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the supposed mineral riches are mostly high priced specialty materials and not the boring metals like iron and aluminum

Huh? The moon has gigatons of common metals and many of the areas are especially aluminum rich (and titanium to a lesser degree).

The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well. Whether that's Earth geosync or a LaGrange point, or something else, the challenges are along the lines of having enough utility stock (for doing the Bayer Process, e.g.) - there's plenty of sunlight to make the needed electricity.

The moon process will likely be different than the Earth process, in the end. For instance, all that oxygen that needs to be liberated from AL(2)0(3) can be stored for useful purposes. Even if at first you're storing the separated aluminum for future use, it might still be the best way to make oxygen for those fussy humans to breathe, if you look at the long-term cost/benefit. I seem to recall the University of AZ had a whole system worked out in the 90's and demonstrated using near-analogues to moon rock in big vacuum chamber. Undoubtedly a 2015 plan involves several generations of 3D printers that can eventually be used to print more moon base.

But, yeah, having a H3-H2 reactor would make it much more efficient, but solar or RTG will have to do in the short-term. It's quite the bootstrapping problem. Once you have a major factory complex up and running for safe habitation and flexible manufacturing, you're ready to set the AI's out building more structures night and day, and that's when you get polynomial expansion.

Barring government interference, I fully expect to see moon habitation visible from Earth in my lifetime (the NIMBYs will complain that it should be on the dark side).

A major issue is that the moon is fairly far up Earth's gravity well. It is easy to get things to low-Earth orbit and already tough to get things to even geo-stationary. The main saving of putting anything on the moon will come if you can do a large part of your construction on-site since otherwise moving that much material up is going to be tough. If you are doing automated construction on site you also are going to need to be able to make mainly a lot of solar cells. Solar cells are primarily silicon and there's already been prior research on refining the moon's regolith for silicon to manufacture electronic components and that looks possibly doable but one does need to get over some technical chemistry issues. See e.g. http://www.asi.org/adb/02/13/02/silicon-production.html.

The other issue is distance for power transmission: most designs for microwave power involve power transmission from at most a little over geo-stat at about 35,000 km. The distance to the moon is about 10 times that, so if you don't have a really tight beam, there are going to be issues. Also, since the moon change's position you are going to need a large number of sites on Earth that can receive the beam, and if you can't switch off smoothly between them always (which would itself require massive planet-wide infrastructure), you would still need power sources on Earth (possibly just massive storage facilities?) to deal with those times.

Overall, a really cool idea with a lot of technical hurdles. I hope they can make it work but I'm not optimistic.

http://asi.org/adb/06/09/03/02/093/redhousing.html This 1996 publication "Breeding Plants for the Mars Environment" seemed to put more thought into what species are likliest to thrive (on Mars), and was less human-centric. It does seem to make sense to test lichens, cacti, a wider variety of plants known for resilience in addition to turnips and basil.

If anyone is interested, the http://asi.org/ site is still there. Would've cost the same as 4 shuttle flights and left a permanent base on the moon. But nooooo.

What's changed? Well, now there's even less money spare...

Jumping the gun is not necessarily the best way to get things done.

The most oft-discussed and visible triumphs of manned space have been by necessity "get there, plant the flag and get out."

But the ultimate goal should be not just to visit space or establish some dangerous and isolated outposts there (though there is no shortage of volunteers!)...it should be to move into space in a series of self-sustaining stages.

This means we first need to build a space colony here on Earth, and decide on some practical steps to take that will achieve the ultimate goal. And each step should be of immediate practical and commercial value.

I would like to call attention to Marshall Savage's amazing project and book, The Millennial Project. another synopsis and at Amazon. Some have picked fun at Savage's priorities, but frankly until this book/project arrived on the scene there had been nothing like it.

In that plan, terraforming Mars is step 6 of 8. In this scenario we are not just landing on Mars to establish an outpost... at that stage we have already perfected the technology for habitats in space. If our focus is on 'the next logical (small) step' instead of some ultimate goal and devote our complete effort to these steps, by 2033 we could be moving outward in all directions... instead of just one.

