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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).

Significant amounts of chromium, magnesium, aluminum, and titanium, though barring a desperate shortage of said materials on Earth, it would be massively unprofitable to send it back.

http://aeromaster.tripod.com/paper1.htm

http://www.freemars.org/studies/et/

http://www.permanent.com/p-extank.htm

There are allot of valuable resources in asteroids and the Moon. The best thing about the Moon is that is very close. The gravity well situation can be offset with railgun launchers and a space elevator. A space elevator would be far easier to build with the Moon's lower gravity than a Earth based one. Another good Moon project would be a Belt of Solar cells around the equator that could beam electricity to the Earth. There are many more reasons the Moon could be a wonderful Industrial Park for the future. See: Major Lunar Minerals

Science Fiction is easy. The moon would be a lot easier for a space elevator, with one sixth the gravity the cable is almost makeable with current fibers. It is not makeable, just almost. If bucky tube fibers can be made with long enough fibers and a low enough adhesive ratio (say 15%) you might make a lunar elevator. You still need the energy to climb the cable. You could attain a lunar orbit that is lunasynchronous and is always on a line from the earth to the moon, and from there fire them over the small gravity hum to fall to the surface of the earth, where they would arrive at 7 miles per second, or to some higher orbit with some method of braking them, I wonder what that would be? A large catcher's mit?
Beaming power to the earth and wasting 80% of it? Why not make it on earth or low earth orbit, to save beam spreading. If a laser catching rectenna could be made, it would give DC, but then lasers have very low efficiencies since they are population inversion dependant and these have such a short half life.
So we need to explore realistic options, not engage in SF hyperbole if we are to get investment by governments or free men and women

There are allot of valuable resources in asteroids and the Moon. The best thing about the Moon is that is very close. The gravity well situation can be offset with railgun launchers and a space elevator. A space elevator would be far easier to build with the Moon's lower gravity than a Earth based one. Another good Moon project would be a Belt of Solar cells around the equator that could beam electricity to the Earth. There are many more reasons the Moon could be a wonderful Industrial Park for the future. See: Major Lunar Minerals

First things first, the possibility of a pump and dump is definitely there. However...

http://www.permanent.com/p-sps.htm

Have a look at that and some of the links presented. The launch costs are relevant only to the equipment needed for further manufacturing. The rest of the material can be found in space for orders of magnitude less investment.
If solar wind turns out to be enough of a problem, then a minimal network of GEO relay satellites could receive high-intensity beams from non-GEO power satellites and relay as a low-intensity beam to the ground.
The current space economy does not justify a full-scale system at this time, but those who take the risk and start doing real in-orbit testing now will be positioned far better when launch costs drop. It is possible that within the next 10 years the capital and launch costs will have fallen enough to make the idea commercially viable on the large scale.
Something else to consider is that having a clean, reliable 24/7 power source available anywhere on earth makes some of those mass-driver or maglev launch concepts look a lot more viable politically and financially. All it takes is one launcher, and the capital cost for further space infrastructure investment drops staggeringly. The two concepts together have the potential for a strong feedback loop that drives launch costs well below anything we might think possible today. Or it might not. Can't tell until we try, really.

breeder reactors extend by several times the use of available fission fuels

Actually, that is only required of your reactor requires Uranium-235 or Plutonium for fuel. There are reactors that can use natural Uranium for fuel, and for those, breeders are completely unnecessary.

Thorium reactors don't have that problem as much. And thorium is fairly common, as well as being a great way to recycle nuclear waste without the pesky weapons grade plutonium problems that breeder reactors can have if designed that way. I could see using both thorium reactors as well as SPSes. And why not make SPSes out of lunar materials? Launch the basics of a refinery and factory to the Moon, set up a railgun catapult to put the components into geosync orbit with minimal manuvering fuel, and you save the 'cost' of launching several hundred tons of gear to build a SPS from the ground. And as a bonus, it gives us the excuse for colonising the Moon already.

Seriously, guys, haven't you done the math????

