[ExI] What happens to US space programs after November?

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 1:38 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

 > *The best options so far (for lunar colonization, at least) seem to be
> mining - for return to Earth - things that are not so economical to mine on
> Earth given current conditions, and manufacturing stuff to be put into
> Earth orbit.  Both of these are direct replacements for things people pay
> money for today, and might be able to be done with a higher profit margin
> than how they are done on Earth today.*


Using lunar material to build large orbital structures might be
economically viable if there was an economic reason to build large orbital
structures; but the moon's crust It's not rich in the heavy metals that are
most lucrative to mine. If you want to mine in space then you'd do better
mining a M class asteroid like 16 Psyche which seems to be one big chunk of
metal. The only thing I can think of that you could mine on the moon that
would be worth taking back to earth would be Helium-3, and even then only
when Aneutronic Fusion becomes feasible.

John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200617/6d3993cc/attachment.htm>