Cost In Todays Dollars Of 1960's moon program: $170,000,000,000

It's considerably lower if you use the GDP deflator as your measure of inflation. PPI shows similar values over this time frame. Also you need to recall that there's a vast amount of development (Mercury and Gemini programs), unmanned exploration (21 unmanned missions in the 60s prior to manned Apollo missions), and Skylab (which wasn't a lunar program) in that price tag. These are high fixed costs which aren't represented well by taking total costs and dividing by number of launches.

If they had launched 30 rockets instead of 15, you'd have seen a considerable decline in per launch cost simply because the vast development costs would have been shared over twice as many launches. When I did the calculation some time ago, I got $91 billion for Apollo (including the fleets of unmanned probes in the early to mid 60s) in 1994 dollars. Using GDP deflator, that comes to roughly $125 billion in today's dollars. If one looks at the funding for the actual Apollo project, you see that costs peaked in 1966 (see last table in link). Rushing R&D lead to tremendous costs before the first guy stepped onto the Moon.

Maximum Payload of Saturn V rocket: 272,000
(170,000,000,000 / 15) / 272,000 = $41666 per lunar pound

According to Wikipedia, payload to LEO was 262,000 pounds and to trans lunar injection was 100,000 pounds. So using your numbers you get roughly $110k just to shoot mass past the Moon. You still have to burn propellant to get into lunar orbit and to land on the Moon (with no benefit from an atmosphere as would be the case with Earth or Mars). So price tag would be higher than you claim.

There are various places for improvement. For example, Earth to LEO costs are much lower than the $40k per pound cited above. Russian program can do it for roughly $2-3k per pound. SpaceX claims that they can support similar prices once they have the Falcon 9 going at high launch frequency. While some payloads such as people and delicate electronics can't afford to pass through the van Allen belts many times or have to travel quickly, it remains that there are a lot of payloads that don't have these issues. Solar-electric (and later nuclear-electric) propulsion provides an efficient though slow means of getting from LEO to lunar orbit. Landing on the Moon will still require some sort of high thrust to weight rocket (such as a chemical rocket).

Finally, there are opportunities for in situ resource utilitization (or ISRU), that is, using local resources at your destination. They can range from the very simple (such as moving soil around and extracting oxygen from regolith for propellant and breathing) to manufacture of local tools using metals and ceramics mined from the Moon. For example, one could make a golf ball with mostly local materials (though it would obviously be a challenge to make a golf ball with similar properties to a terrestrial golf ball), completely negating the need to fly in a golf ball from Earth.

Point is that we can't use the cost of Apollo to make accurate estimates of cost of doing things today. Access to space is a lot cheaper, but done via smaller sized rockets. There are different challenges that need to be addressed. We also have a variety of means to fly in space much more efficiently than a chemical rocket. Materials research has also improved a bit so our spacecraft would be a bit lighter and our electronics systems far more capable than Apollo era spacecraft.

But it was a colossal scientific failure. Nothing was learned that would not have been learned at a fraction of the cost using unmanned vehicles.

So what do you think the fraction of the cost would have been? I've researched this a bit. You have to account for 21 unmanned missions (5 lunar orbiter, 7 lander, and 9 impactor missions) before you even start with the manned portion (almost $5 billion cost in 1994 dollars, probably more like $6-7 billion today). Further, Apollo includes otherwise irrelevant manned stuff (like Mercury and Gemini) and Skylab. Trimming that away, you get something like $110 billion (I'm using GDP deflator on a 1994 estimate of $84 billion for the core mission excluding Mercury, Gemini, and Skylab). If we use the fantasy inflation that NASA uses to price its cost plus contracts, we get something more like $150 billion dollars. Of that figure, the unmanned missions are already a tenth of the cost. The manned portion is particularly hard. You need to land six missions, all six with rovers, but three of them with rovers capable of traveling up to 40 km. You need to deliver and deploy hundreds of kilograms of long term sensors and other equipment and return almost 400 kg of lunar material from these six missions. The rovers need to have the capabilities of an astronaut to be comparable (color vision, real time control, significant manipulation ability).

