Billionaire Teams Up With NASA To Mine the Moon 214
schwit1 writes: Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year, just took another step closer toward that lofty goal. Earlier this year, it became the first company to successfully test a prototype of a lunar lander at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The success of this test—and a series of others that will take place later this year—paves the way for Moon Express to send its lander to the moon in 2016. Moon Express conducted its tests with the support of NASA engineers, who are sharing with the company their deep well of lunar know-how. The NASA lunar initiative—known as Catalyst—is designed to spur new commercial U.S. capabilities to reach the moon and tap into its considerable resources.
Considerable resources? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you seen how much rock we have down here already?
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seems like the only resource worth bringing down from the Moon would be one that just don't hardly exist down here...but if you were planning a long-term presence there, getting resources locally could be a lot cheaper than hauling them up.
Even so, the startup costs would be pretty intimidating.
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:4, Informative)
Disregarding He3, the only point of lunar resources is for orbital/space construction. It is easier to reach LEO from the moon than from Earth. Reaction mass requirements for Lunar surface to LEO are much lower than from Earth surface.
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But the stuff we want to put in Earth orbit is typically very high tech. How do you get from raw ore to microchips, solar panels, and high grade optics, without bringing it down to Earth surface first ? A microchip factory on Earth already costs billions of dollars, so the idea that anybody could afford to build one on the moon is just ludicrous.
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, no...
Yes, it's true that microchips aren't really feasible for building on the moon. On the other hand, microchips don't really weigh all that much, compared to, say, the box you put the microchips in. Or the ISS modules. Satellites are mostly aluminium and steel, not microchips.
If we only had to loft the computers and similar small items from Earth, while larger structures like whole ISS modules were built on the moon, expanding the ISS would be much cheaper.
Likewise, a Mars-bound spacecraft (manned or unmanned) would be cheaper to build if the structural elements were built from Lunar material (either on the moon or at the ISS) and only the high-tech parts were built on Earth.
Note that it's even possible to get reaction mass from the moon, if we can either find H2O or are willing to burn aluminium and oxygen (yah, Al2O3 is going to be some seriously abrasive reaction mass when it's pushed out a rocket nozzle, but we're only going to use it the once, right?
Hell, even if we can't find water, 80%+ of H2/O2 rocket fuel is the O2 part. And there's plenty of that to be had on the moon. Just lifting the H2 to LEO is a potential big savings.
Note, of course, that none of this is relevant unless we decide to get seriously into space again. If all we're ever going to do is send an occasional probe out, and build commsats/spysats/positioning-sats, the moon is completely irrelevant.
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There's not much to do in space.
This is true, if you are using the word "do" as a euphemism for "have sex with". Taken literally, however, the statement is myopic and unimaginative. For example, since there isn't much to "do" in space, I think we ought to start populating the surrounding systems with space hookers.
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> There's not much to do in space.
Yeah, that's why space industry is only $300 billion/year and growing.
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I don't have any math to back me up, but I seriously doubt we'd be able to get anywhere near the core on the moon.
It's nothing to do with temperatures, it's the pressure. We've never managed to get close to the mantle here on earth because rock under that much pressure has some of the attributes of a viscous liquid. You'd think that would make the drilling easier, but it doesn't.
The moon has ~1/6th the gravity of the Earth, but it's still a long way down to the core. We could most likely drill much deepe
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Microchips are light. Water and oxygen are heavy, and we use a lot more of those in orbit than microchips. Aluminum might be kinda handy to have too.
ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often (Score:3)
so much more useful? Or maybe even the lagrange points?
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As Musk argues, launch cost are high because our rockets are not reusable. The fuel is only a small part of the overall cost. So, instead of trying to get stuff from the moon, it would make much more sense to develop reusable rockets, like SpaceX is doing.
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At least you can reuse the first stage, which is the biggest and most expensive one.
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
And lunar He-3 mining is pretty useless.
1) He-3 isn't all that useful. It has niche applications on earth in imaging, neutron detection, and so forth, but there's not really anything that would require bulk He-3 except for hypothetical He-3 fusion reactors.
