Author Topic: How can lunar resources ever compete with resources harvested from asteroids?  (Read 39282 times)

Offline QuantumG

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If we choose to stay with the status quo, even I would vote to discontinue human spaceflight. As it is, it's a waste of money.

They will, and they'll continue to say we're traitors for suggesting it could be done any other way.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline TrevorMonty

The only real hope for lunar base is if it is privately funded. There is definitely the interest, with Bigelow being most obvious but he is not working  alone. I think it is possible to do around trip to surface for less than <$100m based on 7 a trip.

There a few critical items that need to developed to make it happen.

1) Reusable lander. Masten and ULA.
2) DSH/Gateway at EML1. NASA are planning to build this and will allow partners both commercial and international to use it to access moon.
3) Lunar base. Bigelow.
4) Fuel depot at EML1. ULA.
5) Fuel depot at LEO plus reusable OTV. ULA. Maybe optional but would allow smaller RLV to be used and can be used as staging post. Adds extra complexity.
6) HLV for earth EML1 direct. FH, Vulcan Heavy, SLS and maybe Blue Origin.
7) Crew transport. Dragon, Orion, Blue Origin?, upgraded CST100?. Exploration Augmented Module EAM for extra accommodation and supplies, allows Dragon to carry 7 crew. Cygnus, Exoliner, Bigelow BEAM?.
8) Cargo transport. Cygnus and Exoliner/Jupiter.
9) Large SEP for fuel and cargo transport. NASA developing.
10) Lunar rover. NASA.

The DSH is planned for mid 2020s. ULA ACES early 2020s, basis of fuel depot, OTV and lander.
Most of these items either exist or soon will.  The items that need development will use technology that exists or soon will.

I think powering a lunar base is most demanding item. Being able store enough power to survive a lunar night. Nuclear power is differently no go for commercial base.
Lava caves would solve the radiation and extreme temperature swings. A pleasant  -20C 24/7.

Offline Hop_David

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Garbage in, Garbage out, vehicles in space are not even rented, that's just silly.

Someone's silly and full of garbage here. But it's not Gbalkie.

Of course we don't rent single-use expendable vehicles. But we're talking about reusable vehicles.

Reusable vehicles are routinely rented. And as Gbalkie notes, time is money.

I have no reason to believe any of your cost numbers other then $1000 kg to LEO which is the only figure I did not raise issue with from the last post.

That's the part I find questionable. $1000 per kilogram to LEO would pay for the cost of a throw away upper stage. Then we have to add to that the maintenance, transportation and refurbishment costs of a re-usable booster (if we manage to successfully reuse boosters).

I can tell you ball park what kind of fraction of marginal IMLEO cargo can be offloaded at EML1/2 after the vehicles are in place, ~75%.  That compares very favorably with boosting their chemically which would deliver less then 25%.

How do you refill your ion ferry after it runs out of xenon? With a throw-away upper stage?

If that's the case, a chemical lunar ferry beats your ion ferry from LEO after only 3 trips. And chemical's a hell of a lot faster.

And if the propellent source is an asteroid in an LDRO, your case is blown completely out the water.

From LDRO to EML2 by a fast route is about .4 km/s. e.4/3.6 - 1= .12. For every 100 tonnes of cargo and dry mass you need 12 tonnes of propellent.

If we had a power source alpha of kg/250 watts, I'll make a WAG that an ion ship could cut off its engines at around 150,000 km altitude and do a ballistic slide into EML1. So I'll call the delta V about 5 km/s. I believe exhaust velocity of Hall thrusters is around 30 km/s.  e5/30 - 1= .18. So for each 100 tonnes of cargo we'd need 18 tonnes of xenon.

And then there's the trip back. Also .4 km/s vs 5 km/s with the same exhaust velocities.

Offline francesco nicoli

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Replying on the opening post, my take as an economist.

Assuming asteroid resources, are in absolute, cheaper than lunar resources.

