Thoughts on a would be Moon base

 

Update, 2/9/26:

  Now he's talking.  That is, IF he's talking about doing this.   It is reported that SpaceX is moving towards establishing a moonbase, in order to support his Mars ambitions.

  The idea is even more credible given that Musk has found a way to make money in space.  While he is making money in space, he can mine the moon for resources, like oxygen.  All of this infrastructure has to be paid for, and an idea like the one Musk has for supporting AI datacenters in space; will go a long way in funding his Mars ambitions.

  The tweet is is included in the update, and begins directly below this scrollbox.

Elon Musk just announced a major strategic pivot for @SpaceX: the company is officially shifting its primary focus to building a "self-growing city" on the Moon.

The logic is centered on speed. While Mars missions are restricted by orbital alignments every 26 months, SpaceX can… pic.twitter.com/FVY4qBBKpH

— Mark Kretschmann (@mark_k) February 9, 2026

10/30/10:

I got an idea for this post this morning.   I was wondering if there's a way to quickly build a moon shelter and permanent base on the moon.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I started to search for what was already out there on the web.  I came across this:  a pdf file on some proposed designs of a moon base.  It has occurred to me that NASA must have plans like these out the wazoo.   So, why haven't these plans ever been implemented?

A further search brought me to this a link about Gregg Easterbrook, who is a critic of manned space flight.  It would be wrong to blame him for the plans not being implemented.  I don't want to slam Easterbrook here.  Only to point out that the criticisms are too harsh.   It has to be balanced by something.  The manned space program needs a champion, like in the early days.   These days, the critics, like Easterbrook, have the upper hand.  To offset the critics, a there must be a champion of manned space flight.

Here's the article he wrote about the shuttle in 1980 ; it is fairly critical article and its tone turns out to be wrong in most respects, but it proved him to be prophetic in predicting failure as two shuttles were lost.  With the loss of two shuttles, his point of view gained ground.  But why did the Shuttles fail?  Was it design failure, or did some other explanation account for this?  To answer this question, it would take an extensive study the reports that came out of each disaster.  Basing it solely on memory, I suspect that a change in specifications led to both disasters.  If these specs weren't changed, perhaps both Shuttles could have survived.  The Shuttle wasn't an inherently unsafe design, if that is true.  To confirm that opinion would be out of the scope of this post.

In Easterbrook's 1980 article, he mentions that a permanent moon base was considered before deciding upon the shuttle program.  He says that a base would have been useless.  But the moon base would not be useless if it can solve the launch problem.  If men and materials can be launch into space at a reasonable cost and be done relatively safely, we can open up the solar system for business.  At one sixth the gravitational field of the Earth, getting to the near Earth asteroids would entail much less energy and consequently, much reduced cost for fuel.   Having a moon base that is self sufficient in terms of life support could mean multiple missions from the moon, before having to return to Earth- giving further savings.  And mining asteroids for fuel and metal ores could defray the costs of manned space flight.  They may even be able to turn a profit.

A Moon base needs a champion.  If the critics win, it may never be done.  At least, not by the USA.  Someone else could and probably will.  If that happens, American leadership in this field will go by the wayside.  Like many other things.  Isn't it time that this trend be turned around?

Update:  So, how much M type asteroid worth?  This question is answered in Mining the Sky:


"As an example of the magnitude and economic value of space resources, we shall assay
the smallest known M asteroid and account for its market value.  That distinction
belongs to the NEA known as 3554 Amun.  Amun is only 2 kilometers in diameter, the
size of a typical open-pit mine on Earth, with a mass of ... thirty billion tons.
... the total market value of Amun ... $20.000. billion" -John S. Lewis
Mining the Sky, pp. 111-112

more info here
According to this: the feasibility of mining asteroids is close with present day technology.
Here is a site that I just found with plenty of info.  It is called spacefuture.com

Those are late nineties numbers, as the book was written then.  Prices have gone up.

I ran the numbers and each ton of the asteroid would be worth $667 at that time.
This would not seem worth the time orthe expense to bring all back.  I suppose you
would need to pre-process the ore before you brought it back.  Platinum at todays
prices would be about fifty million per ton.  The Altair lunar lander which was to
land men on the moon was supposed to be able to handle (in unmanned versions)
up to 15 tons of cargo.

The importance of colonizing the moon

 

Bucket brigades in space

Screenshot of delta v map from EML-2 to Low Phobos Orbit (Mars) : map via delta-v map on github

Just toying around with the idea of making a supply line that runs from Earth to Mars. At each node, cargo could be exchanged in order to make kind of a bucket brigade. You could pass along pre-fabbed materials from Earth, while grabbing up fuel at each step. There could be a staging area where these could accumulate while you wait for launch windows to open up.

