Re: Exploiting space; the Man IN the moon
- From: Nick Hull <nhull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 02:01:18 GMT
In article <1143420952.272371.124520@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ordover@xxxxxxx wrote:
Okay, you did ask for critique....
There is currently no market for He-3. We don't have fusion functional
fusion reactors and won't have them in the short and possibly not even
in the long term. On top of which, there is no guarantee that a
hypothetic He-3 fusion reactor that needs -fuel from the moon- would be
more economically viable than, say, wind power or fission reactors.
There is simply no current product on the Moon that would repay the
cost of going there to get it.
That's why I mentioned He-3. IF a reactor could be developed for it the
energy MIGHT be worth going after. I can think of nothing else in space
that has a high enough value to be worth getting & returning to earth.
OTOH, if you need rocks in space it's worthwhile to get rocks/metal from
space rather than lifting them from earth.
The reality is that the solar system is made up of hot rocks and cold
rocks, hot gas and cold gas - and there is nothing out there worth the
cost of going to get. It's all on the periodic table and we already
have it. Even if, for instance, there was a fully-functional ecology
on Mars and an intelligent civilization, ,we would likely trade
information without actually going there and back.
So the bar for space travel is set -really- high - either something
worth trillions has to be discovered in space or space travel has to be
reduced to way below the cost of cargo ship travel (because people do
want cars made in Japan; there is nothing they want from outer space
beyond LEO).
Nick Hull wrote:
Exploiting Space
Bear with me on this, it's a rough draft and has a lot of holes and a
few assumptions that need investigating.
The present exploration of space gives a lot of pretty pictures but is a
dead end. The knowledge gained has little monetary value, and most of
the people paying for it would rather have another 6-pack. If we are to
go anywhere in space someone will have to make money doing it. Just
look at the "New World", an investor paid for the Plymouth settlers
hoping to make a fortune in silk when the pilgims grew mulberry trees
and silkworms. The #1 problem, and opportunity, of space is the
$10,000/# cost of getting material to Earth orbit and beyond. This
means that someone based in space can sell just about anything, even
gravel, for $10,000/# if it is needed in space.
I'm proposing a multi-step program to exploit space and make it a money
source instead of a money sink. The program has 3 points; The 2nd is to
put a man IN the moon. The only hope to make billions from space near
term is to harvest the He-3 from moon dust. This will involve mainly
robots, with ONE man to fix/modify/manage the robotic workers. Of
course he would be supported by a small army of earthbound robot
handlers. He would make a one-way trip to the moon and live underground
for radiation protection. Long term he would have to grow the bulk of
his own food, presumably underground illuminated with light pipes. He
would stay for years, with no definite return date, until he either died
or got rich enough to retire & return to earth.
It is simply too expensive to shuttle people to the moon for short
stays, and too expensive for multiple people. Why kill 7 at a time like
NASA when you can learn 7 times as much by killing them one at a time?
If the man died, his replacement would be better equipped from the
lessons learned. If/when the business expands to require more people,
they can be sent as needed for long duration stays after the first
settler gets the garden and air & water surplus necessary.
Water is essential to live in the moon, and I am assuming there is too
little water on the moon to recover economically. Instead I propose a
water supply just like Earth's; the snow on the mountains feeds the
river which fills the lake. This gets me to the 1st point of space
exploitation; find a suitable small ice comet robotically and move it's
orbit to crash into the moon. The resultant crater will be rich in ice
even if only 10% survives impact..The Man in the Moon would set up shop
inside or just outside the crater and harvest the ice and put it into
large plastic bags for a manmade 'lake' water supply. At ice
temperature the vapor pressure is low enough that a cheap bag or jug
will contain the water very long term and can be used or sold for $$.
In addition to harvesting He-3 and water the man in the moon will also
build an electromagnetic launching rail to launch cargo (etc) from the
airless low gravity moon surface. I would guess it would mainly launch
a small pod for He-3 (or a man) delivery to earth. Here is his hope to
return to earth some day, and this brings us to point #3 of space
exploitation; the man in the asteroid.
To move about in space we need metal as well as water and He-3. A he-3
reactor would be ideal for space travel using water as reaction medium.
Until that becomes feasable water can be broken into H2 and O2 for high
powered chemical rockets and even after a space He-3 reactor is
operational often a high boost phase will be needed. The metal would
come from asteroids, mined & smelted robotically with again ONE man
inside an asteroid to repair/modify/direct an army of robots. He would
stay long term and launch metal ships on low energy orbits to his
customers on the moon or in space etc. The Man in the moon will need
lots of metal to build his launch rail as well as lots of solar panels
for power at least until he gets a He-3 reactor running.
I should also mention that the same mechanism that brought He-3 to the
moon would also be expected to put He-3 on the asteroids, and they have
a lot more surface area than the moon. Thus it might be possible to
bypass the moon entirely, at higher risk since He-3 has not actually
been found there yet. Never the less, a first step into space to the
asteroids must be considered. Water for the asteroid base would also
come from a small icy comet moved into a handy orbit.
While I don't consider manned trips to Mars to be economically useful,
an asteroid base could sell a lot of stuff to the govt for their Mars
excursions. A trip to mars & return would expose astronauts to a lot of
radiation, and the only real shielding is heavy, much too heavy to lift
from earth. Thus an asteroid base could sell bags of gravel to NASA for
$$$$.
Since we see both stony and nickel meteors it is logical to assume the
asteroids have Aluminum and Nickel ores, and hopefully others as well.
Spaceships can be built of Aluminum and Nickel, double walled with maybe
3' of gravel between for radiation shielding; with such ships to protect
the crew manned exploration of the solar system becomes possible. One
of the first uses would be for a prospector to survey asteroids with an
eye to mining. The extreme weight of such a ship would be of little
hinderance as long as it stays in the asteroid belt. Bigger engines
would be needed to push it to the planets, but that might be possible
with a He-3/water engine.
Perhaps radiation shielding would only be needed in 2 directions, the
Sun and forward?
--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/
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