Commercial Lunar Settlement Proposal idea

[danhezee]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>And you think a mission can be launched to the Moon, mine and process enogh soil to refine a ton of platinum, and return it to earh for less than 25 million? Do you know what the percentage of platinum in lunar soil is? I don't because it's not in the top 10 lists...Surely you jest!! <br /> Posted by MeteorWayne</DIV><span style="font-size:small" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size:small" class="Apple-style-span">No, I don't think </span><span style="font-weight:bold" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:small" class="Apple-style-span">one</span></span><span style="font-size:small" class="Apple-style-span"> mission can do it. &nbsp;Much in the same way I don't think a mining compay on earth can buy new equipment and send it to a remote location and process one load and expect to recover the cost. &nbsp;But, I do feel that after there is an established moon based with lunar regolith processing capablities for various metals along with launching capablities to LEO or the earth's surface; it can and will be profitable. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>No, I don't think one mission can do it. &nbsp;Much in the same way I don't think a mining compay on earth can buy new equipment and send it to a remote location and process one load and expect to recover the cost. &nbsp;But, I do feel that after there is an established moon based with lunar regolith processing capablities for various metals along with launching capablities to LEO or the earth's surface; it can and will be profitable. &nbsp;&nbsp; <br />Posted by danhezee</DIV><br /><br />You've still got to be kidding, you will have to process more than a thousand tons (or maybe 10,000&nbsp; or 100,000 tons) of lunar material to extract a ton of platinum, assuming perfect efficiency.</p><p>Have you detrimined yet what the percenatge of platinum is in lunar soil? I've tried to, and it's so low that I have not been able to find any estimate at all!</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[frodo1008]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Indeed. Very little research on this thread. There are many, many documents out there examing commercial exploitation of space as well as agreements like the &quot;General Exploration Strategy&quot;. Now we have the &quot;we need a war&quot; argument which frankly I find disgusting that anyone would suggest that we need millions of deaths just to stimulate the economy and get into space. Common people. You can do better than this ! <br /> Posted by mouseonmars</DIV></p><p>I don't think that war was mentioned.&nbsp; What was mentioned, was placing our economy on a manufacturing plane similar to that of WWII.&nbsp; We have no need to be killing anybody (in fact we should be pulling out of the stupidity of useless war).&nbsp; There is easily enough work to be done in this country, but private industry is not in itself going to take the kind of chances to get things going.&nbsp; Share holders are generally very short term in their thinking.</p><p>For one thing we have at least $1 trillion dollars worth of infrastructure maintenance and upgrading that needs to be done even without changing over to greener methods of doing things.&nbsp; If we can somehow come up with some $700 billion for the greedy characters of Wall Street that caused their own demise, then perhaps we might just be able to come up with the same kind of money to keep our country from literally falling to pieces.&nbsp; That might just be a good start for a governmental project to employ Americans in reasonable paying and benefit jobs!</p><p>Then there is the changeover towards going green, beginning with getting off of the oil teat for energy and transportation.&nbsp; This would take additional $trillions, and employ far more people that it would even begin to lay off. How many people would it take to place solar power on almost every commercial building in America?&nbsp; I would say a million with no problem at all.&nbsp; Then changing over from gasoline power to electrical power for automobiles is going to take an entire industry to change!&nbsp; And that IS the type of solution that is needed for the big three to really pull out of the dumps, and at the same time help to clean up the air and give this nation a far less carbon&nbsp; print for global climate change.&nbsp; To me at least such a push by both the government and private industry is in the long run a win-win situation.&nbsp; Besides which we could then tell the oil barrens of the Middle East to "Eat Their Oil", as our own reserves and capabilities would be enough that we would not need any OPEC oil.&nbsp; And THEN watch what happens to the price of oil, and gasoline, for even those that still need it!</p><p>Then there should be plenty left over to give NASA what it really needs to get out to both the moon, and eventually even Mars.&nbsp; After all, it really isn't that much of a bump to go from 0.5% of the federal budget that NASA now gets to even 1.0% of the federal budget.&nbsp; And that would still only be half of what we were funding NASA with in the great days of the 1960's.&nbsp; Both our general economy, and certainly our employment picture was FAR better during that era than today, so perhaps support for placing men on the moon (where none of the money spent on the program was spent anyway, it was all spent right here at home, employing and training the best aerospace workforce the world has ever seen) is a truly worthwhile effort!!. &nbsp;</p><p>If the kind of economics of giving literally $trillions of dollars to the wealthy to have private industry give the US a great economy, and then having that wealth so filter down to the average working man, worked so very well, then right now we should have the greatest economy the world has ever seen!&nbsp; Sorry, about that, but that simply only makes the wealthy even wealthier, and why should they even give a damn about the average Joe under those circumstances anyway, after all they already got theirs?</p><p>Our economy over most of the last eight years has been like the American economy was prior to the collapse of 1929 and the early 1930's.&nbsp; The only thing the people had to cling to was that the government might just be able to do something to bring them out of that Great Depression, and the EXACT same thing is happening today!</p><p>If our new president elect, unlike FDR is not aware of this, we are in for one hell of a tough ride here people!&nbsp; Let us hope and pray that the new man is even half as good as FDR was some 70 years ago.&nbsp; As for all the conservatives that would scream "Socialism", just join the soup lines that most American working people are going to have to be in if the government does not become more proactive.&nbsp; Enjoy your soup!&nbsp;</p><p>Somewhat sorry about the rant here, but I really grow tired of reading the Business section of the paper (yes, I actually pay more attention to that than the internet, where you can have ANY kind of opinion that you want, not facts, just opinion) and seeing more and more good hard working Americans being laid of, literally by the millions, while we tax the wealthy even less.&nbsp; This great country that I love is going down the dumps people, so I really don't care how much money the government has to beg, borrow, of even steal, it is NOW time for action, or we are going to see a bloody revolution eventually, and that will not even do the wealthy any good whatever!</p><p>Fortunately, Barack Obama does seem to know that the employment picture IS the key to the economy, and hopefully congress will go along with that.&nbsp; For instance, if the big three auto makers are allowed to just go into bankruptcy, millions of more workers are going to be laid off (not just the big three themselves, but literally millions of suppliers as well), and the present recession (which is far closer to a depression that many realize) is going ot really get going!&nbsp; If it takes the government to literally nationalize that industry, then so be it.&nbsp; Nationalize it, then start to make the kinds of cars that are really needed by the people of this nation, and even the world.&nbsp; Our workers are the best, and can do it! </p><p>I would really like to see a truly great holiday, but does anywone here really expect that is going to happen? </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[kelvinzero]

<p>The message-writing idea is currently about my favorite for the nearish term.</p><p>It alone could not pay for the development of the technology to get there, but once we are landing things on the moon again and do have a nonimaginary $/kg cost, I can see a quite small robot easily making its money back and generating a lot of positive public interest.</p><p>It wouldnt be frivilous either since as we all know this money really goes into scientists and engineers.</p>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>&nbsp;Actually, I'd have to disagree there.&nbsp; The main commercial application for "early" human spaceflight wouldn't be tourism.&nbsp; That's just a high-profile exploitation of space.&nbsp; The first true, commercial, application of spaceflight (besides satelite and earth sciences, of course) would be drug manufacture. </DIV></p><p>Hmm.&nbsp; Well, the first actual commercial ventures have been tourism related.&nbsp;&nbsp; It seems like the rich are in fact willing to pay for a ride into space.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>I would think that the only way that drug companies would be interested in space is if there is some process associated with weightlessness that helps them produce drugs.&nbsp; Evidently there isn't any profit in such a thing or someone would already be doing it on the ISS.</p><p>IMO tourism is likely to be the driving force of most of the early commercial ventures.&nbsp; Rides into space seem to already be capable of generating a profit provided that the costs can be reduced.&nbsp;</p><p>I do think there may be an eventual manufacturing interest in space, but at the moment, the cost of getting into space, and the hassle of doing work there seems to make this an unlikely "first step" in commercializing space IMO.&nbsp; That isn't to say it won't happen, it's just that I doubt it's going to be manufacturing that generates the bulk of the early commercial revenue from space exploration. </p><p>There are already commercial companies being funded who's sole intent it to create and provide a "space tourism" industry.&nbsp; IMO that's likely to the be driving force of commercial space exploration for quite some time.&nbsp; I predict that someone will work out a deal with NASA to let folks "visit" and "stay" on the ISS once the commercial flights into space start to happen with regularity. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[vulture4]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'> The first true, commercial, application of spaceflight (besides satelite and earth sciences, of course) would be drug manufacture. (Along with other high-value manufacturing) A consortium of drug companies could easily, with their normal research budgets, fund the operation of the ISS. </DIV></p><p>Of course this is zero-G work rather than lunar, but this was an idea that I am pretty well acquainted with. Very early in the Shuttle program NASA looked for materials that were valuable enough to be potential candidates for processing in space, and naturally drugs came up. A cooperative effort was started, with Johnson and Johnson providing the chemicals and presumably the market, and McDonnel Douglas producing the hardware. The idea was that a protein to be used as a drug and produced in cultured cells could be searated from other biological materials by what was called the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System, or CFES.