Commercial Space & Asteroids

http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/local...796698,00.html

Ed Lu praises the virtues of commercial space.

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:59:59 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hop
David made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/local...796698,00.html

Ed Lu praises the virtues of commercial space.

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

I found little to disagree with there.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:59:59 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hop
David made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/local...796698,00.html

Ed Lu praises the virtues of commercial space.

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

I found little to disagree with there.

I would say that it is likely that there is commerically minable water
at the Lunar poles. NASA needs to remove the uncertainty of whether
there is or is not commerically minable water at the poles. This is a
good task for the govt space agency.

There are many aspects involved in determining whether the water is
minable on the Moon. But a simple yardstick is the concentration of
H2O in the Lunar regolith. If an area of a square kilometer on the
lunar surface has slabs of pure ice scattered over this area which is
near the surface [less the meter below the top of surface] and in the
quantity of thousand of tons
of ice in this near pure form- this should be minable.
A kilometer sq by meter deep is a million cubic meters and if average
density is 1, than it's a million tonnes of material. If the total
amount of H2O in this volume is 10,000 tonnes H2O of which of half of
this quantity is large slabs, then it's a 1% concentration and would
be minable. Whereas if the H2O is evenly distributed it would be
harder to mine and less likely to be minable.
At the moment, we lack detail knowledge- we aren't even sure the the
Hydrogen that has been detected is H2O, and the Hydrogen detected is
not at a high enough resolution, we need a resolution of less than km
square, we have a resolution of tens of kilometer square.
For commerical mining of Lunar water and in a time period of less than
a decade of time, the "order of scale" of the actually mined water is
in the thousands of tons, not in the million or billions of tons.
Having gross quantity of 10,000 tons of water mined on the moon,
"changes the game". If the price range of lunar water at the surface
is 1 to 1/2 million dollars per ton, the gross sales of lunar water
would be 5-10 billion dollars.
If the cost in electrical power necessary to split the water is 1/2
million dollar per ton per split, then you have a market for 5 billion
dollars in lunar electrical power. Can a company that buys lunar water
and buys electrical power sell 10,000 tons of rocket fuel in less than
a decade? And at what price? If rocket fuel is sold at $2000 per lb [4
million per ton] at lunar surface. Would there be enough customers?
What about shipping rocket fuel to lunar orbit or EML-1. Would NASA
buy hundreds of ton of rocket fuel at EML-1 for somewhere around
$4-5000 per lb. And would NASA want to buy hundreds of tons of rocket
fuel at Mars orbit- at say $5-6000 per ton. How would this affect how
NASA does Manned Mars? Or instead of company that makes rocket fuel
concerning itself with shipping, it could have a processing plant on
the Moon, and in EML-1 and on Mars's orbit and Mars surface, buying
water and selling rocket fuel to who ever wants to ship it and whoever
wants to buy the fuel.
Shipping companies can deliver to where ever, and probably focusing on
particular destinations. As the markets grow you will need more than
10,000 tons- in few decades there could million tons needed, but my
point was that in the first decade thousands of tons is all you need.
Plus of course beyond the first decade technology will change how
things are done in fairly unpredictable ways. Mass drivers could only
use electricity, nuclear or anti-matter may need more hydrogen for
propellent, beamed power with ion engines, sailing, etc.

gbaikie wrote:
h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:59:59 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hop
David made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/local...796698,00.html

Ed Lu praises the virtues of commercial space.

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

I found little to disagree with there.


I would say that it is likely that there is commerically minable water
at the Lunar poles. NASA needs to remove the uncertainty of whether
there is or is not commerically minable water at the poles. This is a
good task for the govt space agency.


Likewise prospecting should be done to discover what resources are
available on asteroids.

Many asteroids are carbonaceous chondrites thought to range from 10% to
20% water.

Some believe that a good fraction of near earth objects are extinct
comets (objects like 1979 VA which used to be comet Wilson Harrington).
Extinct comets are thought to have an insulating mantle that preserves
an icey interior for a long time.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Hop David wrote:


gbaikie wrote:
h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:59:59 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hop
David made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/local...796698,00.html

Ed Lu praises the virtues of commercial space.

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

I found little to disagree with there.


I would say that it is likely that there is commerically minable water
at the Lunar poles. NASA needs to remove the uncertainty of whether
there is or is not commerically minable water at the poles. This is a
good task for the govt space agency.


Likewise prospecting should be done to discover what resources are
available on asteroids.