2) There are no He-3 fusion reactors.
3) There's not going to be He-3 fusion reactors. It's a solution in search of a problem. We still struggle to get D-T fusion going which is orders of magnitude easier, why would we complicate the problem (and ridiculously raise the cost) just to reduce the short-term radioactivity (emphasis: short term) - radioactivity that we can actually *use* for useful breeding purposes? And if we really wanted to reduce radioactivity, we'd just skip He-3 and go straight to p-B fusion, which actually is effectively aneutronic, versus He3-D which is just low neutronicity..
4) Only low parts-per-thousand of the moon's helium is He-3. So unless you want to be sending huge quantities of helium back for a tiny bit of He3, you've got to do bloody isotope separation on the moon.
5) Only parts per million of the lunar regolith is helium. So you have to mine and bake a *lot* to get a very little amount of of helium. Which of that, only a tiny fraction is what you actually want (#4). Meanwhile, due to the cost of getting your consumables there, your labor and parts costs on any moon colony are going to be utterly absurd.
6) We can already make He-3 here on earth. It's a byproduct of tritium decay - tritium itself being breedable from lithium. Old nuclear weapons are for example often a source of He-3. Do you know what they do with it? For a long time, they were getting rid of it, converting it back to tritium. The market for making glowy paint for watches was more than the market for anything using He-3.
He-3 mining is an excuse to travel to the moon disguised in an economic wrapper.
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> And lunar He-3 mining is pretty useless.
There's another reason besides the ones you mention. Parts of the Moon have Thorium concentrations of 15 parts/million. That's about 1000 times higher than the He-3 concentration, and the energy output from fission isn't that much lower than fusion. Not to mention we know how to build Thorium reactors. So for a given amount of mining work, you would get more energy mining Thorium on the Moon. Now, considering that Thorium isn't terribly scarce on Earth, you
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Since everything we mine gets processed and used here on Earth, what would be the point of getting it off the surface ?
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Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody should have any qualms about mining anything on the Moon
Apparently you didn't see the shit-fit people were throwing several years ago when we deliberately crashed a probe into the moon to observe the composition of the regolith it kicked up. Dumping trash on the moon they said. Ridiculous, but there are apparently quite a few people on Slashdot who had this opinion.
Re:Considerable resources? (Score:5, Informative)
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Oddly enough, when we're talking about aliens, they're more likely to know we were there by our trash on the Moon, than they would by us maintaining a nice pristine, clean moon.
Humans: "Don't shoot alien overlord! We are an advanced civilization too!"
Alien: "Uh, I really don't see that. Prove it."
Human: "We have gone to the Moon!"
Alien: "Bullshit. There's *nothing* there I could find"
Human: "Well there's a flag and some landers and a buggy or two. We tried to keep the place tidy".
Alien: "Your moon is th
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Nobody should have any qualms about mining anything on the Moon since it has no ecosphere to start with.
Except for the part that involves producing and burning rocket fuel in Earth's ecosphere to lift mining equipment and return fuel. (I mean, you're joking, right?)
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All the dust you can eat!
Paging Sam Bell... (Score:3)
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Moon-Ex CEO Bob Richards was on a panel at the International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) last October. He didn't break any "news" there, but gave a welcome update on the latest developments. Very interesting talk, worth a look. [youtube.com]
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I always wondered whether the one on earth knew about the others.
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It's the size of a small planet. Actually... it IS a small planet. It's not like we are pissing into a kiddie pool here, or disrupting a delicate piece of clockwork.
Doing more than making some scratches on the surface and just under it is unlikely to be within our capabilities for the foreseeable future.
VERY cool news, BUT.. (Score:2)
In all seriousness: I think this is a positive first step towards humans going back to the moon. We really need to build a permanent base/colony there. Hey, Elon! Want to spearhead this one?
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Parts of the Moon have natural concentrations of Thorium in the 10 ppm range. A little nuclear waste won't make a difference:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
It's about Energy (Score:3, Interesting)
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But "He Who Controls the Spice Controls the Universe!"
