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Andrew Nowicki wrote:
PS. Imagine that hundreds of cheap telerobots have been launched into cislunar space. High school volunteers control them via Internet and use them to mine the Moon and build orbital greenhouses... Let us figure out how much it would cost. One Dextre with the grapple arm costs $154 million and weights about 2 tons. According to the calculator (http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/SVLCM.html) its cost of manufacturing is about $41 million. The cost of launching 2 ton spacecraft is $20 million. According to another calculator (http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/MOCM.html) its annual mission operations cost is about $9 million. The total cost of building one hundred Dextre telerobots, launching them into low Earth orbit, and using them for one year is: $154M - $41M + (100 x ($41M + $20M + $9M)) = $7,113 million = about $7 billion -- less than one half of the annual NASA budget! Electrodynamic tethers can provide cheap thrust in the low Earth orbit. There will be additional cost of building a network of terrestrial transponders -- perhaps $100 million. I cannot think of a better way to spend $7 billion. |
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