China confirms plans for first Moon visit later this year; First arover, next a taikonaut, then a colony

"China has confirmed it is on track to land a rover on the Moon later this year
to scoot across the surface analyzing dust and rock samples.

"Chang'e-3 has officially entered its launch stage, following its research and
manufacture period," reports the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.

The Chang'e-3 probe, first revealed last year, is a 100kg, six-wheeled rover that
will spend three months traversing the lunar landscape under human control. The
spacecraft will use the Moon's gravity to slow down, orbit the satellite, and
then soft-land using rocket propulsion.

This will be the first time the Chinese have landed a spacecraft on a
non-terrestrial surface and the Chang'e-3 will be a crucial test of both Chinese
aeronautics and rocketry control systems. The rover will pave the way for a
future manned mission to the Moon, and a possible space colony on the surface."

See:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08...r_th is_year/

On Sunday, September 1, 2013 5:33:07 PM UTC-7, wrote:
"China has confirmed it is on track to land a rover on the Moon later this year

to scoot across the surface analyzing dust and rock samples.



"Chang'e-3 has officially entered its launch stage, following its research and

manufacture period," reports the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.



The Chang'e-3 probe, first revealed last year, is a 100kg, six-wheeled rover that

will spend three months traversing the lunar landscape under human control. The

spacecraft will use the Moon's gravity to slow down, orbit the satellite, and

then soft-land using rocket propulsion.



This will be the first time the Chinese have landed a spacecraft on a

non-terrestrial surface and the Chang'e-3 will be a crucial test of both Chinese

aeronautics and rocketry control systems. The rover will pave the way for a

future manned mission to the Moon, and a possible space colony on the surface."



See:



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08...r_th is_year/

At least the Chang'e-3 rover will have an actual fly-by-rocket lander that's downrange and soft landing trustworthy, and perhaps it'll have sufficient tread surface area to prevent it from sinking into that crystal dry dust which really shouldn't offer all that much surface tension for accommodating a 17 kg load.

It could require nearly a square meter of surface tread area, unless it's on a sufficiently steep bedrock slope where the highly reflective inert dust is only as thin and as little ionized as the nicely clumping soil that our Apollo missions always encountered. There instrument cooling by day is going to be a demanding necessity, at least for their CCD imagers that tend to get extra noisy when hot.

At least we'll finally learn a whole lot more about the raw surface of our moon than the last 4+ decades have had to offer, unless China intends to keep all of their science data to themselves (and what government on Earth hasn't done that?)

On Sunday, September 1, 2013 8:33:07 PM UTC-4, wrote:
"China has confirmed it is on track to land a rover on the Moon later this year

to scoot across the surface analyzing dust and rock samples.



"Chang'e-3 has officially entered its launch stage, following its research and

manufacture period," reports the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.



The Chang'e-3 probe, first revealed last year, is a 100kg, six-wheeled rover that

will spend three months traversing the lunar landscape under human control. The

spacecraft will use the Moon's gravity to slow down, orbit the satellite, and

then soft-land using rocket propulsion.



This will be the first time the Chinese have landed a spacecraft on a

non-terrestrial surface and the Chang'e-3 will be a crucial test of both Chinese

aeronautics and rocketry control systems. The rover will pave the way for a

future manned mission to the Moon, and a possible space colony on the surface."



See:



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08...r_th is_year/

A round trip to the moon requires a delta vee of 17 km/sec.

9.2 km/sec - take off to orbit
2.6 km/sec - orbit to trans-lunar injection
2.5 km/sec - trans-lunar to lunar surface
2.5 km/sec - lunar surface to trans-Earth
0.2 km/sec - course correction

A four stage fully reusable system requires 4 km/sec per stage on average.

Stage 1: Hydrogen/Oxygen 4.2 km/sec Ve, 3.8 km/sec dV
Stage 2: Hydrogen/Oxygen 4.5 km/sec Ve, 4.0 km/sec dV
Stage 3: Hydrogen & Lithium / Oxygen 4.8 km/sec Ve, 4.1 km/sec dV
Stage 4: Hydrogen & Lithium / Oxygen 4.8 km/sec Ve, 5.1 km/sec dV

We use nanoparticles of lithium suspended in super-cooled hydrogen to add 14% to the energy of the exhaust and boost very slightly the exhaust speed, thus reducing overall vehicle weight.

