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Old June 3rd 17, 01:21 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Alain Fournier[_3_]
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Default Mining the moon for rocket fuel to get us to Mars

On May/31/2017 at 6:57 AM, Jeff Findley wrote :
In article , says...
There is quite a lot of "exercise for the student" type problems here.
There is a lot of work & study needed about lunar industrialization for
sure including mining.

One factor that may get some consideration down the road is the idea of
what I'd call incremental industrial "densification". The idea being
that lightweight gear is first sent up
that has limited capacity for manufacture of the "heavy gear". Heavy
feed stock ( steel, etc) would then be sent
up subsequently for lunar manufacture. Enabling a heavy mfg. capability
via bootstrapping. At this point my conjecture
is pretty much a total hand wave, but I could at least see it as a
possibility. Would need some math to determine if
this would be preferable to just shipping up the heavy equipment
directly. I suppose if the scale is massive enough
the bootstrap approach might be the only really feasible one. Further
study needed....


I think the "further study needed" is the key here. Researchers don't
really know how they'd do this, so they're fishing for funding. Don't
get me wrong, this is certainly worth doing some work on, but this is
not a next 10 or 20 year solution. It's more like a next 25 to 100 year
solution.

But no, we'll do it all with SLS. Why waste money on studies?


Flags and footprints. We couldn't possibly do anything differently than
Apollo now could we? :-(

The reality is there is so much between the SLS approach and the "living
completely off the land" approach. I don't see "living off the land"
becoming viable until you can start launching heavier bits like machine
tools without resorting to making them out of aluminum, titanium, and
unobtainium. Shaving every last gram off of payloads due to high launch
costs is freaking expensive! It results in one-off payloads that might
work, or they might not.

To build a colony, we need to get to the point where we're buying
machine tools "off the shelf" and simply shipping them to the moon and
Mars. Run them in pressurized environments so astronauts can service
them in "shirt sleeves". By then, astronauts will be selected for their
skill at fixing machine tools, not for their ability to fly a fighter
jet in combat or because they have the most college degrees.


****. I've got college degrees, but fixing machine tools, not my forte. :-)


Alain Fournier