@S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC.ARPA:DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA (06/23/85)
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA The Apollo missions revealed one serious obstacle to lunar colonization and exploitation: an almost total lack of volatile elements in lunar rock. There is very little carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen or halogens; even lead is seriously depleted. This is now thought to have been a consequence of the formation of the moon from debris blasted from the earth by a collision with a mars-size body early in the history of the solar system. A volatile elements were disbursed before the cloud could condense into dust particles. At any rate, this is a serious obstacle to any would-be colonist. Hydrogen is necessary for water, food and rocket fuel. Carbon and nitrogen are needed for food and plastics. Fluorine is vital in the chemical processing of lunar materials. Delivering this material to the moon by rocket is expensive, even with advanced orbital transfer vehicles. Delivering it to near lunar space is somewaht cheaper, since you don't have to ferry it down, but still expensive. I propose a very cheap method for shipping bulk supplies to the lunar surface. The idea is to build a large electromagnetic accelerator on the Earth's surface. Payloads consisting of ~100 kg of plastic are launched at the moon. These payloads hit the moon at several km/sec, completely destroying them; however, the target area is covered with a layer of fine soil to absorb the kinetic energy. Periodically the soil is sifted to remove debris, which is then refined to extract needed volatiles. Assuming the accelerator can be built sufficiently cheaply, the main problem is guidance. Travelling up through the atmosphere, the payloads will ablate and be pushed about by winds. Their velocities will have a significant random component. Some sort of active guidance will be needed to make course corrections. I suggest placing in each payload package a small microwave transceiver, some control electronics, a battery, and some low power thruster rockets. The position of the payload is determined by triangulation from large satellites placed in earth orbit, at the L4 and L5 points, and somewhere out of Earth/Moon system plane. Course correction calculations are made at a central computing facility on Earth and relayed back to the payloads. All the elements I mentioned above can be delivered by this mechanism. Hydrogen and carbon are delivered as polyethylene. Fluorine is delivered as Teflon. Nitrogen can be delivered as Nylon. The guidance and control package will be destroyed on impact, but perhaps some useful metal can be extracted. A rough guess of cost can be made by calculating energy cost (~$3/kg at 30% launcher efficiency and $.05/KWHr) and capital costs (at $5 billion dollars spread over five years at 100,000 tonnes/year, about $10/kg). This ignores guidance package costs, which might add another $10/kg (if the package costs ~$1000, probably an overestimate). -------
ems@amdahl.UUCP (ems) (06/27/85)
> From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA > > The Apollo missions revealed one serious obstacle to lunar colonization > and exploitation: an almost total lack of volatile elements in lunar > rock. There is very little carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen or halogens; > even lead is seriously depleted. [ ... ] > > At any rate, this is a serious obstacle to any would-be colonist. Hydrogen > is necessary for water, food and rocket fuel. Carbon and nitrogen are > needed for food and plastics. Fluorine is vital in the chemical processing > of lunar materials. > > Delivering this material to the moon by rocket is expensive, even with > advanced orbital transfer vehicles. [ ... ] Are there not enough protons in the solar wind to provide hydrogen? Or do we lack the technology to combine the protons with electrons efficiently? -- E. Michael Smith ...!{hplabs,ihnp4,amd,nsc}!amdahl!ems This is the obligatory disclaimer of everything. (Including but not limited to: typos, spelling, diction, logic, and nuclear war)
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (06/30/85)
> Are there not enough protons in the solar wind to provide hydrogen?
The solar wind is mostly protons. Unfortunately, it is far, far too
thin to be of any use. The necessary collecting areas are immense.
--
"Maturity means doing what's right, not just what's easy."
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henryjec@iuvax.UUCP (07/04/85)
Seems to me that it would be a shame to waste all that impact
energy and also be made to sift through the lunar soil for the
materials. I would think it would be better to go with a two stage
trip to the moon. First make an accelerator to put the materials in
Earth orbit and then build a collector to gather it up. Every once in
a while you could send a large shipment to the moon saving on delivery
vehicles and probably fuel. Not to mention you could get away with a
much cheap accelerator. Not cheap, but cheaper.
James E. Conley Usenet: {ihnp4,pur-ee,purdue}!iuvax!jec
I.U. Dept. of Linguistics Phone: (812) 335-6458
401 Lindley Hall (812) 332-3514
Bloomington, IN. 47405