One Small Step

It's in pdf format. I'm afraid its about 1 Meg.

My guestimates were as below. A chemical plant is mostly fairly simple,
and partly very complicated. Hence the used of lunar bricks:

In total, only 160 tons of the plant needs to be brought from Earth,
and over 4,000 tons from the lunar surface. The plant will have the
capacity to process some 11,000 tons of regolith per month, given some
150MW of electrical input. An additional 14,000 tons of regolith per
month would be sorted and rejected, so the crusher and separator will
be sized for 25,000 tons per month, or some 7kg per second.
The plant will consume 3 years of brick supplies and will take
approximately 3 years to assemble for a lunar-based team of 12 people.
======
And, if this pastes OK:
Most of the heaviest components of the plant will be made on the moon,
using the Iron and Moon-bricks available from the Phase 2 Equipment.
The total plant weight would be made up of:
Materials Use Mass (t)
Lunar bricks Used for main structure support, and for refractory and
inert linings. Structure to support output "bins" 3,600
Lunar iron and steel Lining of some kilns and reaction chambers,
piping, material handling, regolith crushing, magnets. Support for
solar mirrors (six 20m by 20m mirrors giving 2.4MW of heat). 400
Conveyors motors and belts Transporting solid components from one
process to another 20
Inert and refractory linings Corrosion resistant interior linings and
electrolytes 20
Pumps Movement of liquids and gases, including hot and corrosive
materials 20
Cabling and control Distribution of power, switching of power 20
Reactants Primarily Potassium Fluoride (subsequently, only Fluoride
will need replacing, as CF4. 20
Cooling units Units to cool oxygen and water outputs to liquid form 20
Repair units Robots and diagnostic equipment to facilitate repair 20
Other Miscellaneous 20
Total 4,560

did you build a working prototype?

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com...
It's in pdf format. I'm afraid its about 1 Meg.

My guestimates were as below. A chemical plant is mostly fairly simple,
and partly very complicated. Hence the used of lunar bricks:

In total, only 160 tons of the plant needs to be brought from Earth,
and over 4,000 tons from the lunar surface. The plant will have the
capacity to process some 11,000 tons of regolith per month, given some
150MW of electrical input. An additional 14,000 tons of regolith per
month would be sorted and rejected, so the crusher and separator will
be sized for 25,000 tons per month, or some 7kg per second.
The plant will consume 3 years of brick supplies and will take
approximately 3 years to assemble for a lunar-based team of 12 people.
======
And, if this pastes OK:
Most of the heaviest components of the plant will be made on the moon,
using the Iron and Moon-bricks available from the Phase 2 Equipment.
The total plant weight would be made up of:
Materials Use Mass (t)
Lunar bricks Used for main structure support, and for refractory and
inert linings. Structure to support output "bins" 3,600
Lunar iron and steel Lining of some kilns and reaction chambers,
piping, material handling, regolith crushing, magnets. Support for
solar mirrors (six 20m by 20m mirrors giving 2.4MW of heat). 400
Conveyors motors and belts Transporting solid components from one
process to another 20
Inert and refractory linings Corrosion resistant interior linings and
electrolytes 20
Pumps Movement of liquids and gases, including hot and corrosive
materials 20
Cabling and control Distribution of power, switching of power 20
Reactants Primarily Potassium Fluoride (subsequently, only Fluoride
will need replacing, as CF4. 20
Cooling units Units to cool oxygen and water outputs to liquid form 20
Repair units Robots and diagnostic equipment to facilitate repair 20
Other Miscellaneous 20
Total 4,560

Alex Terrell wrote:
It's in pdf format. I'm afraid its about 1 Meg.