Jesus, can we really not start this again? First off, we've done the research last time this topic came up. The research cited in the last article we had stated that you would have to have a smaller concentration than 50 mW/cm^2 to keep it from having obvious impact to a single tested species of bird. This means that you would need to have a radius on your receiver of greater than 357 M for one of these beams. Again, this accounts for a single species of bird that similar microwave power was tested against. Not to say it won't affect other species or migratory patterns. The math is here. The article was here. The research about the birds was here.

My huge argument to this is that it SEEMS safe enough, given enough provisions. Is the research on it complete? Is it biased? Will it be implemented honestly and responsibly by PG&E, whose only responsibility is making as much money as fast as possible?

I can't answer those questions. But I do know they'll be hacking off as many corners as they can get away with. I've never dealt with them personally, but from other power companies I have (Ameren, I'm looking at you), I can guarantee that every dime that can be removed from the system and put in someone's pocket will be until something goes wrong, then when people start dying from it, (again, Ameren, I'm looking at you), they won't buckle down and dip into profits. They'll take it out on the consumers and jack the rates 20%-50% to, well, maybe fix the issue, maybe not. I still don't know if my power lines are going to fail for weeks next time there's some ice.

"Research has involved exposing multiple generations of animals to microwave radiation of this or higher intensity, and no health issues have been found."

[Citation]

On a side note, this is for you.

If this article can be believed it's hardly as dangerous as you're making it out to be.

http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm

This isn't an ion cannon. The effects at the transmitter are minimal, so I'd expect they won't do much to a satellite.

http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm

this wacky idea of harnessing solar energy seem rather rube goldberg-ish. if you read the original concept paper you would know there are flywheels and giant vacuum tubes on this thing. aside from that, the ultraprecision for positioning this monstrosity is beyond anything humans have ever done. no worries though, when a giant beam of radiation accidentally hits the wrong place, im sure the people wont mind being irradiated.

in short, this idea is insane.

Without an atmosphere, you'll be totally dependent on soil extraction for materials. It's unrealistic that you'd be bringing anything in really large quantities from the earth. That said, lunar soil is pretty much devoid of Carbon and Nitrogen. Both are necessary for sustaining human and plant life. That's a pretty huge impediment to a sustainable human presence on the moon.

There's plenty of metal and oxygen, and plenty of sunlight, so it might be a better plan to send up a fleet of teleoperated machines to prep the place for a future human presence. Might take a couple of decades to do, but we probably need that time to figure out the other issues.

I noticed you didn't include http://permanent.com/ in your list. IMHO it is quite a good site concerning space colonisation. I have no affiliation with the site btw.

Sounds like it wouldn't be a very good reason for going, then?
But wait! if we are going anyway, might it not be sort of handy to have around? After looking around the web a little, I see that a lot of other people thought of it first; the best link to read up on stuff that would be better done on the moon than here is at http://www.permanent.com/i-index.htm

From the samples we brought back forom the Moon there is a lot of Oxygen tied up in various Metal Oxides(SiO2,Al2O3,TiO2,& FeO). More info can be found at

That's funny- because a large portion of the current international space station is made from recycled junk right now.

No, it isn't. There was talk of doing that, but nothing more than talk. See http://www.permanent.com/p-extank.htm


Also, what's the hurry? The longer we wait, the less there will be...orbits will degrade, stuff will burn up.

Not exactly. That's assuming no new junk gets added to orbit, and even then the total mass decreases, not the number of objects. According to the article the number of objects will remain the same until 2055 because of collisions.

The hurry is that these objects pose a problem right now.

Not bloody likely (*cough* Apollo 13 *cough*)

Just proves my point. A similar problem in the shuttle would have doomed it for sure. And remember, the the guys in Apollo came back alive. No fatalities on a mission. I didn't say no incidents.

Ablatives are just as famous for chipping as tiles are.

But they never resulted in a fatality. John Glenn came bach to earth with the retro pack still attached. Made a great light show, but I believe he's still alive to talk about it.

Yes, I did mean ballistics.

Because "those dopes" are aware that the external tank doesn't even complete a single orbit before it falls into the Indian Ocean.