In addition, you have to consider the time value of that research. The unmanned missions wouldn't even be possible for a couple of decades (IMHO, of course). So you've delayed the science return of your missions by twenty or more years. Now I can't hang a number on that research, but it's worth noting that if you treat it as a return on a risk-free investment, you'd have lost at least a third of the value (at roughly 2% per year adjusted for inflation) of the investment by delaying the payout for 20 years.

My take is that an unmanned version probably would be somewhat cheaper. But it's going to be surprising expensive in comparison, perhaps a third of the cost above of the lunar part of the Apollo program (assuming the sample returns are comparable (lunar missions have more mass to move and very capable rovers) to the cost of a Mars sample return mission ($7.5 billion).

instead, send probes, hundreds of them. send 20 to saturn. send 40 to jupiter. lose a few. who cares? get them up there fast and keep cranking them out. fire and forget. FOR FAR LESS MONEY, ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, THAN A MANNED SPACE PROGRAM TO THE MOON. do quality science remotely. do it on a giant scale

OTOH, this here is a very sexy unmanned approach. I wouldn't mind scrapping a hobby-level manned program for a couple decades, if it meant some sort of serious, methodical unmanned approach like this. It's worth noting that the Apollo program had 21 unmanned probes as part of the deal for a cost (in 1994 dollars) of less than $5 billion dollars. The Russians had some success in their series of probes to Mars and Venus in the 70s when they did a similar approach. As far as I'm concerned, the approach has been validated the few times it has been tried.

A high volume approach like this also allows for the development of infrastructure. For example, it might be more feasible economically to launch an unfueled probe, tank up at an automated propellant depot in orbit around Earth, and go from there. Communication networks in the more popular locations (like Mars and Jupiter) could reduce the complexity of the communication gear that each probe needs to bring. The probe could just have enough communication power to communicate with a router in orbit around Jupiter rather than beam its data directly back to Earth.

Another obvious economy of scale is reusability of components. With dozens of space probes using the same design, you get a lot more value out of any development you do. There's also "learning curve" effects where average price and reliability of a component improves significantly each time you double the volume produced.

I loved that study. Even made a mirror of it on my .edu website to make sure it stayed online. They deleted my home directory the next day. I graduated a while ago and wasn't giving them any money for it, but it was still a bitchy thing to do.

I'm disappointed in your link to openvirgle. The Artemis project has a much better website showing much more real progress with that sort of thing. I was also expecting openvirgle to have something to do with the 'clanking replicators' of the AASM paper, but it doesn't. (Artemis project doesn't either.) Quite disappointing.

Unfortunately the only people who do anything remotely similar to engineering work for free are software people (with the possible exception of the Fab@Home people), and space exploration is all about hardware, not software. As a general rule, hardware people do not work for free. At all. So do-it-yourself replicable hardware has gotten nowhere, despite enormous open source software activity in the world.

Figure out why that is, and you'll have something.

C'mon, Slashdot, this is rocket science. You shouldn't need help figuring this out on your own.

I'll come out and say it: this is a stupid rocket. As Baldrson points out above, its "specific impulse" (the most important measure of a rocket fuel's usefulness) is less than a quarter that of rocket fuels currently in existence.

Aluminum is readily available on the moon, but not as big old bricks of elemental aluminum lying around. You need to *make* it by electrolyzing rock. (Don't panic, this is how we make aluminum on Earth today.) The reaction is roughly Al2O3 -> 2 Al + 1.5 O2, and oxygen is *always* a major byproduct.

Save that oxygen. You get *much* more energy burning aluminum in oxygen than you do burning aluminum in water. Estimated Isp for an aluminum-oxygen rocket is 285 -- waaay better than aluminum-ice.

Al-Ox rockets are nasty to think about, because the exhaust is a solid -- solid sandpaper, actually. But the rocket from TFA has the same problem: Baldrson's data indicates exhaust that's 1/4 alumina, 3/4 hydrogen gas.

But if water is available, and you're gonna electrolyze something to make rocket fuel, why not electrolyze water to get hydrogen and oxygen? Standard, classic, perfect rocket fuel.