My guestimates were as below. A chemical plant is mostly fairly simple,
and partly very complicated. Hence the used of lunar bricks:

In total, only 160 tons of the plant needs to be brought from Earth,
and over 4,000 tons from the lunar surface. The plant will have the
capacity to process some 11,000 tons of regolith per month, given some
150MW of electrical input. An additional 14,000 tons of regolith per
month would be sorted and rejected, so the crusher and separator will
be sized for 25,000 tons per month, or some 7kg per second.
The plant will consume 3 years of brick supplies and will take
approximately 3 years to assemble for a lunar-based team of 12 people.
======
And, if this pastes OK:
Most of the heaviest components of the plant will be made on the moon,
using the Iron and Moon-bricks available from the Phase 2 Equipment.
The total plant weight would be made up of:
Materials Use Mass (t)
Lunar bricks Used for main structure support, and for refractory and
inert linings. Structure to support output "bins" 3,600
Lunar iron and steel Lining of some kilns and reaction chambers,
piping, material handling, regolith crushing, magnets. Support for
solar mirrors (six 20m by 20m mirrors giving 2.4MW of heat). 400
Conveyors motors and belts Transporting solid components from one
process to another 20
Inert and refractory linings Corrosion resistant interior linings and
electrolytes 20
Pumps Movement of liquids and gases, including hot and corrosive
materials 20
Cabling and control Distribution of power, switching of power 20
Reactants Primarily Potassium Fluoride (subsequently, only Fluoride
will need replacing, as CF4. 20
Cooling units Units to cool oxygen and water outputs to liquid form 20
Repair units Robots and diagnostic equipment to facilitate repair 20
Other Miscellaneous 20
Total 4,560

Very ambitious. So it would take about six shuttle payloads to LEO and
perhaps another dozen for the fuel, engines and landing craft to put it
on the moon.
Would you use solar for all the power and heat requirements? Does your
system shut down during the lunar night? Are the processed materials
to be used on the moon?
Finally, what is your estimate of the total cost?

Mike Combs wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

While Apollo moon rocks will likely keep their value, the first ton of
lunar gravel will likely depress the price to that of rare meteorites.

You're probably right. Sure would have been nice to have a terraced
approach to High Frontier, though.

I came across the claim that a mass driver could be carried by a single
shuttle but did not realize that it was ONeil that said it.

Just bear in mind that this comparison considers the PV panels powering the
mass driver to be a separate component. That would actually have several
times the mass.

What is
the ratio between the weight of the 'egun' to the payloads it propells;
30000/1?
Perhaps the system could be scaled down to launch 'bag bolts' smaller
than a golf ball. Fifty gm/min during the lunar day would add up to
ten tons/year.

A smaller bore mass driver would certainly be a smaller upfront investment
(what I keep telling people who talk in terms of mass drivers to launch
big-ass oxygen tanks or finished components of various types). But I was
initially attracted to the proposed idea with the notion of the system later
getting used for large scale construction in HEO. 10 tons per year would be
too small to support things like SPS.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

A look at the difference between Von Braun's 1952 version of a manned
lunar landing and the real thing nearly two decades later would be
instructive here. Instead of a half dozen giant landers, which would
have required a booster the size of the empire state building if
launched all at once, an ultralight LOR LEM sufficed. As experience
and confidence increased, a greater weight of science experiments,
three rovers, extended EVAs and a greater mass of returned samples
followed.
There is nothing that prevents additional units, or a scaled up
version, from following in the wake of the first 'proof of concept'
model.
It is also quite possible that the rate could be increased by a factor
of ten, with enough PVs, should the processing capacity of an HEO
demand it.