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As a follow up to this, here is an article:
http://phys.org/news166975298.... [phys.org]
Re:It's about Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Concentration of He-3 on the moon is in the low ppb range. That means you'd have to process billions of tons of regolith to obtain the 25 tons of He-3.
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About four billion tonnes a year, equal to the US and China's combined coal production.
On the moon.
Re:It's about Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
On Moon there is gas called helium 3
Helium 3 fusion is far more difficult than DT fusion. We aren't even close to commercial DT fusion. It is at least decades away, and He3 fusion is decades beyond that, if ever. Even if He3 fusion was working, getting it from the moon, where it is less than 50 ppb in the lunar regolith, is not realistic.
"Helium 3" has got to be the dumbest possible reason to mine the moon.
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2. ????
3. Profit
The missing step here is a practical fusion reactor.
The reason we need to think about industry on the moon is that if we are going to be a space faring culture, eventually, we need to have resources that are not locked up in the gravity well of the Earth. It is too expensive and is going to continue to be too expensive to life everything needed for space travel from the earths surface.
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High-Beta Fusion (Score:2)
If the SkunkWorks claim is legit about having a working idea for a practical High-Beta Fusion reactor, the by-product of that reaction is Helium-3. So:
The added nifty-ness of SkunkWork's reactor is that a requires Tritium: a by-product of existing nuclear fission reactors! So cleans up existing nuclear waste (waste-water, anyway) and creates energy and creates Helium-3! Almost too good to be true...
D
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I think Jupiter is probably a better source of He3....or will be by the time we get around to having much use for it.
Of course, if we have fusion reactors we can probably breed it locally cheaper than importing it.
From Wikipedia:
Helium-3 is naturally present in small quantities due to radioactive decay, but virtually all helium-3 used in industry is manufactured. Helium-3 is a product of tritium decay, and tritium can be produced through neutron bombardment of deuterium, lithium, boron, or nitrogen targets.
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Saturn would be better then Jupiter if we ever wanted to mine a gas giants atmosphere, much less radiation.
Return mined material to Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think the Keystone pipeline is Bad, consider a few thousand tons of some mined material from the moon coming into the atmosphere at ~17,000 mph.
(sarcasm)What could go wrong?(/sarcasm)
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The point isn't to mine material and send it to earth. The point is to mine material and then *keep it in space*, to do things with that would be astronomically (heh) expensive to do if we had to lift all the material up from earth first.
I'm no Seleneologist but.... (Score:3)
I'm no Seleneologist nor am I a Geologist, but what exactly is up there that we can't get down here in larger quantities for much less money? No sarcasm intended, I'm honestly curious..
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In a word, Helium3 [wikipedia.org].
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We have no use for He-3 in the foreseeable future, though. And if we really need it, we can synthesize it.
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No, synthesizing would be a positive net energy procedure. You can irrradiate lithium-6, to make tritium. Store the tritium, and it would decay into He-3.
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No current power generation use. It's used for medical lung imaging [wikipedia.org] today.
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In a word, Helium3 [wikipedia.org].
Even if it were useful, it turns out that it's available in modest form in extracted natural gas and other deep pocketed materials. If we had a use for a whole lot of it maybe getting it from the moon is practical but that can only come after we have a use for the amount already here, which won't be for a long time. Considering it's measured in the parts per billion in lunar soil you would need a hell of a refining plant to get a significant quantity.
The only hope of profit from this sort of "expedition"
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In the nea
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it's a lot easier to get stuff back into the gravity well than it is to go the other way
That depends on the circumstances. It easier on Earth because it has a nice atmosphere that allows aerobraking. Not so easy on Mars or the Moon. Also landing on Earth becomes more difficult as the mass increases.
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Re:I'm no Seleneologist but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Metals and oxygen, ready to be chemically separated... already outside of Earth's gravity well, and therefore not incurring the energy costs, environmental issues, and safety concerns of launching them from Earth's sea level. That's kind of a big deal, if you want to start large-scale construction in space.