Ve dV u s p
Stage 1 4.2 3.8 0.5954 0.15 0.2546
Stage 2 4.5 4.0 0.5889 0.12 0.2911
Stage 3 4.8 4.1 0.5744 0.08 0.3456
Stage 4 4.8 5.1 0.6544 0.06 0.2856

For a 160 kg payload - which is one astronaut in a long duration biosuit equipped with MEMS based life support and fuel cell technology - and consumables for 12 days. All stages are fully reusable and we have a 21.87 tonne take off weight.

Stage Propellant Struct Oxygen Hydrog Lithium
Stage 1 21,866.1 13,018.2 3,279.9 10,848.5 2,169.7 0.0
Stage 2 5,567.9 3,278.9 668.2 2,732.4 2,169.7 0.0
Stage 3 1,620.9 931.0 129.7 725.3 69.7 136.0
Stage 4 560.2 366.6 33.6 285.6 27.5 53.6

A 200 kW electrolyzer produces sufficient hydrogen and oxygen to relaunch one of these every month from DI water. At $0.21 per kWh this costs $30,681 per launch.

Inert mass is 4,111.3 kg of structure which at $3,000 per kg translates to a cost of $12.34 million per vehicle. With a useful life of 20 years and 240 flight cycles this is $51,392 per launch at zero cost of capital.

The lithium costs $18,007 per flight.

A $650 million program to build 40 of these devices, with another $350 million to fly 40 people to the moon and back every month using them over the next 20 years, would certainly outclass anything done by the West.

Furthermore, following in the footsteps of the Russians, the Chinese by offering a lunar flight to private buyers at $10 million per trip, would pay for the entire program with only 100 sales. Only 1.05% of the total.

A one way flight - with an empty return - totally automated drone rocket - would place 1/3 tonne - 350 kg - of supplies on the lunar surface.

This is sufficient to maintain a person on the moon for six months. With solar power supplied on the moon, for a year. With solar power and water supplied on the moon, for three years.

So, a self sufficient base could easily be established with this launch rate, even with this sub-scale system. The development of MEMS and nano-tech is beneficial along these lines.

A solar pumped laser operating on the lunar surface creating a plume of ions from lunar regolith, which is selectively assembled using 3D print technology, can do a lot with very little payload.

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 9:40:46 PM UTC-7, wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08...r_th is_year/



A round trip to the moon requires a delta vee of 17 km/sec.



9.2 km/sec - take off to orbit

2.6 km/sec - orbit to trans-lunar injection

2.5 km/sec - trans-lunar to lunar surface

2.5 km/sec - lunar surface to trans-Earth

0.2 km/sec - course correction



A four stage fully reusable system requires 4 km/sec per stage on average.



Stage 1: Hydrogen/Oxygen 4.2 km/sec Ve, 3.8 km/sec dV

Stage 2: Hydrogen/Oxygen 4.5 km/sec Ve, 4.0 km/sec dV

Stage 3: Hydrogen & Lithium / Oxygen 4.8 km/sec Ve, 4.1 km/sec dV

Stage 4: Hydrogen & Lithium / Oxygen 4.8 km/sec Ve, 5.1 km/sec dV



We use nanoparticles of lithium suspended in super-cooled hydrogen to add 14% to the energy of the exhaust and boost very slightly the exhaust speed, thus reducing overall vehicle weight.



Ve dV u s p

Stage 1 4.2 3.8 0.5954 0.15 0.2546

Stage 2 4.5 4.0 0.5889 0.12 0.2911

Stage 3 4.8 4.1 0.5744 0.08 0.3456

Stage 4 4.8 5.1 0.6544 0.06 0.2856



For a 160 kg payload - which is one astronaut in a long duration biosuit equipped with MEMS based life support and fuel cell technology - and consumables for 12 days. All stages are fully reusable and we have a 21.87 tonne take off weight.



Stage Propellant Struct Oxygen Hydrog Lithium

Stage 1 21,866.1 13,018.2 3,279.9 10,848.5 2,169.7 0.0

Stage 2 5,567.9 3,278.9 668.2 2,732.4 2,169.7 0.0

Stage 3 1,620.9 931.0 129.7 725.3 69.7 136.0

Stage 4 560.2 366.6 33.6 285.6 27.5 53.6



A 200 kW electrolyzer produces sufficient hydrogen and oxygen to relaunch one of these every month from DI water. At $0.21 per kWh this costs $30,681 per launch.



