Rumours of a manned commercial mission to the moon by 2020

[GIThruster]

Landing stuff on the Moon is very expensive. You can't use a parachute. The energy needed to get to the Moon and back is non-rivial and the energy needed to construct a hotel is enormous. There were some real studies on this back in the '70's. Basically, the cheapest option is to use an automated tunnel boring machine, but they weigh in the hundreds of tons. Then you need to use water from the craters of the Moon to make some sort of sealant--what passes for cement here. Many boring machines use preformed concrete slabs that are brought in on conveyer. All of that is additional weight. That gets you a tunnel, not hotel rooms. Now you have to bring in all the fixtures. If you want any part of your hotel to be above ground for the view, that needs to be brought in separately.

Anyone wants to do any serious number crunching they'll soon find you are talking trillions of dollars using today's cheapest rockets. Even if Musk starts reusing rocket parts and the cost drops another decade, you're talking hundreds of billions in initial investment at the least--something we have 50 years experience in order to know no one will afford.

And this is the lesson we should have learned with all the grand dreams that go back decades and with nothing to show for them--you have to solve the whole space transportation issue first. You cannot do it the other way around, and launch costs are only one portion of the real transport costs.

As to william's bank, it was pointed out to him months ago that his scheme holds no advantage over a ship at sea, so why would anyone throw money into it? Quite simply, banking cannot be used to justify building on the Moon.

If you want to see space exploration and exploitation become a reality, then support it with workable concepts. Don't waylay it with grandiose schemes that cannot possibly work. We've seen enough of that for the last 5 decades.

[williatw]

As to william's bank, it was pointed out to him months ago that his scheme holds no advantage over a ship at sea, so why would anyone throw money into it? Quite simply, banking cannot be used to justify building on the Moon.

Believe there is some question about how soverign a sea-stead could be made to be legally and practically. That the people trying to set them up were already making promises about what they could or wouldn't do. The moon is two to four days away also much further away, and under the 1967 space treaty no country can claim soverignty or owership of the moon. Think the "tourism" or "mining" or whatever would make excellent cover for the tax shelter. More recent data posted by blankbeard and others seem to contradict your "trillions" of dollars to setup a moon base. I mean the seventies? A little dated don't you think?

[Blankbeard]

More inspiration to sit down and run some more numbers. I'm willing to bet a full on moon base/hotel will be far less than 100 billion, probably less than 10, if you do it right. SpaceX has proven that giant fireworks can cost much much less than people previously thought. When someone gets their head wrapped around things right, they'll realize the rest of space shouldn't cost so much either.

There are multiple governments and universities and other entities that would be willing to pay 100 million per person to go to the moon, and I don't think that price is unreasonable with the right infrastructure.

If you do run numbers, remember your error bars. They're gonna be huge. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to do so, just to remember we have limited information and there are many variables we can't nail down.

What a scheme like this has going for it versus something like Sealand is that from very quickly you have an economy based on assets. Services are just extra income. First Bank of the Moon isn't chasing after deposits, it's making loans, acting as an alternative to the IMF for third world countries, and building a web of obligations that an asset free venture like Sealand could never offer. It's the embedding into the world economy that leads to autonomy.

[GIThruster]

The moon is two to four days away also much further away, and under the 1967 space treaty no country can claim soverignty or owership of the moon.

The same is true of Antarctica and it's just a few hours away. Banking is simply not a viable vector for space exploitation. It doesn't matter that you don't like this. The fact is, your idea won't work.

Musk's analysis of what it takes to build a viable colony makes more sense, and BTW, the topic was not what it takes to build a colony. It was what it takes to build a Dubai like resort hotel.

Regardless, any sensible person knows that the key to space exploitation is propellantless transport. Take the Warpstar example. With a 1N/W thruster you can build spacecraft that goes slow in atmo and fast in vacuum, and go through constant 1+ gee acceleration for an entire cislunar transit. A single ship the size of a business jet can make the round trip 3X/day dropping 20T of cargo each flight. Robotic ships that endure much higher accelerations can make the round trip in even less time.