There are a couple of other considerations. How accurate are the
accelerators going to be. To cover a wide area the catchers might have
an arm with something like a wind sock to act like a baseball mit.
Also it might be preferable to make the bore, and the outside diameter
of the bucket, two or three times the diameter of the bag. The
decelleration would be in line, the path of the bucket would not be
deflected, and at the end of the barrel it could be dropped into a
collection basket and wheeled back to the 'breach'. The buckets will
be such a small fraction of the total weight that having the extras
required would be far less than some sort of track return.
When I first read of the concept of a SPS in the late seventies, I felt
something akin to a religious conversion. In the early seventies, the
bids for a 'space truck' predicted a cost to LEO of less than $25/lb.
We have seen so many claims go up in exhaust smoke that it is best to
promote the smallest, least complicated, proof of concept that is still
practical.
Inexpensive recovery of lunar materials, on a small scale, for
scientific investigation, collectors, reaction mass for asteroid
missions and hopefully for processing experiments should be the first
goal of a return to the moon, manned or unmanned.

In article .com,
wrote:
A look at the difference between Von Braun's 1952 version of a manned
lunar landing and the real thing nearly two decades later would be
instructive here. Instead of a half dozen giant landers, which would
have required a booster the size of the empire state building if
launched all at once, an ultralight LOR LEM sufficed...

Remember, that's for small values of "sufficed". :-) One of von Braun's
expeditions would have done an order of magnitude more surface science
than all six Apollo landings put together. It's the difference between
exploring a world and merely sampling it.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
A look at the difference between Von Braun's 1952 version of a manned
lunar landing and the real thing nearly two decades later would be
instructive here. Instead of a half dozen giant landers, which would
have required a booster the size of the empire state building if
launched all at once, an ultralight LOR LEM sufficed...

Remember, that's for small values of "sufficed". :-) One of von Braun's
expeditions would have done an order of magnitude more surface science
than all six Apollo landings put together. It's the difference between
exploring a world and merely sampling it.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

By the same token, the ability to explore the moon roboticly has
advanced by several orders of magnitude, even since the Apollo
missisions, atleast in regard to the transmission of information and
high resolution video.
It is now easy to imagine rovers of under a hundred pounds each that
could operate in conjunction with a mobile PV array and battery several
times that weight. It would be possible to design a unit that could be
lowered by cable down the side of a rill or mountain where layers are
exposed. It could even chip off rock samples. The short time delay,
by comparison with say mars, would make teleoperation workable. Over a
few years time, even the far side could be sampled.
The only hang up would be getting samples back to earth for the full
lab treatment. An electric gun, mini mass driver, would go a long way
toward solving that problem

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

In article .com,
wrote:
A look at the difference between Von Braun's 1952 version of a manned
lunar landing and the real thing nearly two decades later would be
instructive here. Instead of a half dozen giant landers, which would
have required a booster the size of the empire state building if
launched all at once, an ultralight LOR LEM sufficed...

Remember, that's for small values of "sufficed". :-) One of von Braun's
expeditions would have done an order of magnitude more surface science
than all six Apollo landings put together. It's the difference between
exploring a world and merely sampling it.

How so? I don't recall any of von Braun's expedition plans hopping
all over the place.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Tater Schuld wrote:

did you build a working prototype?

Give me a billion and I'll build it.

wrote:

Very ambitious. So it would take about six shuttle payloads to LEO and
perhaps another dozen for the fuel, engines and landing craft to put it
on the moon.
Would you use solar for all the power and heat requirements? Does your
system shut down during the lunar night? Are the processed materials
to be used on the moon?
Finally, what is your estimate of the total cost?

All the answers are he
http://fp.alexterrell.plus.com/web/C...stellation.pdf

(Please feel free to criticise this - but bear in mind it's not a
scientific paper).

In article .com,
wrote:
By the same token, the ability to explore the moon roboticly has
advanced by several orders of magnitude, even since the Apollo
missisions, atleast in regard to the transmission of information and
high resolution video.

Except, even in Apollo days, this was not a great problem for unmanned
lunar exploration. Video transmission from the Surveyors was good enough
for real-time teleoperation of their digging scoops, for example, and
somewhat later the Lunokhods were driven in real time.

The single biggest problem for long-lived lunar rovers is surviving the
lunar night without nuclear power, and there has been essentially no
improvement in that department.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |