...Moon Missions to Reap Mineral Riches for Planet Earth

The primary minerals found on the moon are....

Lowlands

Basalt, which comprises about 90% of all volcanic lava.
It's primary use is for aggregate, which is used in gravel
or concrete.

Highlands

Feldspar, which comprises some 60% of the crust of the earth.
It's primary use in in ceramics.


Just imagine how all that cheap concrete and pottery will
transform our lives in twenty or thirty years, when we have
a few dozen people living there.

Imagine!

And critics dare to claim Nasa is wasting our taxes, hey
I say easy come easy go. It's only a few hundred billion dollars.


Jonathan

s

jonathan wrote:
The primary minerals found on the moon are....

Lowlands

Basalt, which comprises about 90% of all volcanic lava.
It's primary use is for aggregate, which is used in gravel
or concrete.

Highlands

Feldspar, which comprises some 60% of the crust of the earth.
It's primary use in in ceramics.


Just imagine how all that cheap concrete and pottery will
transform our lives in twenty or thirty years, when we have
a few dozen people living there.

Imagine!

And critics dare to claim Nasa is wasting our taxes, hey
I say easy come easy go. It's only a few hundred billion dollars.

Phobos and Ceres are the real deal.

We can simulate 2 year missions on the ISS.

We don't need any complicated landers, all we need is CELSS, and
residual fuel storage capabilities, and plenty of shielding material.

Of course, we'll need a real launch vehicle. Our latest design is the
Delta IV Medium + with a 5 meter upper stage powered by an RL-60, and
two GEM-60s for getting the thing off the pad, with six passengers.

We're pretty confident we can get three on the Delta IV Medium, too.

For heavy lift, the 10 meter ET with SRBs. The orbiting ETs and SSMEs
become the components of large interplanetary orbiting laboratories, and
then we just dump them at suitable sites, for reuse at a later date.

There are lots of interesting large asteroids out there, of every size,
make and model. 90 Antiope is two of my favorites :

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001101.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_Antiope

http://www.imcce.fr/fr/observateur/c.../index.php#img

http://www.imcce.fr/fr/observateur/c...tsyst15sep.jpg

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
Phobos and Ceres are the real deal.

We can simulate 2 year missions on the ISS.

We don't need any complicated landers, all we need is CELSS, and
residual fuel storage capabilities, and plenty of shielding material.

Of course, we'll need a real launch vehicle. Our latest design is the
Delta IV Medium + with a 5 meter upper stage powered by an RL-60, and
two GEM-60s for getting the thing off the pad, with six passengers.

We're pretty confident we can get three on the Delta IV Medium, too.

For heavy lift, the 10 meter ET with SRBs. The orbiting ETs and SSMEs
become the components of large interplanetary orbiting laboratories, and
then we just dump them at suitable sites, for reuse at a later date.

There are lots of interesting large asteroids out there, of every size,
make and model. 90 Antiope is two of my favorites :

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001101.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_Antiope

http://www.imcce.fr/fr/observateur/c.../index.php#img

http://www.imcce.fr/fr/observateur/c...tsyst15sep.jpg

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

At first when I heard about the PhD mission (Phobos & Demos). I
thought wow, that could be done with existing launchers. Then I
considered that depending on how fast or slow you go, that the crew
would be in Micro gravity for the whole mission, I know that some
cosmonauts/astronauts have been able to survive up to a year in
microgravity but it took a toll on them and tool them a while to fully
recover. Hence limiting crew rotations to 6months. Granted on the out
bound and return leg, you could spin the spacecraft by tethers
(handwave, handwave engineering problems involved with that) but when
you reach Phobos and/or Demos, you would still be in Microgravity for a
considerable amount of time.

Just my $0.02

Space Cadet

Moon Society - St. Louis Chapter

http://www.moonsociety.org/chapters/stlouis/

There is only one (maybe 2) basic core reasons for humans to go
beyond LEO, That is for the establishment of space settlements or a
space based civilization. Everything else are details.

Gary Gray 11/9/2005