This kind of transport does not need to make hypersonic exits and reentries, so it does not need much in the way of TPS, maintenance nor even a mission control, past what we use for air travel. Ships like this can build anything anywhere in our planetary system, so it only makes sense to work on the propulsion challenge first. If you put the cart before the horse, you end up trying to row a boat across the atlantic when you should be developing the Galleon.

And just saying, these grandiose schemes go back more than 50 years. They're always a waste of time because people would rather day-dream about a future they have no way to obtain than seek a future they do. Gerard O'Neill was a brilliant guy and we are much in his debt, but one of the legacies of O'Neill is that we focused on things like satellite solar power stations, O'Neill cylinders and crazy hundred billion dollar launch schemes that though rationalized by the numbers of large volumes, we will never build. These macro-engineering launch systems will never be built because they take too much initial investment and there is no ROI. To anyone paying attention, this was all obvious back in the late 70's. Instead of focusing on idealistic and unrealistic goals that sap one's efforts, how much better to focus on what is obtainable? On what can make space exploitation possible--propellantless propulsion.

Marc Millis steered us back on course during the 90's when he introduced the metrics behind the "space drive" during NASA's BPP project. We do well to heed the warning. If you want to see humanity become a true space-faring species, we cannot put off propellantless propulsion any longer, and thus far, only the M-E thrusters are a viable option. That's where the focus needs to be.

[williatw]

The moon is two to four days away also much further away, and under the 1967 space treaty no country can claim soverignty or owership of the moon.

The same is true of Antarctica and it's just a few hours away. Banking is simply not a viable vector for space exploitation. It doesn't matter that you don't like this. The fact is, your idea won't work.

Perhaps you are right but I thought by international treaties Antarctica is specifically off-limits for mining, or any type of settlement or development, only scientific study/research was allowed. The same is not true of the moon, for instance the rock samples "mined" by the US are indisputably US property, as well as the lunar rock samples mined by the Russians by automated probe. The Russians even later sold some of them, no questions asked about legality. So the moon and other heavenly bodies are apparently fair game for economic exploitation. A tax shelter with funds transferred electronically, tax-free interest paid could be worth 100's of billions if not trillions of dollars. Money transferred electronically is just data, bits and bytes has no weight occupies little space, could be serviced by a fairly small colony, not like a large multi-gigawatt SPS weighing thousands of tons. With all due respect to O'Neill, seemed to me his biggest mistake was trusting NASA's figures for transportation cost to orbit of the space shuttle. Seem to remember they were claiming 300/lb to orbit and that it would be flying every two weeks, etc. A lot of people thought that were very optimistic, but basking in the success of the moon landing, few at the time (middle late 70's) were prepared to say so at least publically.

[Blankbeard]

Is still all boils down to one thing, LOW COST TO LOW EARTH ORBIT. once we get that everything else is just numbers.

Kinda sorta disagree. There's no denying that low cost to orbit is important but aside from the tourism aspect, most of this scheme focuses on space infrastructure. I believe that the only cargo worth moving off earth is a human being. Space has to be self-supporting or we can't do it.

Cheap LEO certainly helps as it probably means cheap movement through near earth space.

We have options in space we don't have on earth. Building a space elevator on earth requires materials we have no idea how to manufacture but a lunar elevator could be built using existing kevlar cables. Orion style propulsion as well as ion propulsion are possible and even feasible.

I don't think we have enough information to tell if current/near future systems (Skylon, Falcon Heavy) will hit a price point that lets us expand.

I mean the seventies? A little dated don't you think?

Hey, at least he tried to make an argument. AND he tried to support it. That is real progress. I am crying real tears here. Like they say about the dancing bear, it's not that the bear dances well, it's that it dances at all. And the most impressive thing is not a personal attack in the whole post. I think it's worth addressing and I will do so. You get more of what you encourage after all.

[rj40]

What is propellentless propulsion? I haven't heard of this.
Solar sails?

And...?

Interesting.

[Blankbeard]

What is propellentless propulsion? I haven't heard of this.
Solar sails?

And...?

Interesting.

I think he was referring to the Mach Effect thruster I've read him talking about before. That's what I took it as.

I file it under the "nice if true but not worth stopping other efforts for" category.

YMMV.

[GIThruster]

What is propellentless propulsion? I haven't heard of this.

It's all over the web. Just take a moment to search "BPP", "propellantless" or "space drive".

