[ExI] The Moon's Cold Embrace

[Keith Henson]

Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

>> ### If the ROI
.>> is very low, the doubling time from the initial technology seed would be
> too long to make it viable.
>
>> When you mention ROI, then you must have a profit model in mind for
>> what lunar settlers are doing.  Building condos or what?
>

> Presumably one or more of:
* Exporting energy back to Earth
* Exporting ores back to Earth
* Constructing satellites and launching them into Earth orbit

1. 2 and 4 are O'Neill's plan.

Launch regolith with a mass driver, process it in space into power
satellite components, build power satellites, move them to GEO, sell
~15 TW to earth

I don't know of any element on the moon that is worth enough to ship
to earth.  Can you think of any?

Keith