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What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?
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What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?
Well, nobody is mining anything in space any time soon. Anything like this project done now is pretty much pure research that would only begin to tell us what we'd even need to mine something on the moon and manufacture it in space. Then after information is gathered, tests are done, they can figure out what it would actually take and put together cost analysis of such a project.
Well, as for large scale constructions in space, there are a couple of ways it could conceivably come about. One is that simply d
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It would be smarter to control the population growth and the amount of energy required. You have to do that anyway. You can't keep feeding an exponentially growing population forever. So, if you stop the growth at a sustainable point, there's no need to get stuff from space.
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It would be smarter to control the population growth and the amount of energy required. You have to do that anyway. You can't keep feeding an exponentially growing population forever. So, if you stop the growth at a sustainable point, there's no need to get stuff from space.
Do you really expect people do the smartest thing? Our sustainable point is determined by our access to energy. By time we get to that point, we'll probably already be in space and past the point of economic benefit of getting material from there.
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Do you really expect people do the smartest thing?
If you call genocide smart, yes.
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Ah, QA. How we miss you back over at Fark.
I'm not surprised that your... enthusiasm?... led you to miss the word "if" in my post. I'm not making the case that we should drop everything and Build Things In Space; I'm simply answering the question "what can we get up there that we can't get more cheaply down here", and proposing one hypothetical situation where that would matter.
Now, as it turns out, I do think we'd be wise as a species to start spreading out, and I don't think that leaving Earth's biosphere
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But of course you're now in the Moon's gravity well, which is something like 1/5th of Earth's. Which is a fair advantage if you can build and fuel rockets on the Moon, but launching rockets from Earth to the Moon in order to re-launch from the moon would dwarf those savings. And I don't think moving the whole high-tech supply chain for that is possible, at least not in the next century. So I think you need many things to happen in order to make it even remotely feasible:
1) Reusable rockets, if you can launc
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A moon rock is supposed to cost ~$50,800/g*. A quick Google search shows that platinum costs $35.85/g and gold costs $37/g.
The most valuable thing on the moon are the rocks themselves. I guess their price will come down dramatically if mining begins and there becomes a legal moon rock market.
* - http://www.space.com/11804-nas... [space.com]
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Good point: It's a multi-step thing.
- Entrepreneurs get cheap moon rocks
- Build Moon infrastructure
- Use somebody's plan to make it worth it.
2037 (Score:2)
"Thats Impossible!"
what happens when..... (Score:2)
the moon loses too much mass from mining and the earth gains that mass from being the recipient of those mined resources?
Who has the rights to the moon's resources? (Score:2)
I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?
It just seems to me that although right now, people might think it obvious that whoever spends all the money and effort to get there and retrieve a substance should have the rights to it -- what happens when this process gets cheaper and easier to do? Will people who arrive t
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Is it "first come, first to profit"?
For the foreseeable future, I'd think not....more like 3rd to merge assets of 4 failed startups might profit.
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http://www.victorypointgames.c... [victorypointgames.com]
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The only outcome will be peaceful and relatively fair compomise or war. So depending on which aspect favors the parties in contention, either of them are likely possibilities.
Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?
The Outer Space Treaty [wikisource.org]
Article II: "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Article I says, in part, "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law". I would look to maritime law regarding resources in international waters as a basis for how lunar resources might be handled.
Article VI says, in part, "States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty." Since this is a US company they will need authorization from and supervision by the federal government.
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Since the article says that no govt owns it, which is bullshit, I think (since the world is a democracy and not a plutocracy). And since the common man has no resources to go to the moon, let alone mine it and transport the minerals back to earth. Can we safely assume, the
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Can we safely assume, the treaty favors businessmen of first-world countries who will use public resources to mine the minerals but keep the profits to themselves?
I'm sure we can trust the government to prevent such abuses.
I didn't post the link earlier, but the International Seabed Authority [isa.org.jm] already exists to regulate mining of the seabed, including in international waters. I expect lunar and asteroid mining to fall under a similar authority. (Assuming either ever becomes practical.)