Inert mass is 4,111.3 kg of structure which at $3,000 per kg translates to a cost of $12.34 million per vehicle. With a useful life of 20 years and 240 flight cycles this is $51,392 per launch at zero cost of capital.



The lithium costs $18,007 per flight.



A $650 million program to build 40 of these devices, with another $350 million to fly 40 people to the moon and back every month using them over the next 20 years, would certainly outclass anything done by the West.



Furthermore, following in the footsteps of the Russians, the Chinese by offering a lunar flight to private buyers at $10 million per trip, would pay for the entire program with only 100 sales. Only 1.05% of the total.



A one way flight - with an empty return - totally automated drone rocket - would place 1/3 tonne - 350 kg - of supplies on the lunar surface.



This is sufficient to maintain a person on the moon for six months. With solar power supplied on the moon, for a year. With solar power and water supplied on the moon, for three years.



So, a self sufficient base could easily be established with this launch rate, even with this sub-scale system. The development of MEMS and nano-tech is beneficial along these lines.



A solar pumped laser operating on the lunar surface creating a plume of ions from lunar regolith, which is selectively assembled using 3D print technology, can do a lot with very little payload.


That's one of your best-ever fly-by-rocket reports.

How about a Mook fly-by-rocket lander with fuel and payload to spare, that can can deliver TBM modules to the lunar surface?

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 11:46:58 AM UTC-4, Brad Guth wrote:



That's one of your best-ever fly-by-rocket reports.



How about a Mook fly-by-rocket lander with fuel and payload to spare, that can can deliver TBM modules to the lunar surface?

Thanks.

You may recall I have designed a 620 tonne power satellite that produces 11..2 billion watts when exposed to sunlight. This was to be launched by a highly reusable launcher made from External Tank hardware.

This 5.25 km diameter thin film concentrating mirror pumps multiple thin disk lasers in a 125 meter diameter array that beams laser energy to Earth using conjugate optics. A 500 kg version launched to operate at L1 and L2 above the Lunar Surface produces 12 MW each and beams infrared energy using a 4 meter diameter conjugate objective and a 165 meter diameter primary.

In this way a 4 meter diameter receiver massing only 100 kg operating anywhere on the lunar surface may receive up to 12 MW of energy.

India's Chandrayaan moon probe in 2008 found evidence of water at the lunar poles. Their second probe slated for 2015 will build on these earlier findings.

A 12 MW laser beam may process a tonne of lunar regolith into ionized plasma every 8 minutes and 20 seconds. 125,000 tonnes of rock is processed in this way each year - for each receiver/satellite pair of this size.

There are a lot more volatiles on the moon than Apollo found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2s9AKU4NaU

About 2,500 tonnes of this plasma may be assembled into desired objects using 3D printing technology.

A 620 tonne satellite launched from the Moon anywhere in cislunar space at a speed of 2.4 km/sec - using a 4.5 km/sec exhaust speed - hydrogen oxygen rocket - needs a propellant fraction of 41.35% - with an 8% structure fraction - this leaves 50.65% payload fraction.

So, a 620 tonne satellite implies a 1,223.7 tonne take off weight at the moon. This increases power levels from 12 MW to 11.5 GW!! So, a year's operation of very modest technology provides the means to produce two of these larger satellites.

This of course increases the rate at which we process things by a factor of 1,000!! To 125 million tonnes of regolith per year yielding 2.5 million tonnes of useful products.

This translates into 360 satellites in a year - which when transferred to GEO - along with 360,000 receivers each 12 MW - sent to Earth - solves the world's energy problems.

Of course with this sort of capability, all manner of satellites launched from the moon, for customers on Earth will take place. Allowing the moon to capture the world's launch market and satellite market.

The earth-based launcher described previously is capable of putting up 10 astronauts into LEO if the lunar stages are removed.

A 620 tonne payload launched from the Lunar Surface to LEO - using aerobraking in the final step - is capable of transferring 145.6 tonnes back from LEO to the lunar surface using 424.8 tonnes of propellant in a vehicle that masses 49.6 tonnes empty.

This is enough to carry 910 persons back to the moon in their own biosuits. Ninety one launches of the terrestrial rocket. With luxury accommodation on the transfer vehicle this is reduced to a passenger count of 200 per transfer requiring twenty launches of the terrestrial rocket. The luxury accommodation could also double as a homestead for each arriving astronaut - with the transfer time being used for training.

140 transfer flights per year is possible - 28,000 people per year to 127,400 people per year may be flown to the moon in this way.

