Can Humankind Establish a Supply Chain in Space? (arxiv.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor shares a new paper by NASA planetary scientist Philip Metzger, "detailing a roadmap for humanity to take control of the Solar System in order to solve problems on Earth" by utilizing the resources that are already on the moon. In a 2013 paper, Dr. Metgzer wrote: "[B]ootstrapping" can be achieved with as little as 12 metric tons landed on the Moon during a period of about 20 years... The industry grows exponentially because of the free real estate, energy, and material resources of space. The mass of industrial assets at the end of bootstrapping will be 156 metric tons with 60 humanoid robots or as high as 40,000 metric tons... Within another few decades with no further investment, it can have millions of times the industrial capacity of the United States...
Dr. Metzger wrote in 2013 that "This industry promises to revolutionize the human condition." (See RockDoctor's original submission for more details.) While Metzger now notes that "It will require a sustained commitment of several decades to complete," his new article points out that a lunar supply chain outpost "will cost about 1/3 or less of the existing annual budgets of the national space programs," thanks to advances in both robotics and artificial intelligence, and will help humanity develop renewable energy and greatly expand the availability of other limited resources.

Comments

"the free blah blah blah of space"

[Nutria]

Nothing is free, especially in space because of not just the resources but the industrial capacity to create those resources -- and in space you'll need a lot, since not only aren't there any on the Moon, but you need to claw out of a really deep gravity well to get that stuff to the Moon -- required to take advantage of that so-called free energy and material resources.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[GNious]

After all, Moon is made basically of the same material that the Earth was formed with.

Slightly more precise, the Moon is made out of Earth's crust, so primarily consists of the lighter materials.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[DanielRavenNest]

That's why you want to build in high orbit *near* the Moon, and not *on* the Moon.

The three main types of asteroids (chondrite, stony, and metallic) are all different from each other, and from the Moon, because of their origins and history. In particular, the chondrites have up to 20% water and carbon compounds. You can deliver asteroid rock to high orbit using solar-electric propulsion, which is very efficient. You can deliver Lunar materials to orbit with an electric centrifuge, also very efficient. In high orbit you get sunlight 100% of the time to power your equipment. The Lunar surface only gets sunlight 50% of the time, and the gaps are two weeks long, which is annoying.

> After all, Moon is made basically of the same material that the Earth was formed with.

They started out similar because the Moon is made from debris from the Theia-Proto Earth collison. But the Moon remained hot for a long time due to original collision energy, later bombardment, radioactive decay, and tidal heating when it was much closer to Earth. Because of the Moon's smaller size, it lost most of the "volatile" compounds (anything with a vapor pressure at lava temperatures). They either escaped directly, or were stripped by solar wind particles. So the Earth and Moon are fairly different today.

Re: Yes

[Applehu Akbar]

The will and the commitment are there in the private sector, which is willing to tolerate far more personal risk than the public sector and is not saddled by the 'priorities' argument.