"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...

Running power lines all the way around the Moon is itself a daunting
engineering challenge (though admittedly, one probably on the same order
as a mass launcher and large-scale orbital manufactury).

I'm not even sure it would compare favorably with those items. I'm a little
bit vague on the mass budget for the orbital manufacturing facility O'Neill
proposed, but as for the mass launcher, I remember him commenting that the
components for the mass-driver itself would fit into a single Space Shuttle
cargo bay, although the components for the power supply would be several
times that.

2. Space furnace mirrors can point down at the lunar surface just as
easy as at an orbital processing facility...

Can they? From where? There are no selenosynchronous orbits.

Yet another complication. And the L-1 and L-2 points are so far away that I
think we'd be discussing mirrors bigger than continents.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
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Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.