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

Yes

[NotInHere]

a matter of when not whether.

Re: Yes

[DanielRavenNest]

I think you are being too pessimistic, Barbara.

Space industry as of 2015 was $335 billion in economic activity ( see page 7 of http://www.sia.org/wp-content/... ), with about 1400 operational satellites in total. We don't have a way to effectively repair or refuel these satellites. When they stop working, we have to replace them at great expense. Saving money or increasing profits provides plenty of "will and commitment" to build the first generation of space mining and production. This would start with propellants, since just about every satellite uses them, and they are a simple product to make.

> we don't know where (or even if) the needed resources exist in viable quantities or concentrations

On the contrary, nearly all satellites operate on solar energy, so we know that is feasible. The total solar flux passing closer than the Moon is equal to the whole world's fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. That's more energy than we know what to do with, provided we can tap it economically.

Meteorites are pieces of asteroids that hit the Earth and survived re-entry. So we are able to examine those in detail, and then infer the composition of asteroids still in space by comparing spectra. For a handful of asteroids, and the Moon, we have visited by scientific missions, or in person, and gotten more direct information. So, for example, we have detailed geologic maps for the Moon ( http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resour... ) and are building up our knowledge of other bodies.

> human colonies are a death sentence to anyone living there permanently

I will set aside the fact that the human condition has a 100% mortality rate so far, and that a minor oops driving to work will kill you on Earth. But I helped design and build the Space Station, and it's been occupied for 15 years now. Think of it as a proof of concept. A space colony in orbit or on the surface can deal with gravity by rotation. On the ground that means a merry-go-round or racetrack setup that people use for as many hours as required to maintain health. Bulk rock is easy for surface locations, and not so hard for orbital ones. Enough thickness will provide good shielding. Most illustrations of space colonies are "artist's concepts" and don't address safety in the way engineers building bridges and skyscrapers have to. A real colony would have multiple layers of pressure shell, compartmentalization, emergency shelters, and other safety provisions. Yes, accidents and failures will happen, but we live with fires and natural disasters on Earth. The question is can you bring the risks down to a comparable level as on Earth. I think the answer is yes.

> at the rate we're avoiding meeting even our moderate climate change goals, we'll have a massive depopulation or extinction event long before that.

We are installing over a hundred billion watts of solar and wind capacity worldwide this year. Coal use has dropped by a third in the US in the last 10 years. Things could move faster, but when oil states like Saudi Arabia and Dubai are installing renewables, it should be obvious change is happening ( http://www.pv-tech.org/news/sa... )

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.

Re: Yes

[BarbaraHudson]

Nonsense. The private sector has become dependent on governments making the general population absorb the risks for th e"too big to fail." It would have cost less to bail out every single homeowner in the housing crisis than it did to bail out the banks.

And then there are subsidies and tax breaks ...

Look at Apple - sitting on a cash horde it doesn't want to pay taxes on and won't repatriate until it gets a tax holiday, reduced to removing a headphone jack as "innovation".

"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"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's one important resource that's really scarce on the Moon, comparatively to what we might want: carbon. Other things I'm not so sure about. After all, Moon is made basically of the same material that the Earth was formed with.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[Nutria]

According to this graph, there isn't too much carbon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_composition "Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) appear to be present only in trace quantities from deposition by solar wind." No citation, so take it with a grain of salt.

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"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But it also wasn't subject to the same amount of stratification. And if Earth contains more iron at its core, it's not all that useful to us anyway since it's not accessible. Ore genesis didn't take place on the Moon but the surface material seems to be reasonably mixed to not require it. Any exploitation, however, would require very different processes, not just because of the diffuse nature of the source materials. For example, the aforementioned lack of carbon basically excludes smelting.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[DanielRavenNest]

That's where self-bootstrapping automated production (seed factories) come in.

You build the first ones here on Earth. That's my day job, by the way - building prototype seed factories. The first generation factories are built in moderate environments, like Atlanta where we are working. They produce parts for more equipment, eventually growing to industrial size. They also produce useful products to pay for their upkeep. Eventually you send new seed factories to more difficult locations, like the oceans, ice caps, and deserts. Finally, you tell your collection of factories to build rocket factories and launch pads, and off you go to space.

The starter sets (seed factories) won't be free, but they will be low cost because they are small. They pay their own way after that, by making things people need and want.

