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The Race to Develop the Moon

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Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#51

Post by stcredzero »

rtkwe wrote: post #24
stcredzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a place with lab quality vacuum instead of an atmosphere, at that distance from the sun, I suspect you could use direct focused sunlight for smelting. Not sure if that would be more practical than electric furnaces, though. It would be more efficient, but the setup is less flexible.

The surface of the moon itself has a tiny bit of atmosphere so I'm not sure you could do it there. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.htm...

My understanding is that the Moon's atmosphere is so tiny, it's a lab quality vacuum. I got this from reading stuff from hard SF author Ben Bova. This might be a bit outdated, however.

https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=...

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#52

Post by rjf72 »

eesmith wrote: post #19

Article: "Watching the footage of Neil Armstrong’s first steps, it takes a moment for one’s eyes to make sense of the low-resolution image" As I understand it, the problem wasn't the video feed, it was the re-transmission for the global TV audience. The original video was then lost. Quoting from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1200161/Apol... : > Nasa believed they might contain electronic information…

I think there are two sides to risk. Risk tolerance for a given mission is one. Mission tolerance for a given risk is the other.

What I mean there is I doubt that SpaceX will be a less safe option than NASA, Roscosmos by proxy, for getting crew to the ISS. But SpaceX's big picture plan is to get people, regular people, to Mars. And that is something I think would never happen with NASA would never even consider taking on because the risks involved will be extremely high. NASA tried sending a civilian to space exactly one time - Christa McAuliffe. She was to be the first of many. The mission was the tenth, and final, flight of The Challenger. She died. NASA said it would be a few years before they followed up on their plans to send a journalist and other civilians into space. That was 30 years ago.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#53

Post by lorenzhs »

sidcool wrote: post #27

India is launching their second moon probe in July, expected to land on Moon by September. China has also ramped up its efforts. US has declared its intentions of landing humans on moon by 2030. I am sure India and China will have similar capabilities till 2030 as well.

The US is aiming for a return to the moon by 2024: https://www.space.com/us-astronauts-moon-return-by-2024.html

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#54

Post by lorenzhs »

Symmetry wrote: post #35
all2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For silicon based things, the moon would make sense for manufacturers. Is there enough solar energy for something like that? Specifically for smelting and refinement? What materials would need to be shipped in for manufacture?

For half the month the lunar surface is basically paradise for solar electricity with 1.3 kw/m2 of sunlight 24 hours a day instead of just the 1.0 kw/m2 on Earth's surface for half the day. But the other half of the month is complete darkness except star and Earth light. Unless you're at one of the poles and rig a solar panel to rotate horizontally. This is good for industrial processes you can start and stop over th…

That's not how the moon works. There's no "dark side", only a "far side" that always faces away from the earth. It's just that a moon day lasts ~28.5 earth days.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#55

Post by slfnflctd »

Absolutely the best overview I've seen yet of "the Moon situation", with a fully sufficient range of the most salient facts well described-- in addition to plenty of poetic trivia garnish I never knew about. Anybody who isn't anticipating some aspect of this does not fully understand one of the most fundamental human drives.

Everyone who has an iota of interest should read this, I plan to share it widely. I also highly recommend the Apollo 11 documentary to anyone who hasn't seen it.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#56

Post by thinkcontext »

hsnewman wrote: post #32
amelius wrote: post #4

Wouldn't it be easier to hunt for resources deeper in Earth's crust?

I've heard that the real resource is the heavy hydrogen contained in the first millimeters of the crust as a result of the bombardment of solar winds. If we could use it for fusion power, the heavy hydrogen contained on the moon would power the world nearly forever.

I believe you are thinking of light helium (helium-3), not heavy hydrogen. Everything I've read about mining on the moon mentions it.

Heavy hydrogen, deuterium, is (relatively) abundant on earth and can be harvested from seawater. Heavier hydrogen, tritium, is quite rare, on earth its produced by bombarding lithium. It has a half life of 12 years so it wouldn't be accumulate to useful amounts on the moon. It does decay into helium-3 which is stable, that's why it does accumulate.

Fusion with helium-3 takes place at a much higher temperature than deuterium / tritium (DT) fusion, that makes the confinement problem more difficult than the much more studied DT pathway to fusion power generation. One advantage is the possibility of direct conversion to electricity.

All this is discussed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#57

Post by eesmith »

rjf72 wrote: post #52
eesmith wrote: post #19

Article: "Watching the footage of Neil Armstrong’s first steps, it takes a moment for one’s eyes to make sense of the low-resolution image" As I understand it, the problem wasn't the video feed, it was the re-transmission for the global TV audience. The original video was then lost. Quoting from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1200161/Apol... : > Nasa believed they might contain electronic information…

I think there are two sides to risk. Risk tolerance for a given mission is one. Mission tolerance for a given risk is the other. What I mean there is I doubt that SpaceX will be a less safe option than NASA, Roscosmos by proxy, for getting crew to the ISS. But SpaceX's big picture plan is to get people, regular people, to Mars. And that is something I think would never happen with NASA would never even consider takin…

Ahh, I think I got it. I'll restate it to see if you correct me.

The SpaceX long-term goal is cheap and safe space travel to Mars. The risk is very high that this goal will fail. NASA won't accept this sort of mission because it's very likely to be a waste of money which could be used for other NASA goals (eg, robotic probes).

Though looking at it, it implies that NASA is being fiscally responsible, but the other 1/2 of the Mahoney is the 'government-sanctioned monopoly', so my interpretation cannot be what is meant. (I can think of other reasons, like not wanting to upset the funding system.)

Still, I think it's close enough that it clears up my confusion. Thanks!

EDIT: But if people do die on a SpaceX mission, will that count as a mission failure, and will SpaceX be able to continue?

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#58

Post by hinkley »

Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book is Red Moon, and it's set maybe a decade or two after moon colonization has happened. It's not his best work (it's worth reading but I'm not sure if it's worth owning) but he is known for this genre of fiction and it has some pretty interesting observations in it.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#59

Post by hinkley »

amelius wrote: post #4

Wouldn't it be easier to hunt for resources deeper in Earth's crust?

I read an obscure futurist book years ago in which a pretty cool picture of concrete steps toward becoming a stellar civilization were laid out.

A big point was that there are lots of oxidized metals on the moon. With enough heat, you can drive off the oxygen, giving you metal for construction and air to breathe.

What's really in deficit there is hydrogen, which you can bring up (although we've now found water there so maybe need less of that?). The rest can be found in the asteroid belt (turns out some asteroids are made out of something resembling tar - plenty of carbon and nitrogen).

The delta V to get off the moon is less than earth, and the lack of atmosphere means less drag to deal with, so smaller rockets and bigger payloads. Also with the lack of atmosphere, rail launch facilities are possible without killing passengers. If you can construct the payloads on the moon or in its orbit, that's less pollution and more objects in higher orbits.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#60

Post by dTal »

eesmith wrote: post #19

Article: "Watching the footage of Neil Armstrong’s first steps, it takes a moment for one’s eyes to make sense of the low-resolution image" As I understand it, the problem wasn't the video feed, it was the re-transmission for the global TV audience. The original video was then lost. Quoting from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1200161/Apol... : > Nasa believed they might contain electronic information…

>> The grainy images that the world saw in 1969 came from a TV camera pointed at a giant wall monitor at mission control, of a live feed from pictures sent by satellite from Australia to California and relayed by landline to Houston.

Rather offtopic, but if that chain isn't convoluted enough for you, check out exactly how they accomplished giant wall monitors in the 1960s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

[edit: this guy's presentation about them is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-BvMcqEc98 ]

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