[ExI] A possible X Prize

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Sat May 28 02:39:19 UTC 2011


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 08:11:31AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> Titanium isn't particularly rare.  And linear motors are *so* 70s.
>
> Dirt cheap zero impact titanium air-dropped to your location is pretty rare.
>
>> For the moon, an elevator out through L1 made of dental floss works
>
> Would you need a counterweight for the other end?

For 19,000 tons of Spectra in a loop, 65,000 tons of counterweight, 15
MW of power plant.  The further you go, the less you need, but that
distance, 190 km from the lunar surface is at the end of an orbital
trajectory to GEO.

Payback in mass is around 100 days.  First thing you do is replace the
counterweight made of borrowed power sat parts with lunar dirt.

Keiht


>> just fine and you don't have to soft land a single kg on the moon to
>> do it.
>
> I've seen estimates of M5 fiber with ~7 ton cable,
> with 200 kg surface initial lifting capacity.
>
>> Mass payback is under 100 days.
>>
>> With big lasers, delta V is inexpensive.  Injection velocity from GEO
>> to intercept the huge solid metal asteroid 1986 DA is only 140 m/s.
>>
>> Processing it would take melting and rolling into thin ribbon.  The
>> ribbon would be dissolved in high pressure CO making carbonals.  These
>
> Metal carbonyls.
>
>> can be sorted out and reduced to nickel, cobalt and iron with all the
>> other metals in the leftover dust.
>>
>> A 50,000 ton plant should be able to process its own mass in a couple of months.
>>
>> I don't think you can make a case for returning the iron, but the rest
>> of it should be worth it to sell to the earth market.
>
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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