> but you need to claw out of a really deep gravity well to get that stuff to the Moon

The actual escape energy from Earth is 62.5 MJ/kg = 17.375 kWh/kg = $1/kg at wholesale electric rates, about what I pay for potatoes. We just have been terribly inefficient about how we get to space.

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:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[Nutria]

The actual escape energy from Earth is 62.5 MJ/kg = 17.375 kWh/kg = $1/kg at wholesale electric rates ... We just have been terribly inefficient about how we get to space.

Completely ignores that the energy has to be converted to 40,000 k/h escape velocity.

(Don't even mention "space elevator"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAXGUQ_ewcg)

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[Immerman]

I agree beanstalk-style space elevators are ridiculous for the time being, and there's a real possibility that we may never develop materials strong enough to actually build them on Earth with adequate margins of safety.

  But that's only the most dramatic and convenient kind of elevator, There are many other far more achievable designs being considered, including my favorite, the tumbling cable or wheel elevator, which is potentially *far* more cost effective per launch since it doesn't require actually spending energy for every launch, instead acting as a "momentum battery", imparting momentum to vehicles snatched from the upper edges of the atmosphere, and then reabsorbing it when they return. Even if there's a net imbalance, you can still gradually "charge up" the wheel using radically more efficient ion drives rather than high-power chemical rockets. (Incidentally, such a design also has great potential orbiting the moon, where it could be quite small yet potentially snatch things directly from the surface and hurl them on transfer orbits to either Mars or Venus)

And then there's ideas like airship-to-orbit (http://www.jpaerospace.com/) which if it can be achieved is considerably slower, but also potentially far safer and more efficient than rockets.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[khallow]

Ore genesis didn't take place on the Moon but the surface material seems to be reasonably mixed to not require it.

You think based on very little evidence. An obvious rebuttal here is that certain ore genesis processes on Earth required volcanism or asteroid impact, both which have happened on the Moon. For example, the nickel deposits of Norilskâ"Talnakh are thought to be formed by sulfur chemistry transferring nickel and other metals into a layer of magma pinned under the Siberia Traps eruptions (which would be in the top ten lunar maria by surface area, if it happened on the Moon instead of on Earth).

The famous Bushveld complex is a concentration of platinum group metals thought to be caused by an asteroid impact melting into a magma body and then selectively crystallized out last as the magma body slowly cooled.

So we have two mechanisms for substantial differentiation and ore genesis on Earth, which would apply just as well to parts of the Moon.

Further, there's direct evidence of significant differentiation possible with the "orange soil" discovered by astronaut Harrison Smith during the Apollo 17 sortie which had high concentrations of titanium (8% by mass) and "rich in zinc" which probably came from late stage volcanism on the Moon's surface.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[dbIII]

Typically smelting is a chemical process so it needs heat and a reducing agent (eg. CO).
Just melting rocks doesn't get a lot done unless you add other rocks.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[c]

My (limited) understanding is that material on the moon tends to more "mixed" and less layered (also, see above comment about stratification), making mining less efficient.

True, we'd be hunting for chunks rather than veins. On the other hand, digging should be easier, assuming we're cool with strip mining the Moon.

Asteroid mining seems like more bang for the buck in the long term, especially if you're going after specific materials, but I have a feeling that in order to pull it off successfully we'll need substantial infrastructure in space first.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[DanielRavenNest]

Typical mission times for Near Earth Asteroids in good orbits is 2-3 years. That's going out, grabbing dirt off the surface of an asteroid, and coming back. You can use Lunar gravity assist in both directions, which reduces the acceleration time on the electric propulsion. Current ion thrusters are too small for mining tugs. What you want are 200 kW plasma thrusters, like the VASIMR, and gang up 5 of them for 1 MW total power. That gives you 28.5 N @ 1 AU, sufficient to accelerate a loaded tug (1000 tons payload, 35 tons tug) at 2.38 m/s/day or 868 m/s/year. Most of the time is consumed on the return trip, since the tug is vastly heavier then. On the outbound leg the tug can achieve 68 m/s/day, and do all the required delta-V in a month or so. You would choose asteroids and orbit positions so as to minimize the return leg, and just accept a less efficient outbound leg.