But it should arguably done by those who want to mine it, just like it
is by far done one here on Earth. If a mining company is not willing to
send out a probe to check teh existence of something minable they are
very unlikely to be interested in orbital mining.


Many asteroids are carbonaceous chondrites thought to range from 10% to
20% water.

Finding this out would be an interesting scientific problem (asteroid /
cmet geology in general would be). But again, non-prospectors are likely
to be also non-miners, so its going to happen slowly on science budgets.


Some believe that a good fraction of near earth objects are extinct
comets (objects like 1979 VA which used to be comet Wilson Harrington).
Extinct comets are thought to have an insulating mantle that preserves
an icey interior for a long time.

You can probably do a bunch of such missions for $75m apiece.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:59:59 -0700, Hop David
wrote:

Rusty Schweickart notes that asteroids are much more resource rich than
the moon and says they'd make good stepping stones to Mars.


However, journeying to an asteroid is a journey on the same order as a
trip to Mars. So you get back to using the Moon to prove things out.

Both astronauts seem to question Bush's space initiative.

And someone got their facts wrong. The article intimated Bush wants
to use the Shuttle for his initiative. Instead, the plan is to retire
the shuttle and morph the OSP into the CEV.




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In article ,
Michael Gallagher wrote:
However, journeying to an asteroid is a journey on the same order as a
trip to Mars.

Not necessarily. If you insist on using economy orbits, yes, it's
comparable, or at least comparable to a Mars-orbit expedition. But if
you're willing to plan a more propulsion-intensive mission -- fuel is
cheap -- both the duration and the distances can be rather shorter.

So you get back to using the Moon to prove things out.

The Moon is useful for that only in a relatively small way. (At least if
we're talking about *technical* proving-out. It may be more significant
for *organizational* proving-out, i.e. establishing whether NASA can
conduct manned exploration missions efficiently or not.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Michael Gallagher wrote:
However, journeying to an asteroid is a journey on the same order as a
trip to Mars.

Not necessarily. If you insist on using economy orbits, yes, it's
comparable, or at least comparable to a Mars-orbit expedition. But if
you're willing to plan a more propulsion-intensive mission -- fuel is
cheap -- both the duration and the distances can be rather shorter.

There's a fair degree of complexity and non-straightforward
tradeoffs in here. For Mars, it's possible to do in situ
production of propellant, and leave Earth without a
substantial fraction of the propellant you will use for both
legs of the journey. Since Mars has much lower gravity,
the amount is actually a fair bit less than half the total.
But the savings in not having to ship it up some 11+ km/s
from Earth's surface are greater. The punchline is that
it's possible to ship vehicles to Mars which are basically
empty of propellant, and get away with it. Asteroids have
the advantage that insertion and escape speeds, and landing
and takeoff speeds, are very low (meters per second).
However, you still have to get there and back, and that's
going to eat up some of your mass margin. On the other
hand, you end up saving a great deal in other areas.

Most of all, you can use on-orbit assembly from the get go.
And, probably, you can reuse many Earth orbit technologies
with no problem. Whereas the same can't be said for Mars.
For example, if you have long-duration orbital habitats
and a reentry capsule with a decent shelf-life (which you'd
want for a station anyway) then you don't need much more to
do an asteroid mission. Mainly just propulsion and a
Solar flare radiation "bunker".

I'd bet that the weight and especially cost savings of not
having to bring what you don't need more than makes up for
the slight increase in how much delta V needs to come from
Earth shipped propellant.


So you get back to using the Moon to prove things out.

The Moon is useful for that only in a relatively small way. (At least if
we're talking about *technical* proving-out. It may be more significant
for *organizational* proving-out, i.e. establishing whether NASA can
conduct manned exploration missions efficiently or not.)

Agreed. And that's probably more important than anything
else at this point.

Michael Gallagher wrote:

However, journeying to an asteroid is a journey on the same order as a
trip to Mars. So you get back to using the Moon to prove things out.

1998 KY26 passed within 800,000 kilometers in 1998.

It's velocity wrt Earth was about 4.34 km/sec.

It passes near earth each 7 years. (It's 1.40066 year orbit is close to 7/5)

It's spinning too fast to be a rubble pile. It is believed to be water rich.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020919.html

This is just one of many possibilities. And the possibilities are
rapidly expanding as NEAT and LINEAR discover new asteroids.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Hop David wrote:



This is just one of many possibilities. And the possibilities are
rapidly expanding as NEAT and LINEAR discover new asteroids.


Which reminds me...this is a lot of fun- sit back, enter the figures,
and plot out your very own asteroid strike doomsday:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

Pat