entry for operating in space. Once you’ve got yourself up there, and presuming there is a supply of in space resources, you can build things in space without launch costs. Cities spring up around resources, and in this case space access is the resource.
This was an extremely interesting article, as I have been thinking about similar topics quite a bit over the past year or so.
Concerning the endowment, there are probably many viable ways to structure it. I’d go with roughly the following framework:
- a combination of several trusts/foundations based in best, most stable jurisdictions in the world. Channel Islands, Switzerland, Singapore, Cayman Islands (or some other Caribbean jurisdiction), Cook Islands, etc. are likely candidates here. It may be worthwhile to establish a change rule (or a supervisory board/committee that would review and rank the best jurisdictions), but it is unlikely that the changes would be necessary more often than every 25-50 years. Stable jurisdictions are stable.
- I don’t think any of the world’s governments would be looking at expropriating such money below $1T. Current best estimates for the amount of funds kept in the so-called offshore safe havens are around $20-30T.
- one of the best ways to invest the money would be a broad exposure to global stocks (equities). This is the best combination of safety (spreading funds across ~40 developed countries or 80 developed + developing) and capital appreciation. About 5% real increase annually can be reasonably assumed - about the average of past 120 years.
- payments to the colonists could be capped at these 5% annually (to keep the real value of endowment stable). A better option may be a larger payment: 6-8% of the endowment annually. The reasons are twofold: 1) the colony should develop much faster than the average of Earth-based economies and 2) it would be good to have a rule that spends down the endowment at perpetuity.
Another topic that I think is somewhat likely is the establishment of such endowments by the richest billionaires. I wish Elon all the best in his quest to create 1 million strong city on Mars. But if he does not succeed in this endeavour before he turns 80 or 90, I guess there’s a good (25-50%?) chance, he would donate his fortune to continue his life’s mission. Jeff Bezos seems to have similar interests, too, and I would be surprised if they were the only two billionaires with such a vision.
Thanks for this - these are the sort of details that would be needed to make the thing work.
High net worth individuals kicking off the endowment with a big sum makes things a lot easier, obviously. I can expect that will happen with Elon at least.
"The established members of the colony would work to enclose more volume, providing space for new colonists to live, work and grow crops. Newcomers would pay for this out of the allowance they get from their contribution to the endowment."
I'd be interested in seeing that expense (the marginal cost of adding habitable volume to the colony) accounted for in this analysis.
At some high enough closure rate, I suspect the high marginal mass/construction cost associated with the arrival of each new colonist will overwhelm the cost of the initial transportation and the cost of setting up the endowment to pay for the recurring cost of transportation. e.g. It may be the case that a 99.95% enclosure rate means each new family can support themselves indefinatelly for an endowment of $1M, but if acheiving 99.95% recycling means each family requires purchasing/building a $100M biome/farm/aquaponics Biosphere 2 style dome from the established members, then new arrivals would be much better off just accepting a 95% enclosure ISS+ISRU style system, and putting the money saved on habitat construction into the endowment to pay for the higher cargo transportation costs.
What I would be very interested in seeing is a chart of mass leverage vs. cost of transport, with isolines for some marginal person-habitat construction costs required to accommodate each new arrival. Seeing where the bottom of the curve is (the point where a higher closure rate isn't worth achieving due to higher marginal cost of each new arrival) would be very illustrative for discussing the different kinds of colony designs (say, a cheap to build but low closure space station, vs. an expensive to build but high closure O'Neill cylinder).
That would be interesting, and I’ll consider it in future discussion of this. For now I want to get the basic model in place.
What I envision is that colonists would make new habitable spaces with as few earth resources as possible, as this enables them to attract more colonists. They would then presumably get a cut of the new colonists endowment as rent, but wouldn’t want that to be too large so as not to deter arrivals.
I’m not sure there will ever be colonies in near earth orbit. Eventually a robot controlled by a person on the planet with a VR setup will be able to do anything that an on-site human could do. Colonies on Mars or elsewhere in the galaxy are a different matter.
Colonies in low Earth orbit provide the cheapest ticket price to space for ordinary people, which is the main strength. If teleoperation was the solution to all problems, it would already be deployed on Earth.
Perhaps I don’t understand your use of the term “colonies” in LEO. I think of a colony as a place where certain people live permanently, not as a way station to the other places. That’s what I’m saying, that no one will live their life in LEO.
I disagree. Living in LEO would remove barriers to entry for operating in space. Once you’ve got yourself up there, and presuming there is a supply of in space resources, you can build things in space without launch costs. Cities spring up around resources, and in this case space access is the resource.