If you think 1 MW is a lot of solar power, modern solar panels the size of the ones on the Space Station (400 square meters) can produce 165 kW each, so six of them in a hexagon around the tug core can do it. By comparison the Space Station has eight main panels.

The main asteroid belt is 1.1 to 2.3 AU from Earth ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... ). The "Near Earth" group are by definition within 0.3 AU, so that's the ones you start with. They don't have water as ice, it's too hot that near the Sun. What they have is hydrated minerals, which release the water when heated to 200-300C. An example of a hydrated mineral is kaolinite, which has the formula Al2Si2O5(OH)4. It is a major component of clay on Earth. The OH's are what get driven off in the form of water vapor.

Hauling ice from beyond the "frost line" (2.8 AU), where average temperatures are low enough for ice to be stable, is certainly a possibility, but not for the early years of space mining. It's just too far away. There's lots and lots of water beyond the frost line, because Oxygen is the 3rd most common element, after Hydrogen and Helium, and water is H2O.

Re: "the free blah blah blah of space"

[DrPhiltill]

There's huge amounts of carbon in lunar ice, as shown by the LCROSS impact and the analysis of the debris cloud it threw up from a lunar ice deposit. This makes sense because the ice is apparently the residue of carbonaceous asteroids and comets, both of which are water-rich and carbon-rich.

Re:"the free blah blah blah of space"

[RockDoctor]

I know people get excited about L1 and L2 and low-energy transfers,

Yes, but not for the reason you're looking at.

Say you're on Earth and you hear that a robotic tug bringing a 500m diameter lump of asteroid belt to LEO has malfunctioned, and will be 500km off from it's target location/ time/ velocity heptuple. And that 500km error will plant it into an ocean that borders your home. you are advised to take your suicide pill sometime in the remaining month before your death.

Miss your target by $DISTANCE$ when aiming for one of the L-points and more likely than not the worst outcome would be a fine from the Parking Warden.

which isn't going to make sense for human spaceflight,

The papers are not about performing human spaceflight. They're about building the space-based infrastructure that would allow human space flight at a negligible cost, while simultaneously building power stations for Earth, possibly compute-stations for Earth. Maybe sun-shields at L1 to take 1-2% off solar irradience and maybe save the Arctic from melting. Human space flight (e.g. a geological exploration mission to Mars or Io) is way down the list of priorities.

at least until we can reliably solve the gravity and radiation issues, both of which are only solved long-term with lots of mass.

There is a physically-possible plan for solving either plan that doesn't involve large amounts of mass? Enlighten me!

Re:Another portion of utter crap

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Unfortunately, the "up" direction, i.e., away from Earth's center, coincides with the "into space" direction.

Why is this easier in space than on Earth?

[superposed]

About half of the Earth's land is virtually uninhabited, which means nearly free land; and most of that land has good access to "free" energy (wind and solar power). So why would we have to go to the moon to setup an exponentially growing robot-run supply-chain? Is it ethically better to make rocket fuel and metals on the moon than in Antarctica or the Sahara Desert or northern Canada?

Re:Why is this easier in space than on Earth?

[DanielRavenNest]

It's not. That's why we are building the first self-bootstrapping automated factories here on Earth:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/...

Once we have enough factories that have grown to full capacity, we tell them to build rocket factories and launch pads, and send new seed factories into space:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/...

Re:Why is this easier in space than on Earth?

[TapeCutter]

Modern mines here in Oz are pretty much run by robots already, eg: the giant open cut Argyle diamond mine is operated by just 12 people (up to the point where the raw diamonds are ready to be assessed by a jeweler's eye).We do some really dumb shit too, eg: we mine bauxite in the NT desert, put it on a boat and send it several thousand miles south to Victoria where the state government gave them a great deal on a coal fired generator to run their electric arc smelter. The aluminium is then loaded on a boat that sails back past the mine to the northern hemisphere markets.

Why don't they smelt it on site using solar power from the desert around the mine? - Because "jobs for victorians".

Re:Why is this easier in space than on Earth?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It wouldn't cost "exponentially more" (what variable is in your exponent?), and one of the reasons why shipping is so cheap nowadays is that it uses absolutely shitty fuel that nobody else is allowed to use. If environmental regulations strengthen in the future (they already do near European coasts, if I recall correctly), say good bye to ultra-cheap transport. Pure solar operation is unlikely but some kind of hybrid operation seems plausible.

Re:Why is this easier in space than on Earth?