However, Luna (differently from asteroids) may have different purposes than simply resource harvesting. It may be used as a gate to the Luna-Earth system, it may provide habitats, and so on. Thus, it may produce local demand for resources which in turn produce higher investment and scale returns. In sum, if Luna experiences some degree of economic development, its resources might be accessible at lower price even if ceteris paribus would not be cheaper vis à vis asteroids.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Garbage in, Garbage out, vehicles in space are not even rented, that's just silly.

Someone's silly and full of garbage here. But it's not Gbalkie.

Of course we don't rent single-use expendable vehicles. But we're talking about reusable vehicles.

Reusable vehicles are routinely rented. And as Gbalkie notes, time is money.

I have no reason to believe any of your cost numbers other then $1000 kg to LEO which is the only figure I did not raise issue with from the last post.

That's the part I find questionable. $1000 per kilogram to LEO would pay for the cost of a throw away upper stage. Then we have to add to that the maintenance, transportation and refurbishment costs of a re-usable booster (if we manage to successfully reuse boosters).

I can tell you ball park what kind of fraction of marginal IMLEO cargo can be offloaded at EML1/2 after the vehicles are in place, ~75%.  That compares very favorably with boosting their chemically which would deliver less then 25%.

How do you refill your ion ferry after it runs out of xenon? With a throw-away upper stage?

If that's the case, a chemical lunar ferry beats your ion ferry from LEO after only 3 trips. And chemical's a hell of a lot faster.

And if the propellent source is an asteroid in an LDRO, your case is blown completely out the water.

From LDRO to EML2 by a fast route is about .4 km/s. e.4/3.6 - 1= .12. For every 100 tonnes of cargo and dry mass you need 12 tonnes of propellent.

If we had a power source alpha of kg/250 watts, I'll make a WAG that an ion ship could cut off its engines at around 150,000 km altitude and do a ballistic slide into EML1. So I'll call the delta V about 5 km/s. I believe exhaust velocity of Hall thrusters is around 30 km/s.  e5/30 - 1= .18. So for each 100 tonnes of cargo we'd need 18 tonnes of xenon.

And then there's the trip back. Also .4 km/s vs 5 km/s with the same exhaust velocities.

There is Argon in the surface regolith of the Moon. Its % quantities are very low but if you are processing large quantities of regolith for minerals (not water, because the cold traps will have very little Argon since the source of Argon in the regolith is the sun), then there will be some captured in processing. ~100kg for every 100mt of regolith processed. This is not enough for early stages of mining to make a dent in the required amount of Argon for electric thrusters, but eventually the total amount produced will catch up to the Argon usage. But chemical rockets will be the most economical initially because all the Argon has to come from Earth and for each kg of material exported from Earth there is a steep transport cost.

As far as my little table it was to show that transport costs are the major problem in doing material pricing. It multiplies the price significantly on every leg of the journey. Basicly a factor of 2 because of how much prop is used to go somewhere. Actually reusable vehicles are assumed in the pricing because their fractional cost per round trip makes the cost of prop the most significant item. A $300M reusable Lander reused 50 times costs $6M per round trip, whereas the prop costs (100mt of prop, 85mt used for delivery of 100mt of cargo and 15mt used to return the Lander to the source of the prop. It does not mater which direction the cargo is traveling the number are the same. This excludes development costs of probably $1.5B, but including development costs into the round trip costs used over a total of 10 vehicles ups the cost per round trip for the vehicle costs to $9M per round trip.

The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA.  The interesting item here is that spending does not really represent a NASA budget but all spending by everyone. A special note here is that some of this spending is back and forth between commercial entities and results in an offset of the some of the spending so that NASA spending is about half of the total spending per year, or max NASA budget of around $2B per year  over the first 12 years.
A BTW is that at the time I did this spreadsheet I conversed with Spudis about the concept and even sent him a copy. The spreadsheet is now out of date and the costs for transport from Earth to LEO have actually dropped with prospects of a FHR vehicle.
Another note is that LRMC is a notional name of the commercial mining venture (Lunar Robotic Mining Company), LM is Lockheed Martin for its Centaur based ACES tugs and Landers.


Online Coastal Ron

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One of Spudis/Lavois' assumptions was $5000/kg to LEO. I believe it is around $4,000 now. If the industry manages to economically reuse boosters, that could go down to $2,000.

Yes, or lower.  However Spudis understood that the economics of doing lunar ISRU depended on high costs from Earth.  If it's cheap to bring all your supplies from Earth, there is no incentive for doing lunar ISRU.

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The first ISRU will be low info, high mass products. Water, methane, hydrogen and oxygen. With accumulating infrastructure we would be able to do more.

You make it sound like we can pick up pure forms of all of those from the lunar surface, and we just dump them into a tank and use them.  The reality is likely to be far different, which is where the real costs add up.

For instance, just for water you have to have excavation machines, transportation machines and sizing machines, none of which are non-trivial.  Then you have to input HUGE amounts of energy into melting the water that is bound as ice, and figure out how to release the water that is bound chemically - which likely requires machinery and consumable supplies.

All of that equipment will need to be evolved, since the first versions are unlikely to work or last long.  Plus all of that equipment will need humans to tend to them, so we're talking about a large force that has to be supplied from Earth continuously.

So a lot of money is being spent on creating a local supply of just one commodity - water.  Why?  What is the end goal?

If the goal is to set up shop on the Moon, water is just one of many, many items that will be needed to support human life.  So to me, since water is not the end-all, be-all solution, it makes sense to focus on reducing the cost to move anything from Earth to the Moon and worry about ISRU down the road when we know better how to survive on the Moon.

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Regolith for radiation shielding. Make bricks from regolith.

Moving dirt makes sense, and no doubt we'll be doing lots of landscaping for landing sites, roads, surface operations and equipment, and so on.  That will be good education for learning what it takes to eventually do mining, but doing mining is not the first priority.

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At the moment we're getting no return on investment for the money we spend on human spaceflight. If we're going to invest any money it should go towards building infrastructure that expands our options.

If you don't think we're getting value out of learning how to live and work in space on the ISS, then I'm not sure how you can justify doing the same 1,000X further away.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Online Coastal Ron

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The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA....

The spreadsheet is GREAT!

One suggestion though.  The first tab of the spreadsheet should list who created it (screen name is OK) and any notes you wanted to provide.  I would also add the URL for the original post you posted it on.  That way if people start forwarding it around they can always find the original.

I've done a similar spreadsheet for an EML station, so I can appreciate the work that goes into it.  A great starting point, especially since it can be easily updated with new pricing information.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA....

The spreadsheet is GREAT!

One suggestion though.  The first tab of the spreadsheet should list who created it (screen name is OK) and any notes you wanted to provide.  I would also add the URL for the original post you posted it on.  That way if people start forwarding it around they can always find the original.

I've done a similar spreadsheet for an EML station, so I can appreciate the work that goes into it.  A great starting point, especially since it can be easily updated with new pricing information.

Thank you for the suggestions. I have been working slowly on an updated one with better costing data and a few more commercial players (ULA as well as LM for cis-Lunar infrastructure). But one of the interesting items is that the prices/ capabilities keep changing faster than I have been able to finish the model.

Edit: BTW the spreadsheet I post dated back to 2010/2011. A lot has changed since then. Spudis model used Constellation and Orion with ULA Atlas V for the launch vehicles and the total amount reflects those higher costs in his model. Plus it used development costs along the lines of normal NASA costing. My model used the COTS model for development costs and SpaceX vehicles for launch (cheapest known at the time and still is). As launch costs lower the complete costs of the infrastructure reduces, but also the competition price of water/prop for the sale location also lowers.
« Last Edit: 05/19/2015 06:47 pm by oldAtlas_Eguy »

Offline Impaler

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How do you refill your ion ferry after it runs out of xenon? With a throw-away upper stage?

If that's the case, a chemical lunar ferry beats your ion ferry from LEO after only 3 trips. And chemical's a hell of a lot faster.

