On May 19, 11:48*am, Hop wrote:
On Monday, February 13, 2012 9:52:04 AM UTC-7, David Spain wrote:
Marvin the Martian wrote:
What do they get in the way of new science for the cost of making a moon
base work and trucking all that carbon and hydrogen up there to keep it
going?

Carbon and hydrogen is already up there. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mi...ature_ice_like... http://moonmapper.wordpress.com/2010...e-lcross-brew/

Yeah, this has been my issue with this idea ever since W's VSE / Constellation
was announced.

It seems high cost / low payoff.

As indicated by the links above, there is a huge amount of potential propellant very close to EML1 and EML2. Propellant high on the slopes of earth's gravity well would revolutionize space travel.

The payoff would be making space travel routine and inexpensive.

Paul Spudis isn't the only person advocating extra terrestrial propellant sources. Water is also the first resource Space Resources hopes park in high lunar orbit.http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteroids/usage/

Exactly, EML1 represents a terrific zero delta-V gateway or OASIS from
which any amount of mass could be sent on its way with the push-off
from a pinky finger, using the moon or Earth gravity as the initial
propulsion (aka free of charge), not to mention dipole tether energy
of teravolts and the farads represented by the moon itself.

From within the moon should be considerable hydrogen, helium and
oxygen, not to mention heavy metals and most of everything in between.

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