[superposed]

Solar power is now cheaper than coal in good locations, and aluminum smelting is an interruptible process (smelters often buy interruptible power to get a better deal), so there's no need for any kind of backup. Solar power and aluminum smelting are a match made in heaven.

Seed Factories

[DanielRavenNest]

I'm part of a project to build this kind of self-bootstrapping Seed Factories, for Earth first, then later in space. There's a report on applying the concept to space at:

* https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/... (part 1)
* https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/... (part 2)

I've corresponded with Metzger, and agree with his general idea, but disagree about placing the seed factory on the Lunar surface. The surface only gets sunlight half the time, while in high orbit you can get sunlight 100% of the time. The Moon is severely depleted in volatile compounds because it was baked for hundreds of millions of years, and is too low mass to hold on to easily vaporized materials. Near Earth Asteroids complement the Moon in terms of ore types, and the optimum place to bring everything together is a high orbit near, but not on, the Moon.

Re: Seed Factories

[DrPhiltill]

Valid points. I like the lunar surface for a number of reasons including the ability to put human crews on the Moon to do geology and get them to also help the industry get started. There's a lot of science that needs to be done on the Moon so we can leverage that. I do think asteroids play a crucial role in getting space industry started by providing propellant for cis-lunar operations (etc) and again at the end after space industry no longer needs material input from Earth because the resources are more abundant in the main belt, so asteroids are the real goal. IMO the Moon is important in the middle period. Solar duty cycle is like 70% near the poles so lunar industry will need to shut down 30% of each month until space based solar power has been constructed. Then it can power lunar activity 100% from Lagrange point halo orbits. There are additional ways to get 100% duty cycle for lunar polar industry. My final consideration is that either the Moon or asteroids is better than doing neither, and I'm glad we have companies working on both alternatives so we can discover what works best.

Re:Who will control the resources?

[DanielRavenNest]

They can try, but once people can make their own stuff using automation, they won't need jobs, and therefore won't pay income taxes. Governments can then pass all the laws they want, but without money they can't pay the Men With Guns to enforce them, and so become irrelevant. If they try to collect taxes/goods by force by coming to your door, it will become increasingly obvious they are just organized crime with paperwork. You can tell your computer driven machines to make weapons and then tell the government enforcers to get the hell out.

Recursive Manufacturing

[PJ6]

He's talking about recursive manufacturing, and honestly I'm surprised we haven't developed it already. Its power will utterly dominate our civilization's future, we have the tech to start development right now, and... we don't even have a Wikipedia page on it yet?

When we develop true RM, going to the Moon will be a footnote.

Re:Recursive Manufacturing

[Tony Isaac]

Automation is still hard, even for something as "simple" as an automated hamburger joint. You can easily enough automate specific tasks, such as filling drinks or cooking burgers. But automating EVERYTHING, from cleaning to repairs, is a lot harder. And then automating the manufacture of all of the machines needed to manufacture hamburgers, is another order of magnitude more difficult and complex. It's not at all surprising to me that we haven't done this yet.

Re:Recursive Manufacturing

[DanielRavenNest]

> we don't even have a Wikipedia page on it yet?

We have a WikiBook half written about it: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/...

There's a Wikipedia page on self replicating machines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But "fully automated self-replication" is both a limiting concept, and *hard*. There is no reason you can't make different machines than the ones you start with, or different sizes. So a "starter set" can be smaller and simpler than the final factory. All the complexity is in the stored computer files that tell it what to build. There is also no reason that it has to be 100% automated and make 100% of its own parts. Those are theoretical ideals like 100% efficiency. We can tolerate some manual labor and buying parts and materials from outside. The only real requirements are to be efficient enough to compete with conventional manufacturing, and have enough surplus production to pay for the things you can't make on your own.

RITA: Reusable Interplanetary Transport Approach b

[lagunastarman]

Amongst so many other accomplishments, Dr. Max Hunter outlined Reusable supply chain concepts for earth-moon, earth-asteroid and earth-asteriod systems. If we are lucky, in the next 10-20 years do we may get this by cleverly mixing what SpaceX, ULA and SLS are doing. (Obviously, some methods are more cost effective than others.) Eric Berger just wrote an excellent article on the realities of SLS in ArsTechnia. We already know the successes of commercial crew, SpaceX, etc.