Aluminum-ice has all the drawbacks of an exotic rocket fuel, and no benefits: it's not more abundant, it's not more convenient, and it sure as hell doesn't give better performance.

Colonizing such a region is about THE STUPIDEST IDEA I could ever imagine.

You're not looking at the bright side. There are no terrorists, and, if you hurry, no commies, either.

Also, are you really suggesting that the crew of a moon base walk around in space suits all the time? What's that "base" part for, then? And a leak in a space suit isn't a death sentence, at least not immediately.

http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/08/suit-punctures.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-37

Try these, and follow links to get more info as desired.

composition of the moon:
http://www.neiu.edu/~jmhemzac/mooncomp.htm

lunar mining and refining:
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/02/

In short, aluminum, iron, and titanium are available in very useful quantities. Common additives for the creation of steel (excepting carbon, sadly) are readily available as well. Oxygen is abundant as is silicon. The majority of these materials can be extracted in thermal processes alone, or more efficiently through pulverizing and then heating. An RTG of sufficient capacity could easily run the extraction processes both electrically and thermally. Slugs of various metals and tanks of compressed oxygen would not be difficult to make by automated processes.
Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are in short supply on the surface. A sustainable lunar colony would require periodic resupply of organic chemicals from asteroids or comets. On a material basis alone, metals and semiconductors are easy and plastics and plants are hard. Methane and ammonia ices would provide the missing bulk materials for continued plastic production and expansion of plant life.

Apart from from building the first Chinese restaurant there first, this could be the motivation behind the lunar exploration: http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html

• http://www.planetary.org/home/ The Planetary Society
  
• http://www.marssociety.org/ The Mars Society
  
• http://www.nss.org/ The National Space Society
  
• http://www.seds.org/ Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
  
• http://www.space-frontier.org/ Space Frontier Foundation
  

I read somewhere that the Russians did experiments with growing plants with 2 weeks of sunlight followed by 2 weeks of relative darkness at low temperature. (Not lunar nighttime temperature, but above freezing.) It seems that there are plants can acclimatize to such conditions. (In particular, peas.) They remain dormant and are able to survive for the 2 weeks when the temperature is lowered less light is available, then continue growing. Using specially tuned LEDs, we could provide the interim power for the 2 weeks "economically." (Relatively speaking. NASA contractors would probably charge million$!)

Here's some folks in New Zealand doing experiments that simulate lunar agriculture. There are many papers related to lunar agriculture as well.

I thought it was pretty good for a 12 word sentence fragment. Oh well shoot the messenger, and change the message content. The original post was the layman's version.

A few more references are:
Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium-3 as the perfect fuel source. @ http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html
Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source, in a nutshell. @ http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html
HELIUM-3 FUSION ENERGY: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE BY 2050 AD @ http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/helium.htm

(If you need anymore, do your own research I am confused.)

• The Artemis Project - The project is a private venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon. Brief overview of the Artemis project.
• The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
• The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
• National Space Society - grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Magazine.
• Stanford on the Moon (by 2015?) And yes, Stanford as in the university.
• Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
• The Space Settlement Initiative
• Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
• Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
• International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
• Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
• Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
• Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.` ... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
• Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
• The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin

• The Artemis Project - The project is a private venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon. Brief overview of the Artemis project.
• The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
• The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
• National Space Society - grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Magazine.
• Stanford on the Moon (by 2015?) And yes, Stanford as in the university.
• Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
• The Space Settlement Initiative
• Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
• Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
• International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
• Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
• Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
• Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.` ... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
• Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
• The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin

• http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ moon_caves_000321.html
  
• http://www.asi.org/adb/06/09/03/02/100/12-question s.html
  
• http://www.cityastronomy.com/apecave.htm
  

Artemis Project - been around since 1994. By far the most comprehensive plan I've seen.

Moon Society - been around since 2000. They've already tested one habitat.

LiTeRaTi - been around since 1996. Private company in Sweden.