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In other words, the law is extremely unfair and biased.
If you believe that this law is unfair/biased in the favor of mining companies, I suggest that you start one.
The laws are structured in the same manner as many others: if you can take it, its yours. The oil in the middle of the Pacific doesn't go to "the citizens of all involved countries [on the planet]", it goes to the first to claim it. The "gold in them hills" belongs to the first to grab it.
To answer everyone's question (Score:2)
Helping to drive this newfound interest in privately funded space exploration is the Google Lunar X Prize. It's a competition organized by the X Prize Foundation and sponsored by Google that will award $30 million to the first company that lands a commercial spacecraft on the moon, travels 500 meters across its surface and sends high-definition images and video back to Earth—all before the end of 2016.
I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
"what's up there? This is stupid!"
Seriously, turn in your geek cards, every fucking one of you. I don't care what's up there, if someone wants to put a fucking space colony on the moon, FUCKING AWESOME. We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit, even if that shit fails and blows a lot of money, because we can learn from those failures and keep trying.
Seriously, it's like I just stumbled into high school again. "Who needs math, math is stupid! Why do you read science fiction, that's stupid!" Fuck off, some of us have dreams.
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+1
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I'm all for exploring space, but the premise of mining the moon sounds pretty shaky and its totally fair for geeks to want realistic goals because that's what attracts sustainable capital investment from public and private sources that are needed to realize the goal. It's not a zero-sum game, but putting private and public money into crazy unworkable ideas takes some money away from realistic ideas.
Moon mining sounds to me a lot like orbital solar power - it sounds great and cool until you actually think f
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the supposed mineral riches are mostly high priced specialty materials and not the boring metals like iron and aluminum
Huh? [permanent.com] The moon has gigatons of common metals and many of the areas are especially aluminum rich [asi.org] (and titanium to a lesser degree).
The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well. Whether that's Earth geosync or a LaGrange point, or something else, the challenges are along the lines of having enough utili
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The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well
You mean, much higher cost. When you add all the expenses of building a factory on the moon that can turn raw rocks into useful structures (not just dirty iron bars), and you divide that over the amount of stuff we would like to have in orbit, the cost is going to be several orders of magnitude more than just launching from the Earth.
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Seriously, it's like I just stumbled into high school again. "Who needs math, math is stupid! Why do you read science fiction, that's stupid!" Fuck off, some of us have dreams.
Actually, reading through all that I was thinking of "why do you need a faster internet connection?" The answer is "I'll know when I get it".
Same thing with the moon. Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
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Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward. At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.
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Yeah, but it will be a lot easier once we have replaced ourselves with robots. We might as well just wait and explore the universe after that happens.
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I don't have much control over public funds, but I would prefer as much as possible is diverted to my personal interests, of course.
Another Glomar Explorer (Score:2)
I want to know the real purpose. Was a strange obelisk discovered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?
Are we developing Lunar Rods from God capability?
/s
Mining... what? Come on, editors. (Score:2)
The summary doesn't even contain the word 'mine'.
It's an old custom to whine about Slashdot editing, I admit, but really now.
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It's talking about tapping into its considerable resources. That's mining, isn't it ?
Seen the Movie, Read the book... (Score:2)
Moon Graffiti (Score:2)
At least someone is talking about the Moon (Score:2)
However, that means someone's gotta put up some money for a earth transfer stage and a lunar lander. There off with a start on the commercial lander but first need to make it work, and will there be enough funding (wherever it may come from) to scale it up to industrial size? I wonder what Dennis Wingo http://www.amazon.com/Moonrush... [amazon.com] has to say about this?
Unlike NASA, Musk, and Mars One use Mars as a goal. They romanticize about Mars because it's so far away (we'll put someone to Mars in 20 years and be
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Most of the cost of using titanium is actually processing the material into the desired shape. It's a total bitch to work with.
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They're not even rare on the Earth.
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Someone who's estate was worth $2.5B when he died is probably not the best example to prove your point.