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/1997-J_AIAA_SpaceDr.pdf

Note in the first paragraph of the introduction, the definition Millis used when he coined the term "space drive". It is the limitations of the rocket equation that need a work around. If in doing that you can get warp or wormhole travel, all the better.

Since NASA's original investigation looking for the physics behind a space drive more than a decade ago, the Mach Effect physics of Jim Woodward remain the only viable candidate for a space drive. There are others who don't meet my particular criteria for "viable". If Sonny White ever gets his model into publishable form and fights his way through peer review, maybe his QVF model will join that very exclusive club. Until then, there really is just the one contender, and that's the feeling at Lockheed Martin as well. Has been since their Millennium Project a decade ago.

The book is due out in December: http://www.amazon.com/Making-Starships- ... 1461456223

[Skipjack]

Is still all boils down to one thing, LOW COST TO LOW EARTH ORBIT. once we get that everything else is just numbers.

I fully agree. We need that before we can think about anything else. Otherwise whatever else we try is going to be doomed to be a one off stunt that wont result into anything sustainable.

[GIThruster]

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=18076

[Blankbeard]

Landing stuff on the Moon is very expensive. You can't use a parachute. The energy needed to get to the Moon and back is non-rivial and the energy needed to construct a hotel is enormous. There were some real studies on this back in the '70's.

Moving stuff on or off the moon is relatively expensive to be sure. But that cost is dwarfed by the cost of getting from LEO to lunar orbit which is in turn dwarfed by earth to LEO costs. And I gave you links earlier estimate lunar orbit can be done for 100 million. Landing shouldn't more than double that unless the safety costs go through the roof. Then there's the elevator concept. Doable with current technology. Dozens of near earth asteroids are about the right size for easy capture and providing the materials (roughly 6000 tons) needed to construct the elevator. Needs work? Sure. Then there are other propulsion concepts. I see no reason why you couldn't land an orion style craft on the moon some distance away from settlements. In short, there are options.

And construction is never trivial but I think you're assuming everything needs to be hauled up from earth. Not so. Let's look at the major components of lunar crust. These numbers are from Wikipedia, averaged.

Silica: 45%
Alumina: 20%
Lime: 12%
Iron II Oxide: 10%
Magnesa: About 10%
Titanium Oxide: about 2%
Sodium Oxide: less than 1%
Thorium/Uranium/rare earths: Generally less than earth. Trace

Silica is sand, used in filler, glass, quartz, semiconductors, aerogels. Alumina, and the metal oxides are pretty obvious in their use. Lime is quicklime aka cement.

Location is important. Starting off in on of those permanently shadowed craters near the pole is probably the wisest place. Water, air, fuel, freedom from dealing with solar radiation and heat.

Basically, the cheapest option is to use an automated tunnel boring machine, but they weigh in the hundreds of tons.

Disagree. The cheapest option is going to be thermal decomposition of oxides (and melting silica) for building materials. They're obtained locally, not shipped in. Heat source could be solar but you really need a nuclear source with concentrated heat. HTG, Liquid Fluorine, maybe a polywell or some other fusion source. Not saying you wouldn't/couldn't tunnel but above ground building is practical.

Then you need to use water from the craters of the Moon to make some sort of sealant--what passes for cement here. Many boring machines use preformed concrete slabs that are brought in on conveyer. All of that is additional weight.

Lime on the moon is already quicklime, aka cement. There's also water and the ability to make steel fiber for reinforcement too. Bigelow's inflatable habitats are probably a good start. Use them as concrete forms and interior walls. They have the side effect of preventing the concrete from absorbing your oxygen too.

How hard would it be to put a nuclear reactor on the moon? Politically, possibly difficult to say the least. Easier probably to ask for forgiveness than permission. What about technical issues? There are current designs that would fit in a rocket. The Russian VKT-12 might fit but I suspect it's too heavy. We might gain some weight by dropping shielding (less important on the moon) It's certainly lighter than the same volume of solid iron (22 m^2, about 177 tons) which is a 4 or more rocket trip assuming the earlier figure for the Falcon Heavy is correct. Inflatables and other equipment are another launch. Crew is probably #7. Assuming the earlier 120 million to LEO and 200 million to lunar surface, we're at less than 3 billion dollars with a couple spare launches. I'd take on a couple billion for self-insurance as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_R ... Experiment

There's another way of getting a reactor to the moon though. In the 1950's the military developed small reactors to be used to power aircraft only a few megawatts but they are within the reach of a single launch, perhaps the same one that would carry manufacturing equipment. Gen-4 reactors are another possibility, as well as the LFTR and perhaps even fusion (Yay! On topic! Go Polywell!)

Maybe 3 launches, a couple billion dollars for set up? Note we still don't have a business. We have power, lifesupport, living space, and manufacturing. We could take billionaires on who like roughing it and maybe open our hotel.

If this is built on the back of an existing orbital tourism business, so much the better.

Hard? Certainly. Lots of work left to be done? Oh yeah. Likely to fail? Sure. Possible? Yes.

That gets you a tunnel, not hotel rooms. Now you have to bring in all the fixtures. If you want any part of your hotel to be above ground for the view, that needs to be brought in separately.

See, in the 70's there were no inflatable habitats. Automated manufacturing was just barely going. Everything had to be prefab trucked in from earth. That's not the case today. We can ship an assembly line and build there. Civilization in a rocket, if you'll pardon the hyperbole.

Anyone wants to do any serious number crunching they'll soon find you are talking trillions of dollars using today's cheapest rockets. Even if Musk starts reusing rocket parts and the cost drops another decade, you're talking hundreds of billions in initial investment at the least--something we have 50 years experience in order to know no one will afford.

I disagree, as do all of the people starting businesses to do at least part of this, as does NASA for at least part of it.

And this is the lesson we should have learned with all the grand dreams that go back decades and with nothing to show for them--you have to solve the whole space transportation issue first. You cannot do it the other way around, and launch costs are only one portion of the real transport costs.

Oh yeah, infrastructure is key. Even with it, there's no guarantee. But the secret to success is trying one more time than we fail. If we stop trying waiting on a perfect solution to come along, we've already failed.

As to william's bank, it was pointed out to him months ago that his scheme holds no advantage over a ship at sea, so why would anyone throw money into it? Quite simply, banking cannot be used to justify building on the Moon.

I disagree with the first sentence. No ship, platform, or floating city has ever had real assets. Traditional countries trade land or agricultural or mineral wealth for sovereignty. Running a bank for deposits is a different kind of enterprise than running a bank for loans. Not so say that such a bank wouldn't accept deposits but it's not the strength of those deposits that gives stability. It's the ability to back up credit with a commodity. That's financial power of a sort that's only been wielded by large banks and central banks.

Such a bank could eventually establish its own currency and even function as a reserve currency, all the while protected by its credit and investments, to say nothing of its deposits. Eventually, you might even function as stock exchange. When interfering in your business kicks off a global recession, no one interferes with you.

The second sentence, well, the tourism business is the justification. Banking is just a natural outgrowth of possessing assets and needing security. I think it would be a fairly low profit activity in monetary terms. The real profit is in guarantees of autonomy.

If you want to see space exploration and exploitation become a reality, then support it with workable concepts. Don't waylay it with grandiose schemes that cannot possibly work. We've seen enough of that for the last 5 decades.

I don't know that I'd describe the last 5 decades of space spending as grandiose schemes. We've seen extreme conservatism in scale and scope as cutbacks forced halfway measures. We've also seen a big argument between manned and unmanned spaceflight proponents. Since the last Apollo mission, no human being has left low earth orbit. How is that grandiose? Our space truck was cut back and never delivered on its promises. When we finally retired that, we had to hitch rides with the Russians? Grandiose? Hardly.

Even at the peak of Apollo's popularity, roughly half of the US didn't care. The shuttle launches never reached that level and quickly fell off into obscurity. If it hadn't been for the protesters, no one would have noticed Cassini.

If we're going to be in space, it's going to have to be stand alone. Every step needs to contribute to the next or stand on its own. We can't wait for the perfect solution to all the steps at once to come along.

[GIThruster]

Disagree. The cheapest option is going to be thermal decomposition of oxides (and melting silica) for building materials. They're obtained locally, not shipped in. Heat source could be solar but you really need a nuclear source with concentrated heat. HTG, Liquid Fluorine, maybe a polywell or some other fusion source. Not saying you wouldn't/couldn't tunnel but above ground building is practical.