Actually, this graph is pretty telling (NASA budget as percentage of government spending):

http://www.asi.org/images/2003/NASA-budget-as-perc entage-1962-2004-MM.png

Lyndon B. Johnson (D): Huge increase, then a moderate decrease.
Richard Nixon (R): Large decrease
Jimmy Carter (D): Small decrease
Ronald Reagan (R): Small decrease
George Bush Sr. (R): Small increase
Bill Clinton (D): tiny decrease
George Bush Jr. (R): tiny decrease

Now, factor in the fact that Republicans are "all about" cutting government income and spending as a whole (whether or not they succeed), and you get that democrats are bigger supporters of NASA than Republicans. However, even with that, it's clearly not a very partisan issue.

So, what do you say to articles like http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html?

Oscar

Energy is indeed the only consumed resource besides rock. The process requires temperatures of around 1000C; these temperatures can readily be achieved using reflectors.
More oxygen is produced by the titanium-rich mare soil than by the prolific silica; it's like the difference between regular and premium gasoline. Rates of about 3.3% (by weight) are achieved using ilmenite at around 1000C in hydrogen, and rates of up to 5.5% using iron-rich glass. (Ilmenite, btw, is composed of oxides of iron and titanium, and makes up anywhere from 3% to 10% of lunar material.) In addition, the result is water vapor, iron metal, and titanium oxides. I'll take iron and titanium as building materials over silicon any day.
The question of dust on reflectors seems fairly simple, actually. Assuming one is using polished metal, rather than glass, the dust can be forcibly removed by positively charging the reflectors. Kind of like those ion air purifiers, only in reverse.
Composition maps: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec04/LunarCrust.html
Table: http://www.neiu.edu/~jmhemzac/mooncomp.htm
NASA's earlier work on oxygen extraction: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/ EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC048.HTML
Artemis project: http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/oxygen-extracti on.html
Lunar simulant with composition tables: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/ EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC050.HTML

Altair obviously is not named after some star in Aquila. It is named after the MITS Altair 8800 which was an instant, overwhelming success and its bus became the de facto standard.. and the 8800 was in turn named after a star in Star Trek and not in Aquila. See the emulator. Though these guys think the 8800 was named after the movie Forbidden Planet, but it could also have been Altair sf magazine, which probably was named after a star in Aquila. Of course Altair also means "the flyer" in Arabic which is better than considering it an ill-starred lover. Though any of the above would provide for great mission logos too. Anyway it is difficult to work out who named what since the 8800 was named after the star Altair that the Starship Enterprise was heading for, but the Space Shuttle Enterprise was obviously named after the Star Trek Starship, or maybe after a balloon, or a seafaring ship, and probably not Branson's suborbital.

He3 Fusion is more difficult than De+Tr


No, its more easy. He3 + D (Deuterium) -> He4 + P (one proton) + energy (heat/kinetic energy of the particls)

See e.g.: http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html
or google is your friend.

angel'o'sphere

or maybe they died from the extreme cold, lack of oxygen and mass radiation exposure..

It would have most likely been the extreme HEAT, at 107 C to 123 C daytime lunar surface temperatures, that combined with the lack of air pressure, all body fluids would boil quite quickly.

Has nobody heard of the Artemis Project? It's not doing so well these days, but: http://www.asi.org/

Ethan

Actually, if we have fusion reactors, you can imagine mining Lunar Helium 3 commercially -

http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html

If you're a space flight or fusion geek, you might want to try and convince the government that energy self sufficiency is a National Security thing, so we should do it now regardless of the short term problems with fusion. I mean, no one did a cost benefit analysis on Desert Storm as far as I can see.

There's something strangely comforting about a diagram that includes the tag "other nifty volatiles" halfway down this page.

I've always felt that technical language scared off too many people.

seems like they know what they're doing, and that they have been working on it for a while!

We all could be gone by then.

