A Lunar Station with mass driver to accelerate mining robots to asteroids near earth And a second mass driver to cheaply accelerate into low earth orbit.
Fully Automated mining robots could be build by 2019 at current rate of progression in robotics and Ai.
When do you think will there be a lunar space station? What structures do we need? Are O'Neill style structures feasible with a lunar space station? Will it be ready be mid century to counter the wide resource scarcities?
Veeky Forumsentists propose 1.) date for the first module on moon 2.) date for the first resources send back to earth 3.) A cheap concept to realize a mass driver or similar structure
1.) First module could be send as soon as the public thinks this is a good idea.
..Or investors recognize the potential
2.) resource scarcity will hit full force in ~2030. So hopefully by the end of 2020 we will have the infrastructure in place to not slide into crisis/recession
3.) a railgun would have the tremendous advantage, that it would allow to send stuff from the moon to the earth if the earth is at a lower gravitation potential (sun - earth - moon) And sending stuff into the asteroid belt by using the moons tangential velocity when it comes back from a lower gravitation potential compared to earth (sun - moon - earth)
Christian Wilson
>current rate of progression that's stupid
you could build a primitive mining robot today.
but nobody is building a primitive mining robot, meaning that there is no progression.
You can't just spout horseshit online. Someone will come along and tell you to fuck off.
Fuck off.
Julian Clark
But why fully automated?
If you want to set up a big operation like that on the moon, you've either got to send large masses of equipment or take a very long time painstakingly operating a "seed" package to expand its capabilities using local materials.
Just send people. They did it in the 60s, when they could barely put two logic gates on one integrated circuit. The only trouble with their method is that the equipment was all single-use fancy prototypes, so after pooling the resources of a nation they could barely send two flagplanters and a getaway driver for an overnight stay.
The most straightforward way to do this is to start by improving the launch technology. Thankfully, this process is already underway, with SpaceX likely to provide a suitable vehicle (the Falcon Heavy with three large reusable stages and one small expendable one, which should, in sufficient launch volume, eventually result in launch costs about twenty times better than previous modern expendables, and hundreds of times better than the Saturn V program) within the next few years.
The ability to land thousands of tons of equipment on the moon, and dozens of men to run it and keep each other alive, with frequent resupply, reduces the difficulties and unknowns to a manageable scale.
What we need on the moon is a mass driver capable of throwing significant loads of rock at frequent intervals, and the ability to locally produce heat shields (some sort of silica/alumina foam or fiber should do the job) and simple steering rockets (compressed oxygen cold-gas jets in aluminum tanks should be good enough) for aerobraking to low-Earth orbit (the guidance equipment can be shipped from Earth). This will enable the launch of large amounts of raw material to LEO at far lower cost than launch from the Earth surface, enabling the development of orbital industry including propellant production, which will feed further development of lunar industry, including mining ores and volatiles.
Alexander Murphy
>2.) resource scarcity will hit full force in ~2030. Why would you believe this? 70% of the earths surface has hardly been mined at all Most of the land has also been ignored for various reasons like being in third world countries or being ruled by socialists that hate growth
I don't think the Falcon Heavy will see much cost reduction They have only 1 launch site for it, and that'll only launch maybe 10 times a year Dnno if they can speed that up
Easton Jackson
>They have only 1 launch site for it, and that'll only launch maybe 10 times a year They have three launch sites for it: Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, and the private pad in Texas, and as far as I can tell, only the private pad has clear limits on how often they can launch (and those are likely to be renegotiated).
Their goal for Falcon Heavy reusability is to fly back the side boosters to land near the launchpad, and land the core stage on a droneship upgraded to allow partial refuelling and relaunch, so instead of taking a slow boat ride back to base, it can fly itself back and be available for immediate reuse.
Nathan Taylor
Ah vandenberg too Though when are they planning their first Falcon Heavy launch there? Not for some time it looks like.
Boca Chica won't be ready for years, I don't think they've even started construction of anything there.
This flying the booster back from the drone ship was just something mentioned, I doubt it'll actually happen.
Robert James
>LOOK MOM I'M A SPACE SCIENTIST! HURRRRR
>WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS IS POPSCI? NASA DOES IT SO ME BABBLING NONSENSE ABOUT IT IS SCIENCE!
Blake Murphy
>Though when are they planning their first Falcon Heavy launch there? Not for some time it looks like. The pad will be ready when the rocket is. Vandenberg is for polar launches.
>Boca Chica won't be ready for years, I don't think they've even started construction of anything there. They broke ground two years ago. They're using slower construction methods because there's no hurry. What they've got going on now is a bunch of weight sitting on the ground, compressing it to make it more stable, so they can have a higher quality foundation at a lower cost. They can get the same job done with less time, but it would cost more money, and time isn't a problem because their rocket operations are still ramping up toward maturity.