Musk is planning to build hundreds of these starships. So he could just launch each one with some prefabbed materials to build whatever is needed. If you need to store materials at each node of the way, the first launches will go toward building that node so that it could support the next node, and so forth.

The goal should be to make the entire node structure as self-sufficient as is feasible. If you have a re-filling station, then perhaps the fuel could be made there with raw materials sourced from say Phobos, the Moon, the Earth, and Mars.

Updated with a few back of the envelope calcs and notes (please forgive the informality):

Using the gizmo mentioned above:

Some destinations and their delta-v's please:

These can get from Low Earth Orbit to Geosynchonous Orbit, and out:

Leo to Geo 3.91 km/s

Geo to EML-2 2.6 km/s

Moon to EML-2 2.3 km/s



Loxleo is a topic covered previously on this blog, click on the bolded link below to see:

LOXLEO to LEO ? km/s ; would have to supply it with power

@ EML-2 could intercept and capture near earth objects (asteroids) and return them for processing

can return asteroidal material to the lunar surface along with fuel obtained from phobos and / or mars

lunar surface could process the asteroidal material and make things with it either fuel or solar panels to be used for loxleo

Here's the delta-v's for the trips from the moon to Mars:

low phobos to EML-2 2.78 km/s

low phobos to lmo 1.243 km/s

lmo to Mars 3.6 km/s

phobos to Mars 4.848 km/s



A fully fueled Starship can make the trips, and possibly with exceptionally large cargoes. How 'bout them apples?

Screenshot of pdf file , which lists pages and pages of these asteroids that may be accessed for use in situ resourcing in support of deep space missions

Posted on the Quicklaunch Facebook Page

9/28/24:

This is an old one, but goodie. If memory serves, I may have gotten a response from the head honcho at Quicklaunch about the idea for one on the Moon. The response, if memory serves, is that it would be relatively easy to get to lunar orbit with a gas gun. Quicklaunch would utilize a gas gun, which means that heated gas expands for the thrust needed to get a payload to orbit. The gas gun had been tested at that time, and had success getting them hypersonic, if memory serves.

This topic returns, as there's some news provided by the Marcus House channel on YouTube. He does Space Updates there, and there's a mention of a new company ( new to me, anyway) that proposes to use this concept. I've joined the video in progress at that point:







11/18/11:

As of now, there has been no response. It was a comment about the feasibility of putting one of these devices on the moon or Mars. The idea was to use the device to build a space elevator on the moon or Mars.

Here's another idea. Since tungsten has such a high melting point, he could called upon to use his Quicklaunch to put tungsten in LEO. Twelve million pounds of tungsten would be enough to serve as an anchor for a lunar space elevator, or moonstalk. The trick would be to transport the tungsten to EML-1. That might be accomplished by a fleet of VASIMRs.

In order to build the moonstalk, you'd need that much, or possibly more mass for the anchor in space, plus another anchor on the lunar surface, plus the cable which can be deployed from space so that it can connect to the surface. No new exotic materials need to be invented for cable, as the strength of currently available materials is sufficient.

Once emplaced, it could be used to get access to the surface without the use of propellants.

If it were extended toward the poles, and a second moonstalk was built on the far side with extensions to the poles, one could get to the gateway of interplanetary space from which missions could be launched. The advantage of this arrangement is that you could actually construct your spacecraft so that could do these types of missions right there from EML-2.

The interplanetary ship, could be a variation of the NERVA type rocket which was tested and found space-worthy during the Apollo Era. The nuclear fuel could be supplied from the lunar surface. It could use the Thorium fuel cycle to produce an isotope of Uranium. Since everything would take place on the far side of the moon, NIMBY opposition should be minimized. The Thorium fuel cycle precludes the development of explosive devices, so the project should not be in violation of any treaties. If nuclear is too objectionable, a solar powered VASIMR may be feasible, provided that the solar panels were constructed from lunar materials.

For reaction mass for the NERVA, you could use the abundant hydrogen found in permanently shaded craters near the poles. With the extensions to the poles, the lunar surface could be populated permanently and could even supply interplanetary missions, as opposed to relying upon the Earth. Thus, the moon could serve as a support base for interplanetary exploration and settlement.

The superior ISP of nuclear rockets could open up the space frontier for settlement. The spacecraft could be large enough to provide sufficient shielding and habitat for long duration missions. Most likely, it could also be set up to provide artificial gravity so as to limit the effects of long term exposure to weightlessness. Overall, it minimize the hazards of long duration missions and provide the best probability of success for human exploration and settlement.