Fine. You disagree because you're completely ignorant of all the details concerning the kind of project you're talking about. You do realize there are millions of space enthusiasts around the world for the last 50 year writing on this, doing studies etc.? You're plucking useless data off wiki about percents of elements and ignoring the real data of what percents are in any specific location, pretending that a nuke could melt the rock down and form a habitat, because you have no concept at all of how many PENTAWATTS of power that would take. Seriously, you understand you're talking about more power output than Mount Saint Helens? Melting the landscape? Are you mad? You want to do that with a portable reactor like SP100 or Prometheus? You're off by at least 6 orders of magnitude.

Hard? Certainly. Lots of work left to be done? Oh yeah. Likely to fail? Sure.

See this is what you don't get--floating bad ideas is far worse than floating no idea at all, especially when you presume to do it with other people's money. Who in their right mind would invest trillions of dollars on a project they thought was likely to fail? Are you mad? It's crazies like you who run their mouths while they know nothing of what they speak, ignoring all the real work that's been done on the issue for decades while assuring people "we can do this" that have made it so we have gotten near nothing done in 50 years.

Ren: Hey, lets go melt a continent!
Stimpy: how we gonna do that?
Ren: I got a bic lighter. . .we can do it!

Now consider the reverse--what happens if you invest in developing M-E thruster technology before investing in space exploitation. You have 1N/watt thrusters so you build a small fleet of space-going "Skycrane" transports or ships that carry cargo externally like the S-64. To start you build them small. Just half a dozen of them, with pilots aboard, flying down to a prefab construction sight, picking up habitat modules the size of the shipping containers we use for ship, rail and tractor trailers. The cranes not only deposit them on the Moon, 18/day, but assist in dragging regolith over them so they're protected from radiation.

After the first day, your power station is in place, your command center and 16 self contained living quarters.

And you haven't melted any rock.

In the first month you've moved more than 500 units. You had enough for a "hotel" after the first week. So you build more skycranes and start building on Titan.

At 1 gee constant acceleration you can reach Titan in 9 days. However, on the way back unloaded, the ship can pull substantially higher accelerations and you realize you can make the complete round trip in 12 days if you don't have any people onboard for the return trip. So you start flying your transports unmanned.

Mars and dozens of other happenin' places in our planetary system call out for exploitation, and you're ready to earn a living, because you're not only barely scratching out a living off tax benefits or mining for scraps of Yttrium. You're providing a service to the dopes who are searching for scraps of Yttrium. Hilton has thousands of people employed building habitation modules and people all around the world are buying them up faster than they can build them. Everything is cash and carry. No financing needed. Exploitation explodes across the system with millions of people moving out across a dozen worlds inside the first year--all paid for.

. . .and you still haven't melted any rock.

[Blankbeard]

Fine. You disagree because you're completely ignorant of all the details concerning the kind of project you're talking about. You do realize there are millions of space enthusiasts around the world for the last 50 year writing on this, doing studies etc.? You're plucking useless data off wiki about percents of elements and ignoring the real data of what percents are in any specific location, pretending that a nuke could melt the rock down and form a habitat, because you have no concept at all of how many PENTAWATTS of power that would take. Seriously, you understand you're talking about more power output than Mount Saint Helens? Melting the landscape? Are you mad? You want to do that with a portable reactor like SP100 or Prometheus? You're off by at least 6 orders of magnitude.

No, just no. You have completely misunderstood in the least obvious way possible. I'm not even sure where to begin correcting that. Melting the landscape? I didn't talk about that. It's silly. The process I'm talking about is called "smelting." It's many hundreds of years old. Sheesh.

Note: I am oversimplifying for the puppet show!

Let's put some numbers to this. Let's assume a reactor like a LFTR or HTG reactor that has 3MW of usable thermal power at 1000C. If a polywell is capable of operation at that temperature, feel free to substitute it.

The constituents of regolith can be separated by chemical or physical means. These are well known. Silica and lime require nothing more to be usable. Let's focus on the iron oxide which has a specific heat of 611J per kilogram degree. Let's also assume we have to heat it from 0 K (Ha!) to our target temperature of 800C (1073K) with no phase changes. That uses 655KJ per kg.