Notably, if the tank is saved, the Space Shuttle can lift MORE payload up from Earth, or it can go up to a higher orbit. Why? Saving the tank would eliminate a manuvering operation required to send the tank to burn up safely in a small target area at a remote spot in the Indian Ocean. This requires use of fuel on board the Shuttle, which is a compact but relatively heavy fuel (hydrazine), which is also used to propel the Shuttle to its final orbital velocity. Saving the tank would also allow more of the tank's leftover fuel to be used (by a slow burn at lower tank pressure). An engineering study by the tank's manufacturer, Martin Marietta, shows that the Shuttle can take an extra ton of cargo to orbit if the tank is saved. Turns out there are several people with the same idea. You do remember what Skylab was made of, don't you?
FTL:
An external tanks space station was also a competitor to funding for the International Space Station (ISS) effort that has gained so much political support and money for NASA. There were many interest groups who opposed use of the MET.

Maybe that's the real reason, eh? No rocket science there. I'll leave the insults up to you.

Considering that the moon has minerals very rich in Titanium on the surface (So much so that it's significant...) and that the industrial byproduct of the extraction of the Titanium from said minerals is Oxygen, I'd say that there's metals up there- usable ones. http://www.permanent.com/l-minera.htm

Also worth noting is that there's enough He3 up there trapped in the regolith that can be easily and controllably fused into other isotopes and elements to be bothered with mining it out of the surface as well. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_0006 30.html

Not everything is QUITE as the detractors of the space program would have you to believe it to be.

"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.

For that matter, everyone doing work on Solar Power Satellites would be interested to know that this sort of thing is impossible.

Technically, geostationary orbits can only be achieved with bodies that are rotating on their axis.
A geostationary orbit is one where the craft remains fixed in location in the sky relative to a ground point, and can only occur over equatorial regions.
For earth based satellites, this means they rotate the earth with an orbital period of 24hours, remaining fixed above a location.

However, the moon does not rotate on its axis, the tidal forces because of its interaction with Earth mean it is always pointing towards earth, hence, we always have a dark side of the moon.

There is *no* way that a tether would reach more than half way.

Take a look at the rather pretty energy well representation on this page and revise your estimate.

http://www.permanent.com/t-theory.htm

You mean like this? I suspect that's probably more than you were after...

Ok.. Sorry to do it, BUT... "Well, can you at least make it taste like chicken? Otherwise, I'm gonna shrivel up like a super model"

NASA ran a demonstration project called "Breadboard" starting back in '86. It's still active, I think. The goal of the project were to:

1.) Develop a sealed environment plant growth capability (which is much harder than simple hydroponic farming).

2.) Develop the systems needed to control atmospheric contaminants, b) collect and regenerate condensate water, and c) recycle solid wastes.

3.) Integrate all of the systems in point 2 with the growth in point 1.

Here's a link to a page that gives a decent 'least you need to know' overview of the project.

http://www.permanent.com/s-ce-nas.htm

Of course, NASA hasn't made it to including humans yet, but since as per /. protocol I haven't RTFA, I don't know if the russians are 'cheating' on all of these mundane details.

This link is a summary paper of information from a variety of sources on Solar Power Satellites. This one has a couple pictures of a test in California.

This link is a summary paper of information from a variety of sources on Solar Power Satellites. This one has a couple pictures of a test in California.

Humans need to get into space simply because Earth is not a closed system. We can't keep all our eggs in this basket at the bottom of a gravity well. The solar system affects us and has more resources than are available on Earth.

Incidentally: " 03/26/04 - SpaceDev Seeks Top Spacecraft Program Managers and Engineers"

Initial ore processing (extraction and pulverizing) is about the cheapest part of the process, though the fact that it's already done does make it easier. Electricity for refining aluminum is also much easier to get from solar energy.

Incidentally, I did go looking for information on what is in the regolith. I'm aware of the other elements, but aluminum and titanium will be preferred structural materials for low density and high strength (especially in the case of titanium).

While the cynical non American part of me thinks that this is very possibly an election year exercise in yahoo vote gathering, the other part of me wishes that it will come to pass, and for one reason only: Survival of the species.

While an American moon base and mars mission would be excellent for American morale, it would perhaps also serve as a stepping stone for the real colonisation of space by the human race. And I think it is vitally important that we as a species expand beyond our planet, but more on that later.