This could take place no risk to the Earth from radiation or explosions. It is hard to imagine any political opposition, but the ingenuity of opponents can't be underestimated. Nevertheless, whatever opposition that could develop to this proposition should be manageable, provided that the will to do the project exists.

There are those who would say that it is too expensive, and that it would take too long. We've got all the time we need, provided that the will exists. Let's briefly examine the cost objection.

The ground anchor implies many missions. It would take a multi-decade commitment and most likely a large influx of funds to complete the project. As for costs, Hunter says he could put the fuel for a Mars mission up in LEO for 5 billion dollars, if I am not mistaken. This would probably cost twice that or more for the anchors, plus the other missions could easily double that figure.

A cost comparison to the lunar base Paul Spudis envisions would likely be comparable. There may be a case made that this may cost more than what Spudis' proposal, but that wouldn't take into consideration cost savings from the Quicklaunch method. Spudis' moonbase's cost was projected at about 90 billion dollars. I'm guessing that this proposition wouldn't cost any more than that. Even if it did cost more, it would still be worth it.

So much for the objections, what about the benefits?

The potential returns would be enormous. If platinum resources could be found on the moon, it could spark the hydrogen economy on the Earth. In addition, space solar industry could be enabled by manufacturing the panels in space or on the moon. Easy access to cis lunar space would make deployment cost effective. Overall, this could open up the vast resources of space, and if I may speculate boldly- it could be lead to an entirely new era of peace and prosperity for all mankind.

Update: 11/19/2001

This post gets a new label of Quicklaunch and Mass Driver Concepts plus it also gets the category label of Sidebar Entry.  Sidebar Entry post labels are attached to all posts that introduces an important concept or topic that I want to keep track of on a historical basis.  Putting that label tells me when I started to think about it in more in depth and allows an examination of my thinking as on a timeline.

Real happy to hear this

Elon Musk wants to go to the moon.

He is not just a Mars guy, after all.

Going to the moon first is a great idea.  The moon is made mostly of oxygen.  If you do nothing else, but mine the oxygen, it will be a big help getting to Mars.

Getting on and off the moon takes a lot less than the Earth.  It just makes a lot of sense to me to go there first.

Lunar pits

Seem like a good place for a lunar base.  You can put a roof over it and then inflate it.  ( The "roof" can be an inflatable one that you see in sports stadiums )

If the moon can be mined for fuel and building materials, it could possibly support a colony there.  The colony could be a jump off point for the colonization of the rest of the solar system.  Ah, if only...

NASA is now accepting applications from companies that want to mine the moon

It's kinda dumb to look for rare earths there when there are plenty down here.  What they should be doing is mining for oxygen.  Would that be included?  The article doesn't say.

Initial proposals are due tomorrow for the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown program (CATALYST). One or more private companies will win a contract to build prospecting robots, the first step toward mining the moon.

The contract will be a "no funds exchanged" Space Agreement Act, which means the government will not be directly funding the effort, but will receive NASA support.---Adrianne Jefferies

From what I read, it doesn't look significant at all.

Private company plans US's first controlled moon landing in 40 years

foxnews via Behind the Black blog

quote:

Moon Express is just one of many private companies planning space missions. Tourism, orbiting hotels and more have exploded -- but no area has burgeoned more than the moon. Astrobiotic Technology also plans to mine the moon, for example. Bigelow Aerospace wants to sell property there, a Japanese firm suggested a solar panel power ring, and China on Monday launched the Chang’e 3 lander, which should touch down on the moon in mid-December -- the first controlled landing since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 mission in 1976.

What’s behind the surge in interest? Overpopulation, one expert says.

Perhaps it just makes a lot of sense.

Can the economics ever work for space?

The answer is that we may never know because there may never be the effort required to try.

Everything that has ever been done has at one time never been done before.  That is where we are with the commercialization of space.  No one has tried it.  At least not in earnest.  There are some satellites up there that are generating some profits for somebody.

It may forever more be nothing but a niche market with limited prospects.

Just in the past week, it has occurred to me that there may be a way to make energy in space and beam it back to Earth for profit.  It isn't a new idea, as there has been talk about it before.  So, what's new about this?

I'm not sure that there is anything new about it.  I've been thinking about it though, and it may be nothing more than "re-inventing the wheel" to go back over old ground.

What could be different about this is the roundabout way of getting to the point where you can make money.  The entire process would require enormous amount of preparation first.  You can't just launch a satellite into orbit and expect it to make money from solar power.  The launch costs are too high.  The amount that can be lifted is limited.  You will need very massive structures and we don't have any means to do this any time in the near future.

But something new may be possible.

This idea of bringing an asteroid back to EML-1 may be an enabling act that could kick it all off.  But not just one asteroid, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  You'll need a dozen or more of them.  If you do it a dozen times and collect the mass and make a Moonstalk, then you'll have access to lunar materials.  The significance of that is two fold.  First, is that the Moon is a much easier gravity well to get out of than the Earth.  Secondly, you may not need any propellant at all, or very little of it.  That which you do need can come from the asteroid itself.  Hence, everything you need for a continuing presence is there in place once you get it built.  A continuing presence means an assembly line process can be started and that leads to economies of scale and to large scale projects like space solar.

What's more the process can be repeated elsewhere in the solar system.  The potential market is friggin' huge.

Of course, the whole concept has to be proven sound and profitable.  Before you can get there and see if it can be done, many billions of dollars will have to be spent.  To collect just one asteroid will cost $2.6 billion.  A dozen of them plus the rest of what's needed could push the bill to over 100 billion dollars.  That's about what the US spent on the ISS.

But the ISS was never intended to be commercial.  Well, this isn't either until you prove it can be commercialized.  The Moonstalk will have to built first, thus it is an experiment.  It will have to prove itself.  That isn't guaranteed.  The process that's required to get just one asteroid hasn't been done before.  Then, assuming that works, you have to prove you can put several together into an anchor.  And you'll have to prove that you can connect that to the lunar surface.  Once you get to that point, you still have to prove you can operate the Moonstalk consistently and reliably.

The massive cost and risk cannot be borne by the private sector.  It will have to involve the government and that requires someone to take the initiative and try it.  It requires maintaining the political will over a period of time necessary to complete it.  If that can be done, the rest may follow.

The political system maintained a consensus to do the Moon shots of the sixties and seventies.  It managed the Shuttle.  It managed the ISS.  Perhaps this should be the next thing.  It is comparable in costs and duration.  Perhaps a decade or two or consistent effort will do the trick.  At the end of that period, we will know if we can do it or not.

 The justification is that we may never know that we can become a space faring species unless we can make the economics work.  We need to find out.  Our future depends upon it.

Next Big Future: 3D Printing of a lunar base using lunar soil will ...

Next Big Future: 3D Printing of a lunar base using lunar soil will ...: Setting up a lunar base could be made much simpler by using a 3D printer to build it from local materials. Industrial partners including re...


Comment:

Why build a lunar base?  Because it's there.  ( Couldn't resist making the phrase)

The only way anything like this happens is if somebody with the means and the will takes it on.

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.  If you can convince him to go to the Moon first, that may be a way to get back there.

Why would Musk want to go to the Moon first?  He is a businessman.  Businessmen look for ways to economize, and Musk has certainly been doing that with his rockets.  His work promises to make rocket launches much more affordable, but he still has a problem with his goal.

Getting to LEO is only part of the job of getting to Mars.  There's more to it than that.  Sure, you can get to Mars with a rocket right now, but what kind of shape will the crew be in when they get there?  By using the Moon and its resources, you will be able to build larger and more spacious ships that couldn't be launched from Earth.  The energy required to launch from the Moon is only a tiny fraction of what it takes to get off the Earth.

An assist from asteroidal material could be helpful as well, by the way.  An asteroid could enable you get to the surface with a Moonstalk.  It could provide the means and the material to not only get to the lunar surface, but the means and material to get to Mars.

With these ships, you could arrive to Mars in pretty good shape.  With 3D technology that has been practiced on the Moon, you could replicate that feat on Mars.  There will be housing available to his colonists when they arrive at Mars.

True, he still may be able to do this without going to the Moon first, but it may be a bit easier and safer if he were to stop at the Moon and build up his capabilities there before proceeding.

About that moonstalk

I've been thinking about this for most of the day.

For the price of 12 missions to capture asteroids ( 12 times 2.6 billion dollars each ), there would be enough mass for an anchor that would enable a moonstalk to be constructed from a Lagrange point---preferably L1.

It would also require an anchor on the lunar surface, and this would need to be constructed so as to be sturdy enough.  Come to think of it, the asteroids will need to be bound together with a material that is strong enough to hold it together too.  There may be a tendency for it to want to come apart.

The total cost for such a mission would be well below the price mentioned ($88 billion) to set up a lunar fueling station.  You could still set up the fueling station, and much more if you had access to the lunar surface.  This moonstalk could achieve that.