They don't need more launchpads to support a higher launch rate. As they streamline their operations, one pad can be enough for pretty much any launch rate lower than one per hour ("Then why do rockets spend so much time on the pad?" you ask? again: because under past and current conditions there's no reason to be in a hurry). They want a private pad primarily for negotiating leverage, so the people at the Cape know that they really can just walk away from the table if they don't get what they want.
If they keep getting what they want at the Cape, they'll keep the Texas spaceport as a minimal operation.
>This flying the booster back from the drone ship was just something mentioned, I doubt it'll actually happen. It's almost certain to happen.
Lifting off from a minimal pad with no payload or upper stage and partial fuelling was the first way they flew Merlin 1D, with the Grasshopper tests, and they continued it with the F9Rdev tests. It might sound outlandish (like this whole business of landing rockets propulsively did a few years ago), but there'd be a minimum of development effort involved. Furthermore, it's an excellent test platform and proving ground for their rapid reusability efforts.
Landon Garcia
>this is the extent of my contribution
congratulations, you are more of a shitlord than the people you pretend to hate
Nicholas Thompson
>Lifting off from a minimal pad with no payload or upper stage and partial fuelling was the first way they flew Merlin 1D, with the Grasshopper tests, and they continued it with the F9Rdev tests. It might sound outlandish (like this whole business of landing rockets propulsively did a few years ago), but there'd be a minimum of development effort involved. Furthermore, it's an excellent test platform and proving ground for their rapid reusability efforts. I feel I should expand on this: when the stage lands on the drone ship, it already needs a fair amount of handling.
They don't just land it and then start tugging the drone ship home. It's still a live rocket stage with a partial load of fuel and oxidizer, pressurized tanks of helium and nitrogen, hypergolic ignition shots, and an explosive flight-termination system. They have to safe it and secure it to the deck, then it has to ride home in the salty sea spray and possible bad weather.
Irrespective of the speed of returning it home and getting the drone ship back in place, after it just demonstrated that its propulsion is working properly for relights, they'd far prefer to just have a remote-control crane stick some hoses in it to quickly refuel it enough to hop back to solid ground so they can put it in a proper garage.
Asher Turner
You are out of the game, that's what you wanted. I'll spend some of my energy to tell you a few things. First, you are one adorable monkey to my eyes, a really stupid one, since what you just said is wrong, since you can talk about math using words, one plus one is two, and you can understand nature without understanding math, you drop an apple, it falls and so on :) a small tiny lecture to you, understand it.
And since you are not in, you don't want to know how to.. for example know how to calculate how to get your dream job? Like I have.. or.. How to be the perfect father? Those are all states of everything in existence, plausible ones.
And yes, I am aware this is waste of time, like trying to teach algebra to a dog, but to others here who don't get this, be humble, don't attack me, but the theories, we will never be finished, but we can use these for literally anything..
be smart, for once in your life at least.
Mason Edwards
1) Take your meds. 2) You'll enjoy yourself more on /b/ rather than Veeky Forums.
Henry Williams
Are you schizoid? What are you talkin about?
You (human) cant calculate all possible states of the universe
You (human) cant calculate the "optimal" job
David Richardson
And now
>>>back to topic
Could we build inorganic solar cells with lunar resources?
Levi Parker
I'm starting to like this pasta. Its the Veeky Forums version of gorilla warfare
Ethan Gray
What have I started? I posted this in the teleportation thread and now I see it everywhere
Jonathan Flores
What do you think the teleportation thread does?
Jose Reyes
>asteroids near earth name two
Sebastian Anderson
The plot thickens
Jack Perez
has shitposting gone too far?
Thomas Garcia
why the fuck would anyone need to transfer power from the moon to the earth?
why would anyone want to build a big laser on the fucking moon to beam power to the earth if they could just build solar panels on earth's surface and get the FREE sunlight, which is available for half the day at constant intensity whereas a lunar laser beam is far less available and delivering a varied amount of energy?
Luis Ross
I agree it is dumb. But maybe it is something about He3
Sebastian Phillips
>mining the moon I'm so fucking tired of this meme,
>H3 All of which it's value is nearly 100% speculated, a hand full of companies MAY use it and you can get it from tritium decay. >It's closer so if something goes wrong we have a better chance of helping fix something wrong This assumes you built 2 bases, one on the moon and have everything warehoused with a standby crew, rocket, and can load it up quick. This is not only going to take away from any profit you are making from the moon, but you have to assume the time to diagnose+launch+repair. You're FUCKED either way. >The moon is easier to launch from And much harder to land on since no gasses exist to slow you down or upright parachutes, this is very easy on a planet with a gaseous atmosphere. >It's easier to send material there See above, it is also harder to work on near zip gravity. Drop or bump a screw? hope you don't mind going 50 feet for it.
