The Economic Development of the Moon

On Nov 26, 1:32 am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Quadibloc wrote:
:Until we get D-D fusion - or something else like Boron-11 fusion,
:which I hadn't heard of before as a serious possibility - fusion would
:be a curiosity, and we would still need breeder reactors. Thorium
:breeders, at least, would give us a more common fuel relatively
:easily.

You seem to be mixing fusion and fission.

No, I wasn't, but they are both energy sources. Until we get a form of
fusion that uses a common fuel, we will have to use fission instead of
fusion for power if we want to do more towards reducing fossil fuel
use than can be achieved by the usual proposals of using wind and
tidal power and using less energy.

John Savard

Len wrote:

If you are a significant investor, I would be
happy to go into details. Otherwise, why
should I be on the defensive on this point?

Well, that's the the way it's supposed to work. If someone makes a
claim, that someone is supposed to back it up, or that someone runs
the risk of not being taken seriously.

Yes, with rather interminable delays that
feed the skepticism in all of us. At the
moment, we are feeling rather optimistic
again--but only time will tell.

I think we can agree on this.

I wish you every success on obtaining your funding and hope your
scheme is a huge winner.

Jim Davis

On Nov 4, 1:11 pm, "Mark R. Whittington"
wrote:
Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to
Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The
Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the
economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium
3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in
nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. Even a
cursory examination of the issue makes one wonder why.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...nomic_developm...

What happens when China controls the moon's L1?
-- Brad Guth

Jim Davis wrote:

Len wrote:

If you are a significant investor, I would be
happy to go into details. *Otherwise, why
should I be on the defensive on this point?

Well, that's the the way it's supposed to work. If someone makes a
claim, that someone is supposed to back it up, or that someone runs
the risk of not being taken seriously.

Or, he simply doesn't feel like wasting his time. Talk is cheap, NASA does
quite a bit of talking about supporting Private Enterprise. But no real
meaningful commitment to improve the investor climate for a free LEO
Marketplace. To me, NASA giving money to Space-X increases the probability
of Space-X failing to do what they seem to want to do.

One step at a time, LEO before the Moon.

Ron Paul in 2008, Free Markets in LEO.
--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

On Nov 27, 4:51 am, Craig Fink wrote:
Jim Davis wrote:
Len wrote:

If you are a significant investor, I would be
happy to go into details. Otherwise, why
should I be on the defensive on this point?

Well, that's the the way it's supposed to work. If someone makes a
claim, that someone is supposed to back it up, or that someone runs
the risk of not being taken seriously.

Or, he simply doesn't feel like wasting his time. Talk is cheap, NASA does
quite a bit of talking about supporting Private Enterprise. But no real
meaningful commitment to improve the investor climate for a free LEO
Marketplace. To me, NASA giving money to Space-X increases the probability
of Space-X failing to do what they seem to want to do.

One step at a time, LEO before the Moon.

Ron Paul in 2008, Free Markets in LEO.
--
Craig Fink

It still takes way too much fly-by-rocket energy per given payload
tonnage, especially if going so quickly to our moon. Even the Japan
SELENE/KAGUYA moon orbital mission involved nearly twice the ratio of
rocket GLOW per payload as Saturn V, at less than half the inert GLOW
to start off with, and still taking nearly 5 weeks for establishing
their 100 km orbit instead of our NASA/Apollo 3 day accomplishment.
More than a little something of fly-by-rocket physics simply doesn't
quite add up for our way of having supposedly accomplished that moon
of ours.
- Brad Guth

On Nov 26, 8:51 pm, Jim Davis wrote:
Len wrote:
If you are a significant investor, I would be
happy to go into details. Otherwise, why
should I be on the defensive on this point?

Well, that's the the way it's supposed to work. If someone makes a
claim, that someone is supposed to back it up, or that someone runs
the risk of not being taken seriously.

Yes, with rather interminable delays that
feed the skepticism in all of us. At the
moment, we are feeling rather optimistic
again--but only time will tell.

I think we can agree on this.

I wish you every success on obtaining your funding and hope your
scheme is a huge winner.

Thanks, Jim. I have always taken your comments
as being generally supportive, while reasonably
skeptical.

Len

Jim Davis

On Dec 4, 12:18 pm, Bruce Scott TOK Use-Author-Supplied-Address-
] wrote:
You know, I'm curious. Has anyone demonstrated that helium-3
is in fact of any particular benefit in making a fusion reactor? Like,
have experiments borne out that it's easier to make a sustainable and
power-generating reaction using the stuff?

The problem is that any D + He3 reactor that could fuse these two will
also fuse D + D, leading to D + T side reactions. So there's no
aneutronic path for that. The only consideration would be He3 versus Li
availability for breeding T. The latter path is the planned one.

--
ciao,
Bruce

drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

Are you that nuts?