Once the moonstalk is in place, you can then start to mine it for its water content, amongst other things.  Those things that are taken out as valuable enough for other uses can be replaced by lunar materials that aren't so valuable.  Over time, the entire valuable content of the asteroid could be exchanged for less valuable materials from the Moon without losing its original anchor mass.

A moonstalk could enable propellant free transits to the lunar surface.  This would save valuable resources, like water, for life support and shielding from radiation.  You could build additional structures with the lunar materials that may include materials that the asteroids don't have.  It may be advantageous to build a sophisticated complex at this location in order to do many things.  Perhaps you could construct space ships that could shelter space travelers for years.  Such structures could be too large to launch from the Earth's surface.

Moonstalks could be the way to open up space, and lead to settlement.

Moon hole might be suitable for colony

cnn, jan 1, 2010

quote:

The vertical hole, in the volcanic Marius Hills region on the moon's near side, is 213 feet wide and is estimated to be more than 260 feet deep, according to findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

You could put a geodesic dome over something this size.

Nobody thinks you could make a moon base because hardly anybody thinks about it much.  Gingrich was lambasted for the idea, but it isn't a bad project for a country to undertake.  Other countries are planning moon bases.  Only the USA seems to lack interest.

Difference of opinion about space solar

I had forgotten about this.  Lewis advocates a bit for space solar.  For a time there, I agreed.  Then I found out about LFTRs, and that was all she wrote for space solar.

Sorensen believes that the moon will require a nuclear reactor because of the long lunar night.  Lewis proposes that solar power can crack water and then recombine the hydrogen and oxygen for energy when the sun isn't shining.  Lewis' idea sounds plausible for a lunar base, and leaves open the possibility for something more ambitious.

However, it may not be the optimal solution on the moon, or elsewhere for that matter.  I can't answer that question any better than before.

One thing though.  Let's say that you were to manufacture the solar cells on the moon, then transport them to GEO.  The cost to get them there from the moon, as opposed to from Earth, would be much less.  It would then become a matter of converting the energy to a useful form on the ground at a reasonable price.  If such a industry could be created by building these factories and launch sites on the moon, it could give an economic reason to develop the moon.

Lewis shows a way that a base could be created.  But a base is not profitable nor self-sustaining.  The solar power idea is a way to make it profitable.  Intriguing idea.

Update:

Why do solar at all?  Solar requires very big arrays that will have to be maintained somehow.  Not to mention getting them into space in the first place.

I'm shifting back to Sorensen's point of view.  Forget solar.

One more thought.  If you want to make the lunar colony self-supporting, then send energy via LFTRs instead.  You'd have to get around all the anti-nukes, though.  You could say that by using a CANDU reactor to start several LFTR's, you could generate enough power on the lunar surface that could be exported in order for the colony to pay its own way.

How do you get nuke reactors on the moon?  See this for the answer.

Nuclear cannon to the planets

Here we go on an imaginative cruise into insanity here, but that's okay.  The world is already crazy, so a bit more craziness won't matter much.  An adaptation of a proposition made by Brian Wang of Nextbigfuture and posted here awhile back for your amusement, consternation, or whatever the case may be.

Actually, it is a mash of a number of ideas gleaned from various sources.  The title, for instance, is an adaptation of the Quicklaunch concept.  Quicklaunch was itself an adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, From the Earth to the Moon.  Verne described in detail the plan to set off an explosion that would send a spaceship to the moon.  The nineteenth century novel was technically correct up to a point.  The explosive materials wouldn't have been powerful enough and nobody inside the craft would have survived the g forces.  Besides that, there was no way to soft land the thing once it got there, anyway.

Wang's idea is to set off a nuclear explosion in order to send up to 200k tons of cargo only to the moon or elsewhere.  He doesn't describe how to soft land the thing either.  That and a few other thoughts, led to me try to improve upon the concept a bit.  In the link above, I suggested using nukes to soft land.  But that may run into opposition.  Okay, can you land it another way?  Sure, why not?  As long as we go small ball.  Trying to stop 200k tons would require powerful rockets and a lot of fuel.  A smaller payload and careful planning would reduce that substantially.

To get from lunar escape velocity to a soft landing would require more than half of the launch mass to be fuel.  Not so good, but that's the price to pay for a soft landing on the moon.  Let's say you were to launch 1000 tons with a nuclear blast.  Then, you may get upwards of 500 tons to land softly on the moon.  Not an insignificant achievement.

