Slashdot Mirror
Lunar Scientist Proposes Dozens of Impact Probes To Map Moon's Water (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Water ice believed by scientists to reside at the lunar poles is the key to opening up the solar system to human activity. The water could help sustain a lunar settlement. It could also be refined into rocket fuel, not only to sustain travel to and from the moon but to make it a refueling stop for spacecraft headed deeper into the solar system. A recent MIT study suggested that lunar fuel would simplify NASA's Journey to Mars. Lunar scientist Paul Spudis, writing in Air and Space Magazine, pondered the next step in determining the extent and composition of the lunar ice. Spudis' idea is to deploy several dozen impact probes across one of the lunar polar regions.
The group developed a model to determine the best route to Mars, assuming the availability of resources and fuel-generating infrastructure on the moon.
Well isn't that handy? So as long as we assume that the cost of setting up and staffing and running a moon base is zero, and the cost of building the generation facilities and producing the fuel is zero, generating the fuel cost is zero, It's financially much better to make fuel there.
No doubt the time involved in setting up a completely peripheral side project is also assumed to be zero. Why not, it makes just as much sense as assuming everything else id free?
MIT should be ashamed that such drivel came from anyone related to that institution.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.