2,800 flights to 12,740 flights of the 'short stack' launcher would clearly indicate the need to build larger launchers.

A vehicle 189x the mass of the vehicle described could be built on the moon and flown to Earth with the same launcher that deployed the power satellites. The payload would rise from 1.62 tonnes on LEO to 306.18 tonnes on LEO with no change in underlying technology.

Sufficient capacity on the Earth side to supply TWO lunar orbiters per flight. So, only 70 launches from Earth are needed to support 140 transfer flights to the Moon each year - limiting ourselves to two 11.5 GW power sats one at L1 and another at L2.

So, you can see that with the right investment in the right technologies, largely following the game plan of visionaries like Criswell at NASA who proposed 'demandite' in the 1970s, we could quickly establish the moon as its own independent state.

With Mark Roth's innovations in suspended animation, the smaller launcher could even be used to send folks to Mars and back. Orbiting a small power satellite network provides the means to process water on Mars into rocket propellant and a breathable atmosphere, as well as process CO2 into a wide range of plastics and organics.

With powerful laser beams we also have the capacity to move beyond chemical rockets with laser thermal rockets, laser ablation rockets, and photonic thrusters. The last of these requires no propellants and is suitable for that reason for interstellar missions as well as interplanetary missions.

Redesigning the 11.5 GW power satellite to operate at 1/40th AU from Sol, increases its power output to 220 GW - using its concentrator now as a solar shield and radiator - the revised power satellite beams laser energy to conventional power satellites increasing their output as well.

This provides the means to put a spaceship in every garage using photonic thrusters of very high efficiency. Advanced MEMS technology make biosuits commonplace and with advanced medical MEMS, suspended animation is also commonplace. This way folks can leave Earth en-masse and take up residency on the moon, mars, asteroids, anywhere.

With self-replicating machine cells capable of self-assembly into any variety of forms, folks arriving at any location are well equipped to wait until the homestead of their dreams is completed and outfitted - made from found materials and available light.

The transition from first flight to diaspora is about four years - with a well run program.

hope the quality of chinese moon mission is better than the quality of most chines goods or lots of people will die..........

chinese lack quality control but boy are things cheap

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 10:23:22 PM UTC-4, bob haller wrote:
hope the quality of chinese moon mission is better than the quality of most chines goods or lots of people will die..........



chinese lack quality control but boy are things cheap

That was true once, in the 20th century, but not in the 21st.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/china.htm

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 2:05:22 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 10:23:22 PM UTC-4, bob haller wrote:

hope the quality of chinese moon mission is better than the quality of most chines goods or lots of people will die..........







chinese lack quality control but boy are things cheap



That was true once, in the 20th century, but not in the 21st.



http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/china.htm

The Chinese astronauts and their passengers will run substantially less risk and pay substantially less money than American astronauts ran and American taxpayers paid for lunar missions in the 1960s and 70s.

Consider an ancient American lunar orbiter in the mid 20th century and a modern Indian lunar orbiter in the early 21st century.

1966 - area mapped: 5.0 million sq km, b&w
time to flight: 4 years
cost per orbiter: $305 million.

2008 - area mapped: 37.9 million sq km, multi-spectral
time to flight: 1.5 years
cost per orbiter: $90 million. (plus impact probe)


The United States began development of the U2 and Corona satellite sensors in the mid 1950s. These later became the basis for cameras used in NASA's Lunar Orbiter program which flew five missions to the moon from 1966 through 1967.


http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...977016195..pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lu...28large%29.jpg



Lunar Orbiter 1
Launched August 10, 1966
Imaged Moon: August 18 to 29, 1966
Impact with Moon: October 29, 1966
Apollo landing site survey mission

Lunar Orbiter 2
Launched November 6, 1966
Imaged Moon: November 18 to 25, 1966
Impact with Moon: October 11, 1967
Apollo landing site survey mission

Lunar Orbiter 3
Launched February 5, 1967
Imaged Moon: February 15 to 23, 1967
Impact with Moon: October 9, 1967
Apollo landing site survey mission

Lunar Orbiter 4
Launched May 4, 1967
Imaged Moon: May 11 to 26, 1967
Impact with Moon: Approximately October 31, 1967
Lunar mapping mission

Lunar Orbiter 5
Launched August 1, 1967
Imaged Moon: August 6 to 18, 1967
Impact with Moon: January 31, 1968
Lunar mapping and hi-res survey mission

March 1963 was the formal start of the program and the first launch was August 1969. Lunar Orbiter 1 operated for 10 days and took 42 high resolution pictures and 187 medium resolution pictures of the moon covering 5 million sq km of the moon's 37.9 million sq km.