</p><p>There was one problem with the plan; it assumed that the process could not be performed on earth. There was no evidence that this was the case. A friend of mine was working with the program. I made an educated guess that the drug was erythropoetin, and showed him that there were existing methods that could already perform the separation on earth, including a form of column chromatography called FPLC. However because everyone involved _wanted_ the project to succeed, and prove that space materials processing was practical, no one looked at it realistically. I later saw a presentation by one of the engineers who worked on the system. He mentioned that they did run it on the ground. After thepresentation I asked him whether the purity of the product in ground testing approached that achieved in space. I was shocked when he said the purity on the ground was actually _higher_ than in space. The production rate was much lower, but of course dozens of systems on the ground would still cost less than one in space.&nbsp;</p><p>More recently I gave a talk for a pharmaceutical research group. Naturally I talked about protein crytallization and X-ray diffraction to determine protein structures. They were polite, but afterwards the research director told me they no longer used x-ray diffraction! Apparently computer simulation of the protein synthesis process had become so accurate that they could go directly from an amino acid sequence to the secondary and tertiary protein structure.</p><p>We should continue to investigate every avenue forpractical applications for spaceflight. But we should be realistic. There is no majical product with infinite value that can only be made in space; it has to actually be _cheaper_ to do in space. The practicality of materials processing, like every potential application for human spaceflight, is highly sensitive to cost.&nbsp; </p>

 

[frodo1008]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Of course this is zero-G work rather than lunar, but this was an idea that I am pretty well acquainted with. Very early in the Shuttle program NASA looked for materials that were valuable enough to be potential candidates for processing in space, and naturally drugs came up. A cooperative effort was started, with Johnson and Johnson providing the chemicals and presumably the market, and McDonnel Douglas producing the hardware. The idea was that a protein to be used as a drug and produced in cultured cells could be searated from other biological materials by what was called the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System, or CFES.There was one problem with the plan; it assumed that the process could not be performed on earth. There was no evidence that this was the case. A friend of mine was working with the program. I made an educated guess that the drug was erythropoetin, and showed him that there were existing methods that could already perform the separation on earth, including a form of column chromatography called FPLC. However because everyone involved _wanted_ the project to succeed, and prove that space materials processing was practical, no one looked at it realistically. I later saw a presentation by one of the engineers who worked on the system. He mentioned that they did run it on the ground. After thepresentation I asked him whether the purity of the product in ground testing approached that achieved in space. I was shocked when he said the purity on the ground was actually _higher_ than in space. The production rate was much lower, but of course dozens of systems on the ground would still cost less than one in space.&nbsp;More recently I gave a talk for a pharmaceutical research group. Naturally I talked about protein crytallization and X-ray diffraction to determine protein structures. They were polite, but afterwards the research director told me they no longer used x-ray diffraction! Apparently computer simulation of the protein synthesis process had become so accurate that they could go directly from an amino acid sequence to the secondary and tertiary protein structure.We should continue to investigate every avenue forpractical applications for spaceflight. But we should be realistic. There is no majical product with infinite value that can only be made in space; it has to actually be _cheaper_ to do in space. The practicality of materials processing, like every potential application for human spaceflight, is highly sensitive to cost.&nbsp; <br /> Posted by vulture4</DIV></p><p>Mining the materials of the moon, and then processing them to generate very large arrays for the generation of electrical power to be then sold on the Earth by microwaving the electricity so generated (and tests have shown that this could be at least 90% efficient in generating and bringing the actual power down to receiving antennas on the Earth) is a very real possibility for the reasonably near future. &nbsp;</p><p>The biggest show stopper in this particular idea is the very high cost of a pound to LEO for those items to both mine the moon, and those that such mining would not be able to provide.&nbsp; I personally think that the breakthrough point for this is somewhere around $1,000 per pound to LEO.&nbsp; Rright now we are about at $5,000 per pound, thanks to the EELV program.</p><p>Now, IF (and it is admittedly a big if) spacex can actually get their larger rockets of the Falcon 9 Heavy series to be actually priced at what Elon Musk has been quoting for some time now, not only will spacex quite probably take back almost all the commercial satellite business for the US, but they just might be able to reach that magic number!&nbsp; Thus bringing a shuttle type of LEO-to-moon type of vehicle into actuality, bringing down the cost of permanent moon bases.&nbsp; After that it is a relatively small step to set up both moon mining and processing of those so useful materials into the kind of moon-to-Earth infrastructure to bring such relatively cheap and unlimited power available to the Earth at very low cost to the Earth from an environmental and economic standpoint! </p><p>By the way, this is just part of the main vision, not of myself, but of G. K. O'Neill, who to me was the greatest space visionary of all time! </p>