Re: Asteroids or bust!

From: Mike Combs (mikecombs_at_nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti)
Date: 06/01/04 

Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 12:36:42 -0500

"Henry Spencer" <henry@spsystems.net> wrote in message
news:HyFqt9.9q5@spsystems.net...
> In article <c92kb0$ret$1@home.itg.ti.com>,
> Mike Combs <mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> wrote:
> >...Another issue is that one might get hydrogen,
> >carbon, and nitrogen from CC-type asteroids; such resources will always
be
> >scarce to non-existent on the moon.
>
> On what do you base that last statement? We already know that there are
> substantial hydrogen deposits at the lunar poles, and there is a good
> chance of nitrogen and some possibility of carbon with them.

OK, I should have more cautiously inserted the caveat "as far as we
presently know" on the end of that.

Yes, I'm perfectly open to the possibility of presently-unknown resources
being available on the moon. And I'll argue with anyone who says we don't
need to go back to the moon because we already know what's there.

I was just at the International Space Development Conference in Oklahoma
City, and heard Peter Kokh say that permashade might extend as far as 30
degrees from the poles. That was certainly news to me. 

-- 
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."
   Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"

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