For all we know, the United States of Arabia, formed in 2013, will be the world's lone superpower, we will be driving around in our fuel efficient hydorgen-powered Sayyarrah Ansar 4-doors, created by the Sayyarrah Motor Co in response to rising fuel costs after the world's industrial nations burned through most of the cheaply-accessible Arabian oil, leaving the United States sitting on top of the largest intact oil reserves in the world, which it stubbornly refuses to share. The USA (the Arabian states, I mean) will work with the Brazilians space program and the Federal Chinese States (formed after the Chinese Civil War in 2018) to launch an "asteroid-killer" probe at this thing from the secondary pad at Artemis International Station in the north polar region of the moon.

Or it'll just, like, Africa, or Canada, or some other place nobody cares about, and we'll just live with it. Or the environmentalists will protest that it likely contains spaceborne elementary life forms and that it's an immoral sin of human arrogance to attempt to save our species by eliminating theirs.

Print this post out now and re-read it in 20 years, it'll be fun!

I'm sure you've all heard of it by now, but if not, the Artemis Project has been planning moon colonization by private citizens for years, using a business model to pay for and sustain operations, rather than just sucking tax money out of the system.

you still have to GET the energy from some where If that is to be done without further burning of fossil fuels, we have to commandeer a huge amount of land for solar and wind farms

I fully agree. What Im wondering is if there are parts of the world that are better for producing wind or solar energy than others? I imagine Ireland isnt the best for solar energy but maybe it makes up for it from wind. In the same sense if we go down the road of using nuclear energy then we have to source plutonium or more likely uranium, and that blows a bit of a hole in the articles assertion that:

"Hydrogen is abundant and generously distributed throughout the world without regard for national boundaries; using it to create a hydrogen economy--a future energy system based on hydrogen and electricity--only requires technology, not political access."

And what if Fission becomes possible? The recent article on Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html got me thinking about what the political implications could be if he is right. He estimates that the 1 million metric tons of He3 would be worth $3billion/ton and since the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the militarisation of space the moon will have to be secured, and fought over if necessary.

maybe that explains the recent Chinese interest ;)

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd12 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd18 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0412/22atlas5n ro/ http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /atlasv.htm http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/09/01/npo-energomash. html and: http://www.friends-partners.ru/partners/mwade/lvfa m/energia.htm Sorry for the inconvenience in the previous post.

So the total transportation costs run about $8.25 trillion.

Can I get you to do my taxes?

Apollo didn't cost anything like $110 billion each. Have a look here. The entire budget for the whole Apollo program was less than $80 billion (in 1994 dollars).

Anyway, Apollo wasn't designed to deliver 25 tonnes of Helium from the moon, so it's not surprising to see that it wouldn't be the best tool for the job. You could use Russian Progress spacecraft to deliver over a ton at a time, or actually design a spacecraft to do the job.

That's during a severe solar flare, which is a relatively uncommon event. Otherwise, we would have a lot of dead astronauts and cosmonauts.

See http://www.asi.org/adb/m/03/11/solar-flares.html.

Granted, we've made significant accomplishments in space travel since then, and the cost per shuttle mission is surely less (I seem to recall around $10 million per, but I can't find any numbers). But still... only $88 million to get to the moon? Where exactly are they going to save money?

Of course, India is a very populous nation. Perhaps they're losing money on every mission, but they're going to make it up on volume.

During the Apollo 12 mission, they recovered material from the Surveyor 3 probe. Examination of one of the recovered pieces showed that microbes had survived for over two years on the moon.

While the moon doesn't have an atmosphere worth mentioning for heating the probe during descent, it does become boiling hot during the lunar day. And, considering that you'll want to protect many instruments from extremes of heat, it may actually stay much cooler than 'boiling' inside the probe during the landing.

No, but you can get helium-3 out of the regolith, where it's been collecting in small quantities for a few billion years out of the solar wind.

I am really surprised in some ways, and not at all in others that there are groups of people who want to leave the rest of the universe in pristine condition as it currently is.

Of course, I also believe that those same people would prefer a mass genocide of all of mankind (excepting themselves and a very small group of like-minded people). Some even plan for it and hope the rest of us kill each other.

I would have to agree that ownership of the territory is going to be a huge issue. There are folks that I consider to be on par with the name-a-star-after-your-loved-ones who are selling square mile parcels on planetary bodies throughout the solar system. That is at least the first wave of ownership that is currently happening.

