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.
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.
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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.
The article that you're discussing already answers this. There's a section "5.3.2 Objection: Why Not Put the Self-Replicating Factories on Earth?"
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.