Joann Evans wrote in message ...
"E.R." wrote:
May I submit that it will be cheaper, easier and more profitable to
drop the stuff (from the moon, for example) than to launch the same
material up?

~er

Depends on what the stuff is. It might be possible to, say, fire some
carefully cushioned (insulated and suspended neutrally bouyant in
water?) circut boards that a space station needs *now,* or medicines
nedded in orbit *now* or other things easily produced on Earth into
LEO...but there are no semiconductor or pharmaceutical plants on the
Moon.

No, there aren't any phram plants or semicondutor plants on the moon.
Yet.

And, as I (and it's not original with me) suggested earlier, this may
be the preferred way to get certain moderately bulky materials like
radioactive waste *off* Earth. The Moon doesn't help here either, except
possibly as the final repository of same.

I wonder if the amount of stuff that could be fired out of a gun would
pay back the money spent to build and maintain it?

~er