Other problems >no atmosphere from micro meteors so nothing slows down >no magnetic shielding other than earth (inb-but mars!) Jupiter, and a gaseous atmosphere; both help deflect and slow small meteors >little to no solar shielding >hard to cool when in the sun
We need to go to mars FIRST before we can think about colonizing the moon because right now we know nothing other than speculatory bullshit.
William Diaz
>>It's closer so if something goes wrong we have a better chance of helping fix something wrong >This assumes you built 2 bases No it doesn't. It just assumes that not all things that go wrong need to be dealt with by an external rescue in hours.
If something goes wrong at a bad time, a Mars colony can be nearly three years from an urgent resupply or evacuation to Earth due to launch windows and travel time.
A moon colony can have evacuation vehicles ready to go any time to put everyone back home on Earth within a couple of days. Regularly scheduled resupplies could come every week, or once every few months. There's no reason to bunch launches together into convoys (something that adds major additional costs and risks when compared to launches at regular intervals) once every few years because there are no launch windows. Solid rockets could be kept on standby to launch small urgent packages on short notice.
It's not all do-or-die on a moon base, the way it would be on Mars.
The moon is a lot easier and cheaper to get to, a lot safer to be on, and a lot more useful to our future space industry aspirations.
Eli Baker
imagine you live in nepal. And you want to get to the top of the mount everest for some reason. What is smarter to do?
1.) Pack your stuff and go in one straight path to the top 2.) build a base camp at half the path. Store supplies there. Then start from this camp instead of nepal your way to the top
And with "half way" I am certainly not meaning actual path length in Cartesian coordinates but in gravitational potential
Samuel Edwards
There's not a lot of logistical reasons to stop at the moon on the way to Mars, unless you plan to spend a long time there and establish industry.
Rather, if you want to go to Mars, the moon is a safer place to test technology of independent survival, in-situ resource utilization, and the effects of low gravity on human health.
If someone's focus is on Mars, and they have lots of launch capability, I think they should spend a couple of launch windows doing manned-scale unmanned launches to Mars, while testing manned parts of the system in LEO, at a lagrange point (or other high orbit outside the protection of the Earth's magnetic field), and on the moon.
The first thing we should be doing is a centrifugal simulated gravity base in LEO. Find out what a year of lunar gravity does to human health. If no serious adverse effects are found, good: we can assume Martian gravity is also conducive to good health. If it's found to be unhealthy in a similar way to zero gravity, we beef up the station to provide Martian gravity for a year.
We should have been experimenting with centrifugal gravity for decades now, but the people managing our manned space programs are too risk-averse and prioritize things like having the biggest station for bragging rights over providing actually valuable data.
Luis Smith
Well, payloads can be sent to the moon all year round, rather than once every 2.25 years So I'm sure we'll be going there soon enough, using SpaceX's rockets
Nicholas Green
Is there some nice online GUI for plotting trajectories and launch windows between things in space? Maybe Space Engine has it, I don't even remember, but it isn't online.
Isaac Johnson
>Irrespective of the speed of returning it home and getting the drone ship back in place The time involved to returning home will probably be the biggest pusher for immediately flying it back Once launch rate starts speeding up. Then again, how fast can launch rates actually get if the 2nd stage is perpetually expended
>how fast can launch rates actually get if the 2nd stage is perpetually expended The 2nd stage is a lot simpler and faster to manufacture. Most of the cost is in the engines, and there's only one for each 2nd stage. If the lower stages are fully reusable, they should be able to launch Falcon Heavies about ten times as often as they'd be able to fly expendable Falcon 9s. As the manufacturing process matures and gets streamlined with automation and experienced workers just doing the same thing over and over again, they should be able to launch every day or two.
They could also make a cheaper 2nd stage, once they can afford frequent tests of the second stage. Ordinary aluminum or fiberglass instead of aluminum-lithium. Cast and extruded parts instead of machined or 3d-printed. Ablative cooling instead of regenerative. Pressure-fed or piston-pump instead of turbopump. Ablative aerospike nozzle. Cluster tanks made of small-diameter pipe. Non-cryogenic propellant (hydrogen peroxide, NTO, or nitrous oxide). It would hurt performance, but they could radically increase the production rate. I think they'll make much more conservative, evolutionary changes to reduce production cost and increase production rate.
The only reason they're not focusing on a reusable 2nd stage for Falcon Heavy is that they want to put that engineering effort into a larger, more efficient fully-reusable vehicle. Raptor development is going well. They don't want to get stuck with their first try. They want to apply everything they've learned to a smarter, simpler vehicle with both higher performance and lower operating cost.
They might do a reusable 2nd stage as a testbed for the next-gen vehicle, using some of the technology from it.
