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

[Keith Henson]

Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 10:24 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip
>
>> The time to get a new robot to the moon is around two weeks.

> Not including time to diagnose the fault, build a robot from scratch to fix
the fault (which starts after the diagnosis, which starts after the fault),
and this approach would seem to be launching several tons of robot instead
of much less food & resupply.

It is a replacement, you just abandon the failed one.

>> Is it worth the many billion it would cost to keep humans on the moon?
>

>Would it in fact cost many billions?

Yes.  Industrializing the moon might run more than $2 T.  O'Neill's
1975 proposal is close to half a trillion in current dollars.

> Granted, ISS maintenance is over $1B
- it's about $3-4B - but that includes expansion, experiments, and all
other costs as well as keeping the humans alive.  I'm having trouble
finding hard data on how that breaks down, but it looks like a distinct
minority actually goes into life support, and the bulk of it is just NASA's
bureaucratic overhead, not actually producing anything (except jobs to
support federal funding).

It takes the full-time efforts of 3 people to maintain the ISS.

>> How do you propose to protect them from radiation?

> The best answer I have yet seen on this is to set up the colony in a lava
tube, which has enough overhead mass to reduce radiation to or below
average-Earth-surface level.  There are other methods too, but this is a
simple, robust, and low cost solution.  Perhaps put entrance shafts to one
side of the lava tube, rather than on top, so you don't have a "radiation
sunlight" part of the tube that people should stay out of.

That means your lunar base is located in a lave tube, not where you
want it to be for other reasons.

> I am highly
> biassed in the direction of people in space, on the moon, and on Mars.
> But I can't make an economic case for them.

> Good on you for even thinking of the economics.  That's the most critical
part that most who propose this ignore.

> I haven't completely solved it either, but the more I analyze it, the more
it seems the case will have to be made by what the colony can return to
Earth, rather than the usual orbital/interplanetary servicing options that
keep coming up.  This is for two reasons:
1) Today, there is either literally no or a very tiny (depending on what
you count) off-Earth market.  Either way, insufficient funds can be
extracted to support the colony until an off-Earth market builds up.
2) Even once an off-Earth market does build up, for a long time it will be
dwarfed by the size of the on-Earth market.  Even a tiny sliver of the
on-Earth market will provide way more support than the entire off-Earth
market can provide, likely for decades after the colony's founding.
(Decades after founding, the colony will presumably be much more
self-sufficient than right after it is founded.)

> So, what can a lunar colony provide for Earth?  (I haven't thought through
what a Martian colony might provide, as a lunar colony is likely to happen
first: even assuming completely independent lunar and Martian colonization
efforts, the lunar one needs less resources and thus is likely to establish
a colony before the Martian effort does.)  The main things I am currently
aware of are:

1) Power, from solar panels manufactured on the Moon and relayed (probably
via one or more intermediary satellites) to rectennas on Earth's surface.
You have made extensive studies of Earth-launched solar power satellites; I
would be curious to see your take on this alternative.  Assume that any
intermediate satellites are built on and launched from the Moon as well;
they're simple enough that it seems less cost to set up the manufacturing
facilities on the Moon than to launch from Earth.

Constructing power satellites for placement in GEO was what O'Neill
proposed.  Relaying is just out of the question though, the losses are
too high.  The lunar surface is an awful place for collecting solar
power, two weeks of darkness.  The same problem makes it difficult to
set up any energy-intensive processing on the moon.

Selling power to the earth is not easy in any case.  There are a lot
of ways to make energy and the market is highly competitive.

snip

3) Mining Rare Earth elements for return to & sale on Earth.

Rare earth elements are not that rare.  I don't think anyone of them
is worth the cost to ship to earth.  Certainly, magnesium i and
aluminum are not valuable enough for them to be worth shipping.

Keith