Moon City + cost/# ?

What is the cost, using the projected Ares V system,
to deliver 1# (or kilogram) to the moons surface?
I appreciate this is a difficult answer to quantify.

To start, let's ignore developement amortization and
go with operational costs.

For anyone who is ambitious, perhaps a calculation
of the cost of taking 1# from the moon back to Earth
might be undertaken?

I think most of you have heard of the potential of He3
as a fusion energy source, (more complicated tech),
that may make lunar mining operations economical.
Regards
Ken S. Tucker

Ken S. Tucker wrote:

I think most of you have heard of the potential of He3
as a fusion energy source, (more complicated tech),
that may make lunar mining operations economical.


Isn't total energy output from Helium 3 fusion supposed to be pretty
anemic versus the difficulty of extracting it from the lunar regolith
and bringing it back to Earth?
BTW, "60 Minutes" ran a big story on cold fusion tonight:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n
.....which was more than a little disturbing to me.
Numerous experiments are showing a lot more thermal energy coming out of
the heavy water/palladium/electrical reaction than is going into it, up
to 20-30x.
But every experiment is showing a different ratio of input-output
thermal energy.
If this is actually occurring, then it means there is some variable in
the experiment's parameters that's not being fully understood.
On the upside this means that if that variable could be understood and
used to increase the efficiency of the reaction, we now could have an
amazing new power source.
If, on the other hand, if we are just blundering around and getting only
a tiny fraction of the total thermal energy that the reaction is capable
of creating... and if that variable was fully understood and could be
optimized...then what you might have here is a way of making a
low-cost/low-tech H-bomb.
Which is about the last thing the world needs.

Pat

On Apr 20, 6:55 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Ken S. Tucker wrote:

I think most of you have heard of the potential of He3
as a fusion energy source, (more complicated tech),
that may make lunar mining operations economical.

Isn't total energy output from Helium 3 fusion supposed to be pretty
anemic versus the difficulty of extracting it from the lunar regolith
and bringing it back to Earth?

I ran the numbers once. 1 ton of coal has more than 5 times the energy
of the He3 assuming it cost *no* energy to extract it. At 0.01ppm its
going to cost a lot of energy to get it out, even with a
thermodynamically perfect extraction process.Really He3 for energy is
silly when burning D-D is about as hard as D-He3 or that Li+n-T-He3
would work so much better. Lets not forget we don't have D-T fusion
yet which at least an order of magnitude easier to do.

BTW, "60 Minutes" ran a big story on cold fusion tonight:http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n
....which was more than a little disturbing to me.

Are they still claiming D+D- He4 which violates the standard model as
we know it. You can have D+D-He4+2gamma IIRC but that is suppressed
by the fine structure constant squared (~10000).

Greg

delt0r wrote:
Are they still claiming D+D- He4 which violates the standard model as
we know it. You can have D+D-He4+2gamma IIRC but that is suppressed
by the fine structure constant squared (~10000).


They don't know exactly _what's_ going on inside the palladium, but it
does seem to be producing a lot more thermal energy than is being put
into the system.
The Wall Street Journal has a short article about it now:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalca...energy-debate/

Pat