I don't think it will be possible to get the Bush programme working on the budget that he claims and even if the programme isn't cancelled by the next president after Bush (or by Bush himself after getting reelected) the costs will probably balloon into five or tens times the initial amount before it actually gets there. Simply taking a look at the ruinous costs of the American war effort in Iraq ($4 billion per month) and the way that massive cronyism led to connected companies such as Halliburton being able to charge what they wanted for gasoline, and companies such as Bechtel charging $10 million to repair a bridge where a local Iraqi competitor was offering to rebuild it for $500 000, and thereby blow costs in the war wildly out of proportion, I don't think, given the way that the current American administration is run, that it would be possible.

Even the so called spin offs from a space programme are mostly propaganda myths. It is true that space provides bountiful resources and the ability to develop whole new techniques in engineering, medicine and science, such as those advertised by Permanent.com, but obviously those things would primarily be of interest and value to colonists in space, not to people on earth.

But that doesn't mean it should be done. Even the tiny chance of an asteroid or comet hitting the earth could mean the extinction of our species, and given how humanity is incapable of living in peace with itself or even solving easier problems such as hunger, disease and the enironment on our own planet, it is not unthinkable that we might wipe ourselves out in the future. It's not like we haven't been close to that point in the past (Black death, the Cuba crisis).

Nothing has really changed much in human nature, really. We still fight and squabble, oppress and murder, cheat and steal, suffer from greed and egoism just like we have throughout history. Yet in spite, or perhaps because of those dark sides of our nature (The discovery and colonisation of America was mainly a commericial and political power venture) we have achieved great things. I think it is important that we as a species accept ourselves for what we are, intelligent primates but animals none the less, and expand off our planet to colonise the solar system.

I don't think anyone alive today will ever see the first true colonists making the first martian version of a homestead, and not even our great great grandchildren will see the terraforming of mars, but we as a species need to go, I think, simply because it's a part of what life is about.

Yes, in general this is a poor argument to use. However in this case the additional spending is far out weighed by the economic advantages of space exploration. Instead of building a bomb which has a negative economic impact (not to mention cost) we are building spacecraft that have the potential to generate huge economic benefits.

Not to mention the advances in science and technology that the program alone generates. One example of technology developed from the Apollo program is the circuit board which of course led to the personal computer.

Rex Stephens

PERMANENT core member

Author of The Preparation

Attempts to mine asteroidal material from NEOs (Near Earth Objects) would present even greater problems for remote control. While asteroid mining presents a lot of advantages over lunar mining (your product is already in orbit, for instance), the moon has the noted quality of being local to us. Furthermore, we can see what's going on there from here without a whole lot of effort, assuming that mining operations stick to the Earth-facing side.

I suspect that, at least in the short term, Lunar and asteroidal mining operations are going to be carried out by small human crews with large arsenals of semi-automated equipment at their disposals.

JD Ray
PERMANENT core member

Attempts to mine asteroidal material from NEOs (Near Earth Objects) would present even greater problems for remote control. While asteroid mining presents a lot of advantages over lunar mining (your product is already in orbit, for instance), the moon has the noted quality of being local to us. Furthermore, we can see what's going on there from here without a whole lot of effort, assuming that mining operations stick to the Earth-facing side.

I suspect that, at least in the short term, Lunar and asteroidal mining operations are going to be carried out by small human crews with large arsenals of semi-automated equipment at their disposals.

JD Ray
PERMANENT core member

Moderators, if someone provides a link which does not work properly, they are not being Informative. They are simply posting useless garbage.

Here's the correct link: http://www.permanent.com/.

The entire star system known as Betelgeuse, and all planets and other bodies that may orbit said star, as well as a 15,000 mile area of control arouns said star system

a square on Mars bounded by the following coordinates:2.5 degrees North, by 31.5 degrees West, by 5.5 degrees South by 39.5 degrees West. All minerals, soil and rocks beneath the site down to a depth of 50 miles and up to a height of 25 miles as an air space over the top. - This by the 1998-1999 Fourth Grade Class at Westridge Elementary School - at least they're a lot cooler than I was in 4th grade.

GAlaxy NGC 4013

If anyone's interested in the current state of asteroid mining tech, have a look here. Thought provoking stuff.

Starting haphazardly.


The delta-v quoted by your source is far lower than the delta-v needed to get into a Hohmann transfer orbit even from free space in a circular solar orbit at Earth's radius (which the C3=0 orbit is the equivalent of). As the Hohmann orbits are the lowest energy transfer orbits that don't require slingshots from other bodies, I question the values on that figure.

Ah, there's your problem. The C3=0 orbit is NOT a circular orbit at Earth's radius. It's a parabolic orbit with Earth at its focus, which necessarily can NOT be a circular orbit about the Sun at Earth's radius. A parabolic orbit means that at infinity, it will have no velocity relative to the Earth, which means, if the craft traveled to infinity, it would then have the equivalent orbital velocity of Earth. Problem is, it never reaches infinity, as it's not a two-body system, since the Sun's there.

If you want a spacecraft to be in a circular orbit at Earth's radius, well, it doesn't have to do anything - just stay home. It already is in one. :) After it lifts off, depending on the direction, it is doing two things - first, it is escaping from Earth's gravity, and second, it is changing its orbit. You don't have to "add" the escape velocities onto the necessary orbital delta-V. If you wanted it to actually reach a circular orbit, that takes a lot more work, actually!

This is the problem when you're doing "you need to add an extra 5.03 + 2.38 km/s" - you're adding the Lunar escape velocity and the Martian escape velocity, which you do not need to do, because you're not exactly going to infinity. On the return, you can easily aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere as well to enter lunar orbit.

Also don't forget about aerobraking! No matter what, any time you approach a planet (even entering lunar orbit! you can always place your perigee inside Earth's atmosphere with clever timing!) if you need to slow down, it's free.

And if you don't like that site, how about here, which shows that Deimos is more accessible than the Moon (and shows a delta-V from Mars surface to Lunar surface of 8.0 km/s, not 13.0 km/s).

Or here, where you'll note that "LEO to Mars" is a delta-V of 4.8 km/s, not the 5.6 km/s you're claiming - this is because, of course, it's in LEO, and therefore has some orbital velocity about Earth (and is therefore traveling at -greater- than Earth's orbital velocity at certain points).

I can continue to give examples if you want - the point is that from the Moon, it's easier to get to Mars and back than it is to get to Earth and back.

The easiest way to think about this is simple: You do not need to actually escape Earth orbit in order to reach Mars. A highly eccentric orbit can include both Earth and Mars (if both were stationary, obviously - they're not, so you can't orbit them, but you can of course use that path to transfer between them), and so must necessarily take less energy than the escape velocity of Earth+the escape velocity of Mars (which reaches Mars by going through infinity).

Interestingly enough, Hohmann transfers are not lowest energy. Google for "interplanetary superhighway", which is a relatively recent discovery. Really does suck that the 3-body system isn't analytically solvable...

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have tried to put words into your mouth. I have a nasty habit of doing that....

However, from the Projects to Employ Resources of the Moon and Asteroids Near Earth in the Near Term (PERMANENT) website:

First, the Moon is made of lighterweight material blown off of the Earth's surface, and is poor in materials from the Earth's mantle and core. We see this in the aluminum-rich lunar highland geologies. We also know by measuring the mass and density of the Moon by Apollo and other scientific instruments. Overall, the Moon is not very dense.

The mantle has heavy metals that are carried by convection from the core. While the Moon has some heavy metals, it certainly isn't close to the concentrations the the mantle.

to make fuel and infrastructure from materials already in space

I hope to see that happen in my lifetime - even if permanent.com is too optimistic. That's why I like these probes, not because of the (negligible) impact danger.

In fact, earth has not been hit by an asteroid in at least several hundred thousand years. Why do people suddenly feel protection is urgent now?

Tell that to the Russians... The last major impact was less than 100 years ago, and released about the same energy as a 10 megaton nuclear weapon. It wasn't nearly enough to cause any kind of extinction, but I sure would want to be able to push one of those off course if it was headed towards a populated area.

I, for one, think Earth's gravity well is too deep to make space elevators feasable. If I'm wrong, great, but I'm pretty sure the near term is going to be all about SSTO HLLVs.