Total program cost was estimated to be $200 million 1963 dollars. This would be worth $1,526.72 million today. About $305 million per orbiter. It took four years from project start to first flight, making use of existing equipment already flying aboard UR and Corona satellites operated by the NRO.

The Indian Space Research Organization built and launched the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2008 for 3.8 billion rupees (USD$90 million) in a space of 18 months. The spacecraft operated in lunar orbit for 312 days and mapped all the lunar surface at higher resolution than the Lunar Orbiter producing a wider range of scientific data than either Orbiter and even many of the Apollo orbiter missions.

While many sensors were new, some were already existing and researchers were looking for a vehicle to carry them to the lunar surface. All took advantage of advanced technology not available in the 1970s, but existing because of the work done in the 1970s.

Indian Payload included;

TMC or the Terrain Mapping Camera is a CCD camera with 5 m resolution and a 40 km swath in the panchromatic band and was used to produce a high-resolution map of the Moon. The aim of this instrument was to completely map the topography of the Moon. The camera works in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum and captures black and white stereo images. When used in conjunction with data from Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI), it can help in better understanding of the lunar gravitational field as well. TMC was built by the ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC) at Ahmedabad. The TMC was successfully tested on 29 October 2008 through a set of commands issued from ISTRAC.

HySI or Hyper Spectral Imager performed mineralogical mapping in the 400–900 nm band with a spectral resolution of 15 nm and a spatial resolution of 80 m.

LLRI or Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument determines the height of the surface topography by sending pulses of infrared laser light towards the lunar surface and detecting the reflected portion of that light. It operated continuously and collected 10 measurements per second on both the day and night sides of the Moon. LLRI was developed by Laboratory for Electro Optics Systems of ISRO, Bangalore.

HEX is a High Energy aj/gamma x-ray spectrometer for 30 – 200 keV measurements with ground resolution of 40 km, the HEX measured U, Th, 210Pb, 222Rn degassing, and other radioactive elements.

MIP or the Moon Impact Probe developed by the ISRO, is an impact probe which consisted of a C-band Radar altimeter for measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the lunar surface and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of the lunar atmosphere. It was ejected at 20:00 hours IST on 14 November 2008. The Moon Impact Probe successfully crash landed at the lunar south pole at 20:31 hours IST on 14 November 2008. It carried with it a picture of the Indian flag. India is now the fourth nation to place a flag on the Moon after the Soviet Union, United States and Japan.

Foreign Payloads included;

C1XS or X-ray fluorescence spectrometer covering 1- 10 keV, mapped the abundance of Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe at the surface with a ground resolution of 25 km, and monitored solar flux.[30] This payload results from collaboration between Rutherford Appleton laboratory, U.K, ESA and ISRO. It was activated on 23 November 2008.

SARA, The Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser from the ESA mapped mineral composition using low energy neutral atoms emitted from the surface.

M3, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper from Brown University and JPL (funded by NASA) is an imaging spectrometer designed to map the surface mineral composition. It was activated on 17 December 2008.

SIR-2, A near infrared spectrometer from ESA, built at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Polish Academy of Science and University of Bergen, also mapped the mineral composition using an infrared grating spectrometer. The instrument is similar to that of the Smart-1 SIR.[35][36] It was activated on 19 November 2008 and scientific observations were successfully started on 20 November 2008.

Mini-SAR, designed, built and tested for NASA by a large team that includes the Naval Air Warfare Center, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. Mini-SAR is the active Synthetic Aperture Radar system to search for lunar polar ice. The instrument transmitted right polarised radiation with a frequency of 2.5 GHz and monitored scattered left and right polarised radiation. The Fresnel reflectivity and the circular polarisation ratio (CPR) are the key parameters deduced from these measurements. Ice shows the Coherent Backscatter Opposition Effect which results in an enhancement of reflections and CPR, so that water content of the Moon's polar regions can be estimated.

RADOM-7, Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences maps the radiation environment around the Moon. It was successfully tested on 16 November 2008.

