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Has the Great 'Moonrush' Begun? (thespacereview.com)
This week The Space Review published an essay by retired aerospace engineer Gerald Black, who worked in the aerospace industry for over 40 years and tested various rocket engines, including the ascent stage engine of the Apollo lunar module.
"The Moonrush is now on," he argues "fueled by entrepreneurs dreaming of profits from Earth's nearest neighbor." Leading the Moonrush are a bunch of private companies developing small lunar landers and rovers to explore the Moon. On February 21, the first mission of the Moonrush embarked aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Beresheet lunar lander built by Israel's SpaceIL was launched as a secondary payload, sharing the ride with the Indonesian communications satellite PSN-6. After reaching geostationary transfer orbit, Beresheet and the communications satellite separated from the Falcon 9 launcher. The communications satellite will propel itself to geostationary Earth orbit. Meanwhile, Beresheet is slowly raising its orbit. In early April the spacecraft will enter lunar orbit, then land on the Moon. Israel Aerospace Industries, the company that built the lander for SpaceIL, announced plans in January to partner with the German company OHB to offer a commercial lunar payload delivery service to the European Space Agency.
Black also notes that while Google never awarded its $20 million Lunar X grand prize, many teams are still active, including Astrobotic Technology, Moon Express, ispace inc., TeamIndus and PTScientists -- and that NASA will be awarding $2.6 billion in commercial moon exploration contracts over the next decade under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The first mission under this program could be launched as soon as late this year... Blue Origin is developing a much larger lunar lander called Blue Moon that can land several metric tons of cargo on the Moon. And the German companies OHB and MT Aerospace have tapped Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander to ferry a payload to the Moon in 2023.
Around-the-moon tourism could begin as soon as 2023, Black writes, while Bigelow Aerospace's CEO "is dreaming about establishing facilities on the lunar surface that could host tourists and others." And finally, landers and rovers will soon confirm whether there's accessible water hiding in the moon's perpetually dark craters -- and will hunt for other valuable resources. Rovers that include sample analysis laboratories like the one aboard the Curiosity rover on Mars will provide details about the constituents of the lunar rocks and soil. Deposits of gold, platinum group metals, and rare earth metals are likely to be found. Especially promising in this regard are the numerous impact craters on the Moon. High concentrations of precious metals have been found in craters where asteroids impacted the Earth.
Riches are there to be had, and mining may well become a major industry on the Moon.
"The Moonrush is now on," he argues "fueled by entrepreneurs dreaming of profits from Earth's nearest neighbor." Leading the Moonrush are a bunch of private companies developing small lunar landers and rovers to explore the Moon. On February 21, the first mission of the Moonrush embarked aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Beresheet lunar lander built by Israel's SpaceIL was launched as a secondary payload, sharing the ride with the Indonesian communications satellite PSN-6. After reaching geostationary transfer orbit, Beresheet and the communications satellite separated from the Falcon 9 launcher. The communications satellite will propel itself to geostationary Earth orbit. Meanwhile, Beresheet is slowly raising its orbit. In early April the spacecraft will enter lunar orbit, then land on the Moon. Israel Aerospace Industries, the company that built the lander for SpaceIL, announced plans in January to partner with the German company OHB to offer a commercial lunar payload delivery service to the European Space Agency.
Black also notes that while Google never awarded its $20 million Lunar X grand prize, many teams are still active, including Astrobotic Technology, Moon Express, ispace inc., TeamIndus and PTScientists -- and that NASA will be awarding $2.6 billion in commercial moon exploration contracts over the next decade under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The first mission under this program could be launched as soon as late this year... Blue Origin is developing a much larger lunar lander called Blue Moon that can land several metric tons of cargo on the Moon. And the German companies OHB and MT Aerospace have tapped Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander to ferry a payload to the Moon in 2023.
Around-the-moon tourism could begin as soon as 2023, Black writes, while Bigelow Aerospace's CEO "is dreaming about establishing facilities on the lunar surface that could host tourists and others." And finally, landers and rovers will soon confirm whether there's accessible water hiding in the moon's perpetually dark craters -- and will hunt for other valuable resources. Rovers that include sample analysis laboratories like the one aboard the Curiosity rover on Mars will provide details about the constituents of the lunar rocks and soil. Deposits of gold, platinum group metals, and rare earth metals are likely to be found. Especially promising in this regard are the numerous impact craters on the Moon. High concentrations of precious metals have been found in craters where asteroids impacted the Earth.
Riches are there to be had, and mining may well become a major industry on the Moon.
As it is the second step of winning the science race. #civilization6
The value in the moon is in cheaper launches. Might be a little late for karma whoring but... bare with me here.
In the 60's we had the technology to build a base on the moon. Hell, we could have even had the technology to produce fuel on the moon. Somewhere there's an interview with Armstrong who said even NASA knew there was water on the moon in the 60's. Water + electricity = hydrogen and oxygen. Very easy to get the 2 turned into some sort of fuel.
The thing we lacked though was money. Beyond money, we lacked things we have today that we just take for granted (looking at the har har funny comments here) We barely had enough fast switching technology to send a 240x160 video stream back to earth. Today we can switch at GHZ, lots of stuff can be fit into that stream. Lots of information. We don't even need it though, we can probably fit plenty in 1tb of solid state storage.
Moving on, we now have advanced processing that recognize conditions and work autonomously. Coupled with 3d printing, we can send smaller robots to the moon to do most of the heavy lifting that would have required humans years ago. There's no atmosphere on the moon, so solar panels will work a lot better up there than here on earth.
So now instead of sending a construction crew to the moon, we can send robots. Robots that will find a suitable place (lava tubes or deep craters) that will build us a base in a somewhat underground area, shielded from cosmic rays and the suns radiation. They can generate their own power, find ice, turn it into breathable oxygen, and eventually fuel for return trips.
I think that's the end game of this moon rush. It's not for tourism, or finding metals. It's to be somewhere that has 1/7th the gravity of the earth, meaning 1/7th the amount of fuel to launch. Future missions, like building a deep space manned craft to go to mars will need the moon. As soon as we get some sort of livable permanent habitat up there, we will start sending other machines up there, start building clean rooms to build processors and RAM up there.
In the beginning, I'd imagine the labor on the moon will be much higher than that on earth, but as the outpost up there evolves, eventually the cost of manufacturing up there will be negated by the cost of launches. That is why we need to be up there. There will never be any reason to bring the resources of the moon back here, but we need to be there to make our eventual trip into the outer solar system possible.