The Artemis Project is more of a space club than a business (although it has some of the latter, and it is pretty successful compared with other clubs). Their web site contains a Data Book which was pretty good, but seems to now be members-only. Another good site is P.E.R.M.A.N.E.N.T. with lots of details about things like all the different minerals on the moon. Much of it is kind of long term (for example, mining applications which only make financial sense if you are using the minerals off-earth). And at the risk of immodesty I have pages on mining and novelties (with the former being more for the intrinsic value, such as platinum for its appearance or chemical properties, and the latter more having value by virtue of being from the moon). My pages are more focused on near-term applications (such as bring platinum group metals to earth). I try to include some numbers (such as prices of platinum, how much flooding the market would affect the price, how much it would cost to get materials back from an asteroid and stuff), so that you can tweaks the assumptions and see how that affects the finances.

Of course, it's still a massively controversial subject and they must have been hoping that it would be good for their funding. The press release was dated August 1996, which is certainly a good time for NASA to have been feeling a bit poor. In fact, looking at the 2000 NASA budget testimony, if the 1996 release was a bid for funding, it really didn't work very well.

a) You're assuming you want to send the materials back to the earth. For a Mars mission you wouldn't want to do this.

b) the crust certainly isn't lacking metals- there's plenty of iron, aluminium, titanium etc; see Permanents list of minerals on the moon. And they are already oxides. For several reasons they are probably easier to separate in space (some techniques like fractional distillation of the oxides[!] are easier there due to ready availability of solar energy and the micro gravity.)

c) the moon is short of volatiles (especially hydrogen and carbon) however; there does seem to be a supply of hydrogen in some form at the poles, and there is speculation that it might contain carbon too.

d) Imagine it was back in the 15 century: "why would we want to go to the west indies? There's nothing there we haven't got plenty of...". In point of fact there's more stuff in space than down here on earth (particularly solar energy.)

Apparently, though, the risks have been pretty carefully considered and the conclusion is that this isn't much of a problem compared to suntanning or eating a typical American diet. As pointed out elsewhere, this frequency is non-ionizing and therefore does not cause chemical reactions. It can heat you up in significant intensities but nothing more, and the intensities under consideration would cause only about as much heating as being outside on a hot day.

From the website cited above: What if the beam wanders off from the rectenna? The beam can't wander off target with a significant intensity because it needs constant feedback from the rectenna for focusing. (A phased-array system is necessary for successful focusing onto the rectenna at such distances.) If it wanders off, then it immediately defocusses and disperses to a tiny fraction of its operating intensity. It also can't be used as a weapon for this reason. Even if it were re-engineered to point anywhere with the same focussing, the transmitters would be designed to operate at a relatively benign frequency (e.g., 2.45 GHz) which would not pose a credible threat to anyone. Again, the only thing that will significantly absorb the 2.45 GHz frequency beam is a receiving antenna designed for it.

The San Diego company, Orbital Development, OrbDev, has owned Eros since 03 Mar 2000 when the company filed a claim at the Archimedes Institute

OrbDev's founder, Gregory Nemitz, states that Orbital Development has sent an invoice to Dan Goldin, Head Administrator of NASA, in the amount of $20 for the next century's parking/storage fees for the NEAR spacecraft, now resting on OrbDev's property Eros.

Nemitz says, "It is not about the money. The invoice was sent to stimulate serious discussion about Property Rights in Space. Twenty cents a year, for a century, is a bargain. Nobody can rightfully say that OrbDev is ripping-off the US Government."

He also maintains that any agreement on Space Property Rights by the world's Nations could take more than a decade to enact.

Nemitz goes on to postulate that if OrbDev's claim was recognized by the United Nations as a one-time only experiment in "equity-based space resource development", OrbDev could use that recognized equity in Eros' 80 trillion tons of material to raise the funds to develop all of the Space infrastructure pieces that can also enable Lunar and Martian development.

Eros development will require new heavy-lift launch vehicles, micro-gee mining equipment, long-term habitation systems, deep space power systems, fuel extraction and storage equipment.

"The Space Resources Development Industry could be born, while the UN debates the fate of the rest of the Solar System." Nemitz states.

Oh, China knows the rocks. We published what is in the rocks. The head of the China space agency said they intend to use what is on the Moon.

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.