Re: Summer Study and colony location

RobertMaas_at_YahooGroups.Com
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:31:43 -0700

> From: "Mike Combs" <mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti>
> The only point is that one cannot cite the gravity of the moon as
> some advantage for processing there over orbit.

The advantage of processing Lunar ore on Luna itself, rather than in
space, is that the material is right there already. You don't have to
wait until a mass-driver on Luna to magically appear before you can
start processing the ore. You just land some device that can move
around a little, under tele-control from Earth, and which can do some
digging and processing, and start it working almost immediately.

> The recent experience with the DARPA competition doesn't give one
> much cause for optimism here. If we can't even so much as design an
> automated ore car that would drive itself from the site of mining to
> the site of refinement, what other gaps exist throughout the
> enterprise?

It would have been nice if the competition had been successful, but it
is overkill for what we need on Luna. It isn't necessary for an ore car
to drive many miles under totally robotic control with no human
intervention. All that is necessary is for the ore car to drive a few
feet at a time, just like the rovers on Mars are doing now, except with
a tele-operation cycle tuned for 2.5-second delay instead of half-hour
or hour delay, that is a GUI where the operator just points and motions
what to do, waits a moment, sees how it worked, and then repeats for
the next operation or for a corrective operation. As travel routes are
better known, both by practice and by navigation beacons getting
installed along the way, drive segments can be made longer and longer,
but long drive segments aren't necessary to get started doing mining
work on Luna.

> The Summer Study recommended the High Frontier plan based on the fact
> that mass-driver launch of raw materials from the moon should be much
> less expensive than launch of finished products due to G-force
> limitations and bore size issues, ...

Those are two extremes. What about processing Lunar materials into
specific compositions such as particular metals etc., using some of
those materials to fabricate actual working parts on Luna to bootstrap
industry there, but *not* launch those fragile parts to space, and
launching the rest of the processed materials as ingots of whatever
size is a best match for the mass launcher? Why do you assume only one
extreme, raw ore, and the other extreme, fragile finished products, are
the only possible things to launch from Luna? Why not launch ingots of
processed ore? The specific parts needed on Luna, and needed in space,
are likely to be different, so it's not duplication to build
fabrication infrastructure in both places. But the processing of the
raw ore to produce ingots of specific chemical composition would be
mostly the same regardless of final destination, so why not do most of
that on Luna and avoid duplicating that in space?

Note: I'm assuming no humans on Luna, only tele-operated/robotic
equipment, at least during the first ten or so years of bootstrapping
the Lunar industry. But in HEO, there might be some humans from time to
time, because it's relatively easier to get humans there and back
safely and cheaply.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Summer Study and colony location
    ... >> start processing the ore. ... processing Lunar materials, so initially we'd just be building up ... samples from Luna, just to get the chemistry right, but that is no ... we'll know which bulk components of a mass launcher can be ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: New space settlement article
    ... >components is that we don't have to worry about the G-forces of launch. ... >can launch sintered balls of ore into space at 1,800 G's with a mass driver ... and about the diameter of a dinner plate. ...
    (sci.space.policy)