Boltzmann Constant:
1.3806488e-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1

Kinetic Energy: E=1/2 * M * V^2
=3/2 * k * T

To produce a plasma that vaporizes literally anything we must attain a temperature of about 4,500K. That's about 56 kJ/mole. For lunar regolith which has an atomic weight of about 142.3 that means 393.5 MJ/metric ton. Add in other loss mechanisms associated with laser heating and the fact that not all the material is useful, and you end up with 40 kg/metric ton processed and 9.8 GJ/tonne retrieved.

About 4% of the material found on the lunar surface is useful to human industry. So, we get 40 kg/metric ton of useful stuff.

Now, you can use the 96% you don't retrieve to pre-heat the fresh rock and reduce the amount of laser energy needed. This reduces energy use substantially. Surveying a region for desired materials (like volatiles) also reduces energy use.

A 12 MW laser system operating continuously on the lunar surface will produce between 2,500 tonnes and 25,000 tonnes of useful materials per year.

The controlled deposition of super-cooled plasmas in an additive assembly process using chemical plasma deposition allows the production of any molecule and its assembly into any structure - including biological structures, like food, or a mixture of living and electronic systems in an improved bionic device (a living skin advanced biosuit for example) - or artificial cells that circulate in your body to reverse aging, destroy disease, repair radiation damage, provide nutrients, and so forth.

http://semimd.com/blog/tag/cvd/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6WzyUgbT5A

These technologies have obvious applications to the needs of people here on Earth. So, any nation or group of nations that builds a city on the moon will develop technologies that allow them to build things on Earth using off world resources of energy and material without adversely affecting the biosphere.

China is already building cities for millions more people than it currently needs. Unlike America who is bull dozing homes of people thrown out of them who couldn't pay for them. Sort of flip sides of the same coin - one that is resolved with advanced technologies and abundant energy and materials from space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqAzvX6UrI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQijucxgQA




PAPER DISCUSSING USE OF LUNAR MATERIALS TO BUILD PRODUCTS ON THE MOON

Demandite, lunar materials and space industrialization
No Digital Version Available: Go to Tips on Ordering
Author and Affiliation:
Criswell, D. R. (Lunar Science Institute; Houston, Tex., United States)
Abstract: Terrestrial industry consumes a wide range of elements in producing the outputs which support and make industrial societies possible. 'Demandite' is a conceptual or synthetic molecule which is composed of the weight fractions of the major elements consumed by industry. Demandite needed for mature industrial activities in space will differ from the terrestrial composition because solar energy must replace hydrocarbon-energy, lunar and asteroidal bulk compositions are different from mineral deposits on the earth, and the major bulk processing in space will be the creation of radiation shielding for human habitats to provide real estate in space complete with water, atmosphere and life-stock elements. Demandite cost may be dominated by earth to deep space transport cost of minor elemental constituents depleted in the lunar soils unless careful attention is given to substitution of materials, searches of the moon (polar regions) and asteroids for the depleted elements, and continuing lowering of earth to deep space transport costs.
Publication Date: Jan 01, 1977
Document ID:
19780044024
(Acquired Jun 04, 2003)
Accession Number: 78A27933
Subject Category: ASTRONAUTICS (GENERAL)
Document Type: Conference Proceedings
Publication Information: (See A78-27926 10-12)
Publisher Information: United States
Meeting Information: Conference on Space manufacturing facilities II - Space colonies; Princeton, NJ; May 9-12, 1977; 3rd
Contract/Grant/Task Num: NSR-09-051-001
Financial Sponsor: NASA; United States
Organization Source: Lunar Science Inst.; Houston, TX, United States
Description: 7p; In English
Distribution Limits: Unclassified; Publicly available; Unlimited
Rights: Copyright
NASA Terms: ASTEROIDS; COST ANALYSIS; EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESOURCES; LAGRANGIAN EQUILIBRIUM POINTS; SATELLITE SOLAR POWER STATIONS; SPACE COMMERCIALIZATION; SPACE MANUFACTURING; SPACE TRANSPORTATION; TABLES (DATA); TRANSPORTATION ENERGY
Imprint And Other Notes: In: Space manufacturing facilities II - Space colonies; Proceedings of the Third Conference, Princeton, N.J., May 9-12, 1977.. (A78-27926 10-12) New York, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., 1977, p. 131-136; Discussion, p. 136, 137.
Availability Source: Other Sources

In article ,
says...

hope the quality of chinese moon mission is better than the
quality of most chines goods or lots of people will die..........

It's an *unmanned* mission you ignorant git.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer