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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.
I have heard these predictions a few times in the past 60 years. Nothing ever happened, and since the laws of physics have not changed, nothing will happen.
So how long before the first Poseidon Adventure/The Martian-style film featuring moon tourists getting stranded...
Deposits of gold, platinum group metals, and rare earth metals are likely to be found.
So? A fact I've always heard is that going to the moon is so expensive, that even if there were endless pure gold nuggets (or diamonds?) littering the surface, then it simply isn't worth the cost to go get them. Has that cost/benefit analysis changed much, if at all?
Tourism is another valid angle, but there's much more to see (much more quickly and safely) in LEO and that hasn't taken off either.
As it is the second step of winning the science race. #civilization6
It's great that a number of companies are reaching out to the moon and organizations like NASA is paying for it but until there is some way to cheaply return materials, the "moonrush" will be a flurry of explorers and then nothing.
The moon gets a lot more exciting when we get cheap titanium and aluminum down to Earth and power from solar cells from the moon's crust. Oh, and maybe in 10 years or so we'll know what to do with He3.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
How big do you think a strip mine on the moon would have to be for you to see it on a telescope? What about the naked eye?
You're talking about an excavation 100 or so miles on a side...
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Is it even remotely feasible to send normal-ass moon rocks back to earth for less than $1300/ounce including overhead, let alone gold which would have to be mined/purified/whatever first?
No. But that doesn't matter because investors are fucking stupid. This is what happens when all the wealth is concentrated at the top - the only way for the already-rich to get richer is to scam money out of other rich people. The rest of us just get to sit here thinking "Man, I wish I had the money to scam other rich people with some bullshit scheme."
1. Run ads/press releases about your great new moon venture biz.
2. ???
3. Profit!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A fact I've always heard is that going to the moon is so expensive
"A fact" huh?
Don't you think your intel is pretty dated?
That was true when a handful of governments could get you into space. But now clearing the atmosphere has been made far cheaper thanks to companies like SPaceX and Blue Origin, and driving costs cheaper.
Anyone can do the math and see that it might make a lot of sense to try mining valuable minerals from space objects now, and if not certainly within 10 years it will be easily viable.
Tourism is another valid angle, but there's much more to see (much more quickly and safely) in LEO and that hasn't taken off either.
It's just starting but the uptake will be quick. I'd way rather visit the moon than just do an orbital visit though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some humans have 20/20 vision. Some humans have 20/200 vision. Some humans have 20/10 vision. Some humans have much better vision than that.
If you do a strip mine on the front side, people will see it. Unaided. Also: contrast, and shadows. Remember, the Sun is reflecting directly, without having been attenuated by an atmosphere. That totally changes the visibility distance calculations.
1. Go to the moon.
2. ???
3. Profit!
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
SpaceX currently charges $62 million to launch 50k lb satellites
No, they say it costs $62 million for each Falcon 9 launch.
Form Earth.
So it would be pretty expensive to send gold to the moon. Luckily for people working on this plan, they only need to get gold from the moon back to the Earth - way cheaper since you just have to launch from the moon's gravity well, and basically takes controlled falling back to Earth to recover.
Also of course, SpaceX launch costs are predicted to get much cheaper over time.
You might say, well the rocket has to get there... true, but since it would go to the moon mostly empty to pick up shipments, it would could also have a paying cargo like satellites that get released before it heads to the moon.
The economic feasibility of the plan is good, just needs the BFR (which is more made for these kind of land and re-takeoff missions) to make it practical.
All you'd be paying for would be the rocket and not the fuel, which would be made on the moon. Heck you'l probably come back with some extra fuel so that would further reduce the cost of the flight as SpaceX could credit a mining org for that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it even remotely feasible to send normal-ass moon rocks back to earth
No ... and that is why you do NOT bring it back to earth. It is worth far more in space.
Price of a kg of iron on earth: $4.
Price of a kg of iron at GEO: $12,000
"A fact" huh?
Don't you think your intel is pretty dated?
Yes, hence my question of how much it has changed.
Anyone can do the math and see that it might make a lot of sense to try mining valuable minerals from space objects now, and if not certainly within 10 years it will be easily viable.
False, I cannot do this math, nor does it seem intuitive (even ignoring mining costs) that mining anything on the moon could come close to breaking even.
I was hoping someone might link an xkcd-what-if style analysis of some kind. In another post, you made a good point that the rocket could leave Earth empty and the payload only needs to escape moon's gravity, but that's all.
Shouldn't we rape Antarctica First for resources before the moon?
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Mining? I don't know about you guys, but I see great potential to use the moon as a huge billboard to place ads. Is there any treaty against that?
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
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.
Price of a kg of iron at GEO: $12,000
Value of a kg of iron at GEO: $0.00
We are not running out of anything on Earth except maybe intelligence. I doubt youâ(TM)ll find much of that on the Moon, though bringing back few rocks might significantly improve the average IQ of the planet.
Some humans have 20/20 vision. Some humans have 20/200 vision. Some humans have 20/10 vision. Some humans have much better vision than that.
If you do a strip mine on the front side, people will see it. Unaided. Also: contrast, and shadows. Remember, the Sun is reflecting directly, without having been attenuated by an atmosphere. That totally changes the visibility distance calculations.
The limit of the size of a lunar feature detectable by people with really good vision is about 100 km -- the size of Copernicus crater. It is an an actual feature on the Moon and it is in fact the limit of what can be seen. This is very well established. Kepler crater, at half this is invisible to the naked eye. Only people using telescopes can see it (binoculars are just two small telescopes mounted together).
The largest surface mine on Earth is the Hull–Rust–Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine in Hibbing, Minnesota about 5 km in its largest dimension.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The Moon was formed from a big collision between the Earth and some other object. Generally speaking, the light stuff was flung further into space, and formed the Moon while the heavy stuff congealed into the Earth as we know it.
As a consequence, the Moon has density of 3.5 grams/cc while the Earth has 5.5 g/cc. All the heavy, expensive stuff is on the Earth. So mining operations on the Moon would not find a lot of iron and valuable heavier metals. Silicates and the like, sure.
Because people who invest billions in long term projects don’t have the insight about future tech that some random guy on the Internet has.
Right - because there's not currently much to do with raw iron in orbit. And why would there be, when it costs $12,000/kg?
But, if lunar iron can be delivered at $10-$100/kg, then it starts being valuable for building orbital structures and interplanetary ships.
And there's no particular reason that it would be particularly expensive to get lunar resources to orbit, or to Earth for that matter. After all, you don't need any rockets or rocket fuel - without an atmosphere you can use a rail gun, sling, or various other moon-mounted launch systems to get stuff into Earth orbit, or launch a bit faster and send it all the way to Earth - you just need to add a heat shield and parachutes, or some other landing system, for the final approach.
It's getting to that point that's going to be expensive, without a whole lot of immediate payoff. But those who lead the way will have an immense first-mover advantage as things accelerate from there. The Americas were colonized by European powers in order to profit Europe, but even before we won our independence, most of the wealth produced in America was staying here, and the canny businessmen who invested here made money hand over fist.
Space probably isn't going to have quite the same appeal for a long time, and may never have much to appeal to the common man (other than a place to escape from whatever insanity is taking place on Earth). But for a certain brand of skilled and ambitious dreamer it offers unlimited wealth and room for expansion. A chance to build businesses and societies from the ground up, in an environment that can sustain the fantasy of unlimited growth for centuries or millenia to come, while Earth is already beginning to collapse under the strain.
And Earth benefits, at a minimum, from unlimited mineral resources without an environmental mining cost, and the technology for building mostly-closed ecosystems, extremely efficient recycling, and all the other such things are are far, far more valuable to sustainable space colonies than planet-side living, but will be extremely valuable as we struggle to adapt to an ecosystem collapsing under the weight of our demands.
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For those that downvoted or left demoting comments, the expression was based on Donald Douglas (I think) of how he became a millionaire with his company Douglas Aircraft, "you have to spend 100 million." Douglas bought out by McDonnell in 1960s, then by Boeing in 1990s. We see this happening again, Musk and Bezos spending billions (some of this includes money from NASA) and maybe earn a few million.
mfwright@batnet.com
But, if lunar iron can be delivered at $10-$100/kg, then it starts being valuable for building orbital structures and interplanetary ships.
There's a big difference between a piece of raw iron and an interplanetary ship. The difference is about the size of an industrial base, plus pretty much every other element of the periodic table.
And there's no particular reason that it would be particularly expensive to get lunar resources to orbit, or to Earth for that matter. After all, you don't need any rockets or rocket fuel - without an atmosphere you can use a rail gun, sling, or various other moon-mounted launch systems to get stuff into Earth orbit,
No, if you launch something from the Moon, it'll end up in a very elongated and unstable Earth-Lunar orbit, and probably smash into the Moon or Earth after some time. If you want to bring it into an Earth orbit you'll need thrusters to circularize.
you just need to add a heat shield and parachutes
You need an aerodynamically stable shape if you intend to fly through Earth atmosphere at hypersonic speed, and payload size will have to be small compared to shield/parachutes, similar to what current Dragon capsule looks like.
unlimited mineral resources without an environmental mining cost
The reason that we have large environmental cost is because of things like dumping large amounts of contaminated waste water in a river or lake. On the Moon, there's not a lot of water, so you would have to focus on extraction techniques that don't use water, or only use it sparingly. But if you can do that, you could also put your plant in the middle of the Nevada desert, and do the same thing there.
in 2000, when the dotcom deregulation came through, i had the idea of stellarpropertymanagement.com and said. can't wait till we have to do an open house and showing on the moon.