What could you do with 500 tons?  Well, a 100 megawatt LFTR would weigh in at about 50 tons or less.  A railroad locomotive weighs about 200 tons.  You could substitute several "earth" movers and diggers for the weight of one locomotive.  Various equipment and supplies to support a crew could fill out the rest.  With all this equipment, you can construct a moon base with in situ materials.

The purpose of the moon base would be to begin development of the moon by using the moon's resources.  Thus, the equipment mentioned above would be tailored towards that purpose.  The equipment would have to survive the launch, too.

As Wang mentioned, none of the technology for the launch itself is new.  Nor are the concepts.  Radioactivity can be contained, as it has been in underground nuclear tests in the past.  It wouldn't violate any treaties, and it could be done quickly and cheaply.

A thousand ton device isn't as massive as a Saturn V rocket, nor a Space Shuttle on a launch pad.  It could cause quite a boom when it hits the atmosphere at escape velocity or higher.  But there are plenty of remote sites where this wouldn't be a problem.  The boom would be a lot less than it would be if the boom occurred above the ground, don't you know.

The hard part may be the landing.  The rockets would have to solid, I would think.  That's because liquids have to be contained in a tank, which may not hold up in such a launch.  Besides that, solid rockets have to burn up completely because they can't be stopped.  In answer to those problems, here's a proposition.  Carry more than enough rockets and use only what you need.  That will cut into payload though.  But payload won't be a problem because you can just send more with a bigger blast.  Careful planning can reduce any overage to a minimum.

Assuming all goes well, you can begin building the moon base.  Perhaps you wouldn't need to land a crew.  Using teleoperation, just operate everything from the Earth.  Once everything is set for the crew, then people could land and begin using the facilities.

In the long run, you could build space stations that could be placed at EML4 or EML5.  These could be used as way stations to Mars.  That facilities would be used for the transport of people, and the transport of goods for interplanetary trade.  Now to set up the Mars base, you would just lather, rinse, and repeat.

Once completed, a chain like series of stops would be in place for the long transit to Mars.  Starting from Earth, you reach orbit.  From orbit, you would proceed to the moon.  From the moon, you could proceed to EML4 and finally from there, to Mars.  People could collect on the station and go to Mars in large groups every two years.  In a decade, several hundreds to thousands could be on Mars.

Kickstarting a moon base

Take Brian Wang's idea of a nuclear cannon, which can deliver cargo to the moon.  Load it up with raw materials that can be used on the moon so that you can build whatever you need there on the spot.

It would be like in-situ resourcing with stuff that you know is there because you put it there.  That is opposed to going somewhere on the expectation of finding something there, but not sure about it.

You can put thousands of tons of stuff on the moon with one shot.  Then send an expedition to recover it there and to make stuff out of it on the moon.  This can jump start development of the moon.

Update:

I don't know if it would survive, so it may not be a good idea, but consider this:  send along some ammonium carbonate.  It is otherwise known as "smelling salts".  The good thing about it is that it decomposes readily under heat into ammonia and carbon dioxide.  Now, these two products can come in mighty handy if you got great quantities of it on the moon.

The ammonia can be harvested for energy and converted into water by using the plentiful oxygen on the surface of the moon.  The moon is literally made of oxygen.  Burning ammonia will produce heat and water.  Also nitrogen which can be collected and used as breathable air.

The carbon dioxide can be used in more ways than can be imagined.

Update:

How about combining an Orion type craft that can land softly on the moon with this nuclear cannon?  If you could get this much mass safely landed on the moon, it would be a stupendous achievement.

I've discussed Orion on this blog recently.  Scroll down a bit to find it.

Part 6 of lunar station

Part 5 here.

This all started with the idea of making a lunar station that could lift itself off the ground.

Well, that may get diverted a bit with this post.  Or perhaps not.

A problem to solve is how to make fuel to get back and forth between the asteroid and the lunar surface?

The advantage to this is save money.  It costs a lot of money to use disposable rockets.  You want to use them over and over again.  Secondly, you don't want to transport fuel from Earth.  It costs 25,000 dollars a pound to put something on the lunar surface.

NASA wants to bring an asteroid to the moon and have a mission there someday.  Okay.  So, when you get there, what do you do?

If the asteroid is typical, it will be carbonaceous with a good deal of water content.  With that, you can make fuel, but not enough to get to Mars.

So, what do you do with that capability?

It turns out that you can "burn" elemental carbon with carbon dioxide provided that you have plenty of energy.  One thing you may consider doing is bringing solar panels from the moon to where the asteroid is.  You can use the ever increasing capability of the solar power panels that you obtain with each trip down in order to make more and more fuel.  Do the same thing on the surface.