One mole of iron II oxide reacts with 3 moles of hydrogen gas over several steps to form water and metallic iron. We get hydrogen from water so let's assume a starting temperature of 100C. Heating the hydrogen takes another 20KJ per kg. We also need to supply the energy of activation which is less than 1KJ per kg. Let's call it 700KJ per kg.

We have 3 MW of usable thermal energy. Let's assume our process is 10% efficient. We can refine 1.5 tons of iron per hour.

Production of aluminum takes 56MJ per kilogram, so we can produce only about 20 kg per hour. Luckily, this process takes place at 180 C so we can run it off the waste heat from the iron refining.

Titanium dioxide is horribly energy intensive to refine and useful in its raw form.

So we have concrete, steel, and maybe a bit of aluminum. We regenerate our hydrogen as water so we have a steady source of oxygen. Feeding this process takes around 9 tons per hour of regolith. Not that hard to acquire. A rocket load of automated equipment would be plenty.

3 megawatts of useful thermal energy translate into about 1MW or less of electrical power. Very very doable and not at all needing to melt the landscape.

Do you even know what a petawatt is? If you took all the power used by human civilization since 1900 it might be 1 petawatt. And you think it's going to take multiple petawatts to make a building? Even on the moon?

PS, it's PETAwatt, not PENTAwatt, which would either be 5 watts or a watt produced by the Chrysler Corporation. I'm not sure which.

Hard? Certainly. Lots of work left to be done? Oh yeah. Likely to fail? Sure.

See this is what you don't get--floating bad ideas is far worse than floating no idea at all, especially when you presume to do it with other people's money.

You are simply not a competent judge of ideas. Math(s) is not a fuzzy thing.

Ren: Hey, lets go melt a continent!
Stimpy: how we gonna do that?
Ren: I got a bic lighter. . .we can do it!

Now consider the reverse--what happens if you invest in developing M-E thruster technology before investing in space exploitation.

Oh, here comes the sales pitch.

You have 1N/watt thrusters

Do you not realize that if these things actually work, they would change the nature of human civilization long before they reached that kind of efficiency? Read the wikipedia article on Statites and think about what being able to build those would do to change our society.

so you build a small fleet of space-going "Skycrane"
. . .and you still haven't melted any rock.

I snipped all of your evangelism because it simply doesn't matter. If those thrusters work as advertised, the world will beat a path to the door of whoever supplies them. If they don't, no one will notice. You can talk till you're blue in the face and it won't change those two simple facts.

If Woodward produces a reliable, robust device that any competent physicist can replicate his results with at a level that leaves no doubt, then it matters. I wish him the best of luck.

[williatw]

]
As to william's bank, it was pointed out to him months ago that his scheme holds no advantage over a ship at sea, so why would anyone throw money into it? Quite simply, banking cannot be used to justify building on the Moon.

I disagree with the first sentence. No ship, platform, or floating city has ever had real assets. Traditional countries trade land or agricultural or mineral wealth for sovereignty. Running a bank for deposits is a different kind of enterprise than running a bank for loans. Not so say that such a bank wouldn't accept deposits but it's not the strength of those deposits that gives stability. It's the ability to back up credit with a commodity. That's financial power of a sort that's only been wielded by large banks and central banks. Such a bank could eventually establish its own currency and even function as a reserve currency, all the while protected by its credit and investments, to say nothing of its deposits. Eventually, you might even function as stock exchange. When interfering in your business kicks off a global recession, no one interferes with you.

So the hypothetical bank of Luna's primary source of revenue is electronic deposits from earth, fleeing taxes, earning interest tax free. The bank in turn loans money to people/businesses back on earth charging interest, generating profit. But are you suggesting that mined precious metals on the moon, gold, platinum, yttrium etc. would have value even if they weren't shipped back to earth? A sort of cash collateral for the deposits? Can't own land on the moon, but you can "mine" minerals just like the US & Russia did, held in the colonies environs, it would have value, even if it isn't shipped back to earth, backing up the electronic deposits, shoring up the colonies value therefore attracting more investment possibly.