I guess that's why France is going ahead with their full scale fusion
reactor, because they don't know what the hell they're doing? (that's
a question for you)

D + He3 Fusion works, whereas it just need lots of He3 that shouldn't
be nearly as spendy and as Muslim bloody to come by as are those
fossil fuels or the $1000/kg future of yellowcake.
- Brad Guth

Once China is in charge of our moon, there shouldn't be any shortages
of He3.
- Brad Guth


On Nov 4, 1:11 pm, "Mark R. Whittington"
wrote:
Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to
Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The
Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the
economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium
3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in
nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. Even a
cursory examination of the issue makes one wonder why.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...nomic_developm...

Is our physically dark and extremely dusty old moon really all that
violet/purple/bluish hue saturated? (unless it's all because of that
valuable He3 causing such a badly skewed color, of course there's not
so much of a shifted hue as to the human eye, but of those
insufficiently filtered CCD cameras simply don't know any better that
our naked moon seems as though so unusually violet/purple/bluish
saturated).

Where's all of that Usenet love and affection when you need it the
most, along with those supposed better ideas and honest
interpretations from all of the new and improved data about our moon
that's coming in?

In other words, do tell us why is our moon is still so officially NASA
taboo/nondisclosure rated, and/or getting faith-based banished along
with our NASA policy of officially ignoring the active geothermal
planetology and ETI truths about Venus, as much the same being kept so
unusually off-limits like our moon?

Why are the pretend atheists that are in charge of most everything
still acting as though so unusually Old Testament sequestered within
their borg like collective or killer bee swarm like mindset, in that
the mere honest thoughts or considerations on behalf of other
intelligent life having existed off-world and so nearby is forever so
gosh darn faith-based insurmountable?

China, Japan and eventually India are no longer sitting back or having
to take another NASA no for an answer, and perhaps our Barack Obama
doesn't have to keep taking no for an answer for creating a fleet of
new and improved shuttles with fully reusable LRBs that can deliver
100+ tonnes of payload into LEO/ISS space instead of having to utilize
those polluting and only semi-reusable SRBs that can't accomplish 50
tonnes, seems like the right sort of thing to be doing as a 50/50 kind
of public/private alternative to the spendy NASA way of doing things.

This following "KAGUYA Image Gallery" link (still somewhat under
construction or perhaps even getting moderated to death by our NASA)
will soon enough become the start of good things to come out of their
KAGUYA(SELENE) mission. As far as I can tell, their chosen Adobe
Flash gallery format of sharing those otherwise terrific images isn't
such a good idea unless you have an ultra fast internet connection and
don't mind such limited image access, but perhaps they'll eventually
get around to either fixing it or simply posting a home public
directory of those raw images without forcing us to deal with all of
their fancy Adobe Flash interface graphics.
http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/index_e.html

Just wait until their lunar exploration mission of mapping everything
in sight eventually works it's way down to orbiting at just 10 km
above that physically dark lunar surface, and subsequently gets those
one meter or better resolution images, plus that mission hosting loads
of nifty other gamma spectrum obtained data as to what the secondary/
recoil detecting of all those sorts of accessible raw elements which
our unusually massive and nearby moon has for us.

For some unexplained reasons, our crack NASA/Apollo wizards along with
their rad-hard Kodak film and unfiltered camera optics never had any
of this following UV-a induced hue saturation problem of depicting the
moon with such a violet/purple/bluish tint.

Notice that even with JAXA/Selene's most advanced camera CCDs having
quality coated optics including some specific bandpass lens filtering,
as to how purple/blush or even somewhat violet hue saturated those
initial full color images turned out. It's exactly what happens
without using a very good set of optically sharp spectrum cut-off and/
or narrow bandpass filters in order to exclude those strong primary
and unavoidable secondary/recoil worth of what those raw UV-a photons
create, as otherwise for those images having been so color/hue
saturation skewed as though being illuminated by way of the raw solar
energy was entirely unavoidable, though can be somewhat PhotoShop
corrected after the fact. (they obviously should have incorporated an
optical layer coating of Y-48 deep yellow or as great as Y-52 amber
for the sharp cutting off of most all that's below 500 nm, along with
an HA-50 layer or element for blocking IR, or simply by having applied
a custom NBPF [ECI-1020] multi-layer coated element)
http://www.selene.jaxa.jp/en/communi...#NEW_20071116A

The CAS Chang'e imaging as having the exact same violet/purple/blush
hue saturation issues as due to their not having incorporated a
sufficient optical spectrum cut-off filter or narrow visual band-pass
alternative.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/234114.htm

As to the ongoing mission by China's CAS may not ever accomplish as
good of images, but of their next and the ones after that should not
be the least bit disappointing, because most of anything Japan can do,
China should be fully capable of accomplishing one better and at not
10% the cost per deployed kg.
- Brad Guth


On Nov 4, 1:11 pm, "Mark R. Whittington"
wrote:
Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to
Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The
Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the
economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium
3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in
nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. Even a
cursory examination of the issue makes one wonder why.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...nomic_developm...