Here's the way it would look:

1. Make enough fuel to make a trip down to a water source.
2. Obtain the water.  Make fuel on the surface to use to go back up.
3. On the way up, bring back some completed solar panels and repeat.
4. Once you completed processing the asteroid, you will have a big fuel production facility on the surface and where the asteroid was.
5. Get another asteroid, and repeat as often as desired.
6. Repeated often enough, and you'll have enough to go to Mars.  Or you could send the orbital facility on to Mars and build a new one at the moon.
7. You may even take the solar panels with you to Mars with your crew.  You will make your own fuel for your trip down.  
8. Perhaps you could lift off the lunar surface the production facility on the surface and transport it to Mars.

Think it would work?

Can you burn pyrolytic carbon? Part 5 of lunar station

Part 5 of a series.  Part 4 was here.

First of all, where did that question come from?  In part 4, I was wondering about which fuel to use.  So, I decided to look elsewhere as opposed to using solid rockets.

So I started reading the Wikipedia article on the Sabatier reaction, to answer that question.  Pyrolytic carbon can be produced by pyrolyzing methane.  The point of pyrolyzing methane is to obtain the hydrogen. This is all anticipated as a way to close the carbon-water cycles in outer space for life support.  If you do that, you can remove a lot of the mass that has to be taken along.  That mass is in the form of food, which is eaten and produces carbon dioxide and water in respiration.

Anyway, this didn't start out as a life support thought experiment.  The idea is if you can obtain methane via pyrolytic carbon.  If you can do this with that form of carbon, can you do it with other forms of carbon?  My hunch is yes, but I'm not sure.

Why would you care about obtaining methane from carbon?  Well, if you have a source of carbon, as what exists in asteroids, then you can make methane as fuel.  That's provided that the said asteroid has water. NASA wants to send an asteroid to lunar orbit, so that's where the asteroid will come from.

The carbon can indeed be burned using carbon dioxide.  So, you would need a source of carbon dioxide to burn the carbon which produces carbon monoxide.  This requires an energy source to accomplish. Provided that you have such a source, just use this process to produce the carbon dioxide by burning the carbon monoxide thus produced.  In other words, the carbon dioxide is generated, but you need some in the first place in order to jump start the process if there's none available from the asteroid.

Once you have the carbon dioxide, you can make the methane and LOX for a rocket.  The methane is produced from the Sabatier Reaction.  LOX is obtained from the lunar surface or the asteroid by cracking water from the moon or the asteroid.  Or it can be obtained from the regolith on the moon.  In that case, hydrogen will have to be brought down.

Now the only thing you need is a carbon source and a water source.  There's water on the moon, but you have to get it to a handy location.

Now you can use a rocket to send down the raw materials, but that defeats the whole purpose doesn't it? Can we mitigate that to some extent?

Maybe you could just de-orbit the carbon, which is pretty indestructible stuff.  Collect the carbon after it is crashed into the lunar surface.  You'd have to be pretty precise so that you don't hit anything important and it's not too far away that you can't get to it.

Next problem is finding the water.  There's water on the moon, but it is hard to get at.  You'd have to get it from the poles or by baking it out of the regolith.  The second option will take an enormous amount of energy.  Third option is bringing it down via the asteroid.  Any old way you look at it, this part won't be easy.

If you brought the hydrogen down from the asteroid, you'd have to make some for the trip down too.  You'd make the LOX on the surface and generate the methane from the carbon that was crashed into the surface.

Then you'd have a way of transport from the surface to the asteroid and back.  This could use the same vehicle over and over again.

On each excursion, you'd build up your space station.  Eventually, you will have enough carbon and water to make the LOX to fill up the fuel tanks and blast your newly built station into lunar orbit.

What kind of fuel to use? Part 4

A series about a self launching space station built on the moon.  Part 3 here.

A few questions arise from the latest post.

1. What kind of fuel will it use?
2. How big will the station be?
3. How will it dock in space?
4. What kind of missions will it perform?

These are the questions I can think of now.  Undoubtedly, there are many more.

What sparked this idea was that there's plenty of aluminum and oxygen on the moon.  That's the primary components of a solid rocket booster.  But there's more stuff, which kinda throws water on the idea.  If you can find chlorine, that'd be great.  But you also need a binder.  That makes up a considerable portion of the mass.

If you can find all of these materials, you still have to put it all together.  This would require some type of facility of the moon.  Like a permanent moonbase.  This may help to answer #4.  One mission would be as a bus that can transfer people back and forth.  Or it can stay in space for awhile if it is properly provisioned.  If it is to stay for a long time, it will need a lot more capabilities that I envision at the moment.