Ownership of any rock that is outside of the earth is still up for debate. I think D. Delos Harriman (from Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon") probabally has the best approach if it really needs to come down to it, by trying to buy the property rights for celestial bodies from all nations that lie below the orbit of the planets (or the moon) but this is something that is going to get ugly before it gets better. Try to park a geosync satellite above Equador and find out just how valuable celestial real estate really is. Equador claims that spot directly above their country as soverign territory (really, look it up).

A pro-active approach from the UN might help in trying to distribute celestial territory, but their current efforts are more along the lines of the Moon Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty are, IMHO examples of those UN member nations who don't have spaceflight capability from legally keeping those who have it from doing anything with spaceflight. That and they are also diplomats and lobbiest who endorse mass genocide of most of mankind at heart. They really don't want anybody to go anywhere else beside staying on the earth. Oh, maybe send a few robots to check out some cool places, and keep the scientist in their ivory towers to keep writing cool proposals and professional research publications. Keep the teeming hoards of ordinary people from ever getting to the rest of those places.

If the UN get into the business of realistically dealing with outer space, it would have to be more along the lines of the Homestead Act and the Northwest Territories Ordinance passed by the United States congress, which specifically acknowledged that the new territories are going to be settled, provided a way for individuals to get involved in the process, and established governing principles for the creation of new governments for the people going into those territories. It would be cool to see the UN coming up with a plan that would allow sections of the Moon, for instance, be able to achieve the status as a UN member nation in the General Assembly.

(BTW, the Northwest of the Northwest Ordinance was the northwestern portion of the USA after the Revolution: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. This was one of the only comprehensive pieces of legislation passed under the U.S. Articles of Confederation before the current U.S. Constitution. This also established the pattern for making most of the western USA as well, in addition to current governing principles for American territory that is not currently in a state. I'm sure this would apply to soverign American territory in space as well.)

I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Instead, I think what is probabally going to happen is a reenactment of the territory grab for the Americas (and most of the rest of the world as well) that happened between the 15th and 18th Centuries. That the players are going to be a little bit different (Europe will be a united voice, but India, China, and Japan w

I am really surprised in some ways, and not at all in others that there are groups of people who want to leave the rest of the universe in pristine condition as it currently is.

Of course, I also believe that those same people would prefer a mass genocide of all of mankind (excepting themselves and a very small group of like-minded people). Some even plan for it and hope the rest of us kill each other.

I would have to agree that ownership of the territory is going to be a huge issue. There are folks that I consider to be on par with the name-a-star-after-your-loved-ones who are selling square mile parcels on planetary bodies throughout the solar system. That is at least the first wave of ownership that is currently happening.

Ownership of any rock that is outside of the earth is still up for debate. I think D. Delos Harriman (from Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon") probabally has the best approach if it really needs to come down to it, by trying to buy the property rights for celestial bodies from all nations that lie below the orbit of the planets (or the moon) but this is something that is going to get ugly before it gets better. Try to park a geosync satellite above Equador and find out just how valuable celestial real estate really is. Equador claims that spot directly above their country as soverign territory (really, look it up).

A pro-active approach from the UN might help in trying to distribute celestial territory, but their current efforts are more along the lines of the Moon Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty are, IMHO examples of those UN member nations who don't have spaceflight capability from legally keeping those who have it from doing anything with spaceflight. That and they are also diplomats and lobbiest who endorse mass genocide of most of mankind at heart. They really don't want anybody to go anywhere else beside staying on the earth. Oh, maybe send a few robots to check out some cool places, and keep the scientist in their ivory towers to keep writing cool proposals and professional research publications. Keep the teeming hoards of ordinary people from ever getting to the rest of those places.

If the UN get into the business of realistically dealing with outer space, it would have to be more along the lines of the Homestead Act and the Northwest Territories Ordinance passed by the United States congress, which specifically acknowledged that the new territories are going to be settled, provided a way for individuals to get involved in the process, and established governing principles for the creation of new governments for the people going into those territories. It would be cool to see the UN coming up with a plan that would allow sections of the Moon, for instance, be able to achieve the status as a UN member nation in the General Assembly.