Think about how much material/resources its required to build a space ship from raw lumps of iron. All the processing, all the tooling, etc etc etc. Now think about the cost of moving all the infrastructure of the entire supply chain for that material into orbit, and doing everything without gravity. Now factor in the cost of building on earth, lifting the partial products of the "thing" you actually want to build, and assembling in orbit, and compare that to building the infrastructure in space before you get one piece of your "thing" built.
Unless everyone suddenly gets cool with something equivalent of the defense budget going to space factories, that ain't happening.
Short answer: nope!
Longer answer: Gold rushes start when someone finds an easily and cheaply accessible lode of commercially valuable ore... And a bunch of other people rush in to get their piece of the action. Almost always, they're short lived and the only people who actually make money are the folks selling supplies to would-be miners.
There is no material on the Lunar surface that's easily and cheaply available - even if you use it on orbit rather than returning it to Earth.
>No, if you launch something from the Moon, it'll end up in a very elongated and unstable Earth-Lunar orbit
It'll almost certainly be an Earth orbit, there's no benefit to putting it in a high enough orbit that it can orbit both (unless it's destined for one of the L-points I suppose), and doing so would require those rockets anyway. And the moon isn't massive enough to make much difference anyway, other than as a destabilizing influence.
Without modification it will be in an orbit that intersects the moon orbit, probably a highly elliptical Hohmann transfer orbit with an apogee at lunar orbit distance, and a perigee near the destination orbit. From there, circularizing the orbit as desired takes a miniscule fraction of the delta-v necessary to reach orbit in the first place, and can be done with much smaller, weaker engines than the initial launch, since you don't have to overcome surface gravity, and won't have to worry about hitting the moon for many, many orbits (unless you specifically launched it on a resonant orbit that will hit the moon sometime soon)
Meanwhile, for sending raw materials to Earth - yes, you probably want an aerodynamically stable shape - but that's no big deal, one shape is much the same as another when casting ingots. And there's not even any specific need for parachutes, those are there to allow passengers and scientific equipment to survive landing. If an ingot breaks or flattens on impact - so what? You were going to melt it down anyway. As long as it's hitting in the middle of nowhere, impact isn't a big deal. Just pick a size that lets aerobraking slow down enough to suite you, and bombs away. An active control system might be nice to keep it on target, but there's no reason that couldn't detach at the last moment and land separately, or just be inexpensive enough that destroying it doesn't matter.
>you could also put your plant in the middle of the Nevada desert, and do the same thing there.
Absolutely - all the more reason to learn to do it on the moon. Because we're clearly not going to do it on Earth unless the cost is cheaper than the current disaster. We could add severe environmental impact taxes or regulations to make current it unattractive, but not until we actually have another mature technology ready to take over for the current one.
Though there's still the possibility of moon-mining/refining producing lots of toxic waste that just isn't a problem on the moon, which has no air, water, or life to transport it out of your trash heap.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Because we're clearly not going to do it on Earth unless the cost is cheaper than the current disaster
If cost is the reason for dirty mining, how do you figure we will ever do it on the Moon, where cost is going to be several orders of magnitude more ?
The point is rather that you *won't* be transporting all that infrastructure into space - just enough to be able to jump-start on building the rest. Presumably the vast majority of "high tech" materials and components would continue being produced on Earth, but if you can make it out of iron or aluminum with only limited working, you can build it in space. And that probably covers at least 95% of the mass of most equipment, if not far more.
There's already been some really interesting developments in 3D printing bulk metals with space in mind. Admittedly cast iron isn't the strongest building material - but it's easy to work with, and if you have to make your first generation of heavy equipment considerably more massive than otherwise necessary, so what? There's plenty of local raw materials to work with, and it's not like it needs to support it's own weight.
And once you've got the heavy equipment necessary to make worked iron and steel components, then the components for the second-generation and later factories don't have to deal with the limitations of cast metal anymore. And you can always recycle the original factories once more sophisticated factories render it useless.
And of course, once you're building in orbit, you can build things that would collapse under their own weight on Earth. Factories, habitats, even interplanetary spaceships. Something like the SpaceX Starliner for example is massively overbuilt for traveling between planets - you could use the same mass of materials to make something far more spacious in orbit, and only use the sturdy high-acceleration rockets as "long-boats" for getting to and from a planet's surface.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Because even if the cost of extraction and refining is orders of magnitude more expensive than mining on Earth (several orders seems unlikely), it's still cheaper once you include the shipping costs to the moon or orbit. At least once you get a good system worked out. It's that early research that's especially expensive, which is why it's mostly governments and magacorporations currently looking to get involved.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.