I was thinking it could have legs and with five separate tubes, it could be quite stable when it landed.

On the opposite end could be the docking ports.  One for each tube.  Each tube would have its own dock because there's no simple way to add a capability to move to one tube to the next when the thing is spun up in space.  It should be spinnable and unspinnable at will in order to allow docking and to handle contingencies.

This leaves question 2.  How big?  A lot depends on what you intend for the mission to do.  If it is just to be a bus, it need not be very big at all.  If it is to be a big station, it will have to be tall.  In fact, so tall that getting it into position to be launched may be something of a problem.

It could be a flexible design that would allow for growth in capabilities depending upon mission needs.

Thought experiment: Can you build a station on the moon and launch it from there?

Given that you could use nuclear explosions to launch massive objects into space, I was wondering if there was another way to do it.  It may be the harder way, but it could have a better chance of making it past the anti-nuke crowd.

If we are going to have a space station, why not launch it from the moon, which requires only 15% or so of the energy?

We want to spin up our space station, so lets figure that out first.

Using the formula below, I experimented with several combinations of radius and rpm by using a spreadsheet.



Here are the results:

As you may notice, increasing the radius doesn't move the g's very fast, but rpm does.  Unfortunately, humans can't tolerate rpm's too much above 6 and most can tolerate 2 rpm.

Since I want to make the space station as small as possible, but large enough to do something useful, I'm going to select a 90 meter radius at 2 rpm.  This will give us a Martian like gravity of .40 g

I want to build the station on the moon and launch it from the moon using solid rockets which make use of the aluminum and oxygen which is so abundant there.  Hopefully, we can keep the mass down to a minimum.

The station will be in the shape of a torus ( think do-nut).  There was something I blogged about which was about how to make an extruded tube like structure on the moon.  I would figure an aluminum skin of sufficient thickness will give us a stiff enough structure, with a lightest possible weight.

But it may not give us enough protection from the harsh radiation in space.

Let's make it a double hull, and fill in the gap with water.  We may have to skimp on the water.

Let's divide the station into sections so that if one part of the station starts to leak, we can isolate it and possibly repair it before we lose all of our air.

Let's make it eight feet in diameter.  I don't know if an extrusion device could make it that big, so we have to keep it small as possible.

Let's make it and inch thick for each side of the hull, plus a foot thick of water.

That seems like too much as the weight will begin to get out of hand.

Luckily, the mass comes out to 324k pounds.  That means relatively small boosters like on an Atlas V could boost it into orbit.  The trick would be to make the boosters on the moon and attach them to the station.

In order to outfit the internals a bit would require more weight.  You wouldn't launch crew with it.

You'd also need access and so forth.  Plus a docking area.

Let's say it all doubles the weight.  We could still comfortably launch it using relatively small boosters in my opinion.


Update:

Come to think of it, it may be easier to just use methane and lox.

Update:

Ooops!  Too soon to post on this.  I found a significant error in the mass calculations.  It will be much heavier.

Probably about 4 or 5 times heavier on a rough guess.

Update:

You'd need to downsize to maybe a 50 meter station and spin up to 3 rpm.  It still be several times heavier than my original calc.

Other considerations would be the stresses and strains on the metal.  It may not be strong enough for what is being "attempted" here.

If such is the case, the water could wait until you get into lunar orbit.

Update:

With those thoughts in mind, you could still launch it without the water and with a powerful nuclear rocket.

By the way, this is starting to look a little iffy.

Update:

This is designated as a series now.  Consider this as part 2.  Part 1 was the previous post to this.

In-situ resource utilization

From the Project rho site.

Quote:

Aluminum and oxygen can be used as chemical rocket fuel, though the specific impulse is a pathetic 285 seconds. This is made up for by the fact that aluminum and oxygen is quite plentiful in lunar regolith, i.e., it's in the dirt.

Comment:

Holy crap!  Why go to the permanently shadowed craters for water when you've got most of what you need for a solid rocket booster in the lunar regolith!

This may well be a gross oversimplification, but...

Really, I never thought of that.  Dang.  You could build rockets on the moon and then launch them.  Provided, of course, that you can get there in the first place.

One forgets that there isn't much need for thrust to get to orbit on the moon.  The tiny lunar module ascent stage weighed only 10k pounds, but was SSTO from the moon.  You wouldn't need big rockets to get off the lunar surface.

Update:

This is being designated a series.  Let this be considered as part 1.  Part 2 is the next post.