(BTW, the Northwest of the Northwest Ordinance was the northwestern portion of the USA after the Revolution: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. This was one of the only comprehensive pieces of legislation passed under the U.S. Articles of Confederation before the current U.S. Constitution. This also established the pattern for making most of the western USA as well, in addition to current governing principles for American territory that is not currently in a state. I'm sure this would apply to soverign American territory in space as well.)

I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Instead, I think what is probabally going to happen is a reenactment of the territory grab for the Americas (and most of the rest of the world as well) that happened between the 15th and 18th Centuries. That the players are going to be a little bit different (Europe will be a united voice, but India, China, and Japan w

Mars is 5 months travel each way (assuming 2 years on planet). Regaining Mars orbit will require more fuel than reacquiring lunar orbit due to the increased gravity (38% vs 16.5% on the moon). Food, water, oxygen, shelter for 2 years....

'A nonymous Coward (7548)' may have been guessing at 100x cost, but I expect, if anything, his guess is on the low side.

Easy. All you have to do is award a no-bid contract to Halliburton....

But seriously.. wait, I take that back.. Still being serious, $1 trillion sounds about right. If it cost around $100 billion for all the tech/infracstructure that led to the short hops (and no extended stay) to the moon, that's a trickle compared to manning and supplying a manned Mars station.

Mars is a much stickier problem than the moon. And it's a long time getting them back.

Mars would be colder than Antarctica most of the time.

And Antarctica does better in the oxygen and water availability stakes.

Moon Miner's Manifesto has a piece on how the Celestis capsule will only be in orbit for a year before the ashes meet a fiery end and proposes other and similar methods of putting remains in space.

Even to provide light for a large greenhouse during the lunar nights (not to mention maintain a constant temperature during this cycle that ranges from -180 C to 110 C would be an enormous amount.

Solar radiation in the tropics is something like 1000 watts per square metre. Say you need 30% of that (we'll be generous), and because you'd only need to illuminate for half the time we'll halve it again. So we could work on a constant 150 watts per square metre. Over one year, that works out to 1314 kW/h. We have to add in an allowance for the less-than-perfect efficiency of the lights, but I have no idea what that factor might be. But, ignoring that, at 10c per kW/h, which is a ballpark figure for power generation on Earth (rather than the moon, where it's likely to be much more expensive), we're up to $131.40 to illuminate our crop for a year.

Now, how much are you going to produce out of that one square metre of land? According to this article, efficient rice farmers get about 8 (presumably metric) tons per hectare. Maybe you could double this in a moon farming situation - no pests, optimal watering, custom-built soil, etc. etc. etc., so we'll say 16 tons per hectare. That works out to 1.6 kilograms per square meter.

So our rice costs at least 80 USD per kilogram, just for the power to keep it lit!

That's just the beginnings of our problems, however. We need water and soil for our plants. Water doesn't seem to be exactly abundant on the moon - at best, there's water on the poles but it's going to be a PITA to get at it (if it's there, it'll be in a crater that never sees the sun and is consequently under about -200 Celsius). We could potentially cheat and make water by bringing hydrogen from somewhere else and mixing it with the much heavier oxygen we could get by melting lunar rocks. What else do we need? Carbon, for one. Even the Artemis Project, a bunch of people trying advocating lunar colonization, doubt that there's much carbon available. Carbon will have to be either a) imported from Earth, or possibly b) obtained from the asteroid belt (which, longer term, is actually likely to be easier than from Earth).

All in all, therefore, lunar agriculture is looking dodgy until the cost of energy drops dramatically.

I found an interesting link while looking for temperatures of the moon and mars called The Artemis Project. I didn't look at it much, but they seem to indicate we'd have to build an underground habitat in order to endure those cold temps for long perids. Another good point they bring up is how the cold temps will simply cause tools to break down with use more easily.

Read up on Mars Direct. It's a plan to do Mars missions on the same budgetary scale as the Apollo missions. Those were done for about the same budget that NASA currently gets.