You can not simply throw a 'throw-away' at me simply because you are skeptical of upper-stage reuse.  Though I am thoroughly convinced that this skepticism of yours is motivated purely by a desire to justify your own proposal and not out of any honest assessment of the engineering involved. 

I have pointed out repeatedly that reusable LEO launch is basically a wash because massive off earth infrastructure costs are going to be driven largely by these launch costs, if it's expensive to send propellent from Earth it is just as expensive to send infrastructure.  Not to mention we will never have the volume of payloads to justify using any resources in space unless we have cheap launch.

The scenario under which extra-terrestrial resource makes sense is 1) Your collecting the propellent at the destination to allow you to return to Earth, propellent that is FAR away is more valuable then near propellents because they maximizes our leverage in the rocket equation.  2)  The resource is to support an ongoing satellite/base or other ongoing mission and the resources allow us to reduce our logistical supply-train costs.  We use solar energy like this all the time, no one even thinks of this as 'using resources in space' but it is by far the most valuable resource ever harvested in space and without it we could do almost nothing.  But for things like water our ECLSS closure levels are so high that very soon we will need NONE, the water produced by the metabolic break down of food will provide all we need to make up for leaks and losses, so this need scenario is rapidly closing.

And if the propellent source is an asteroid in an LDRO, your case is blown completely out the water.

From LDRO to EML2 by a fast route is about .4 km/s. e.4/3.6 - 1= .12. For every 100 tonnes of cargo and dry mass you need 12 tonnes of propellent.

If we had a power source alpha of kg/250 watts, I'll make a WAG that an ion ship could cut off its engines at around 150,000 km altitude and do a ballistic slide into EML1. So I'll call the delta V about 5 km/s. I believe exhaust velocity of Hall thrusters is around 30 km/s.  e5/30 - 1= .18. So for each 100 tonnes of cargo we'd need 18 tonnes of xenon.

And then there's the trip back. Also .4 km/s vs 5 km/s with the same exhaust velocities.

Wow by arbitrarily choosing both the SOURCE and DESTINATION to be within spitting distance of each other you can claim a fantastically efficient transport system, BRILLIANT, why didn't I think of that.

Oh I know, because the only asteroids in DRO is one that WE put there by using Electric propulsion, why don't we just put the thing at EML2 in the first place and have zero transportation cost???  And if we moved an entire asteroid with SEP why wouldn't we move everything that way?  Not to mention that EML1/2 are not real delivery points, payloads originate in LEO and must be provided with outward propulsion from LEO to claim a viable system.  Seriously your ability to think of unreasonable and unlikely scenarios to try to justify extra-terrestrial propellents knows no bounds. 

Offline gbaikie

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As far as my little table it was to show that transport costs are the major problem in doing material pricing. It multiplies the price significantly on every leg of the journey. Basicly a factor of 2 because of how much prop is used to go somewhere. Actually reusable vehicles are assumed in the pricing because their fractional cost per round trip makes the cost of prop the most significant item. A $300M reusable Lander reused 50 times costs $6M per round trip, whereas the prop costs (100mt of prop, 85mt used for delivery of 100mt of cargo and 15mt used to return the Lander to the source of the prop. It does not mater which direction the cargo is traveling the number are the same. This excludes development costs of probably $1.5B, but including development costs into the round trip costs used over a total of 10 vehicles ups the cost per round trip for the vehicle costs to $9M per round trip.

The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA.  The interesting item here is that spending does not really represent a NASA budget but all spending by everyone. A special note here is that some of this spending is back and forth between commercial entities and results in an offset of the some of the spending so that NASA spending is about half of the total spending per year, or max NASA budget of around $2B per year  over the first 12 years.

So is upshot that NASA should not do this?
My idea would be NASA establishes LOX depot in LEO, first.
And perhaps depot evolve to be H2 and LOX depot.
The LOX depot is used for robotic lunar mission and later used for Manned lunar missions.
NASA explores both poles could evolve a focus one one of the Poles.
The robotic missions could explore say around 6 to 8 different sites with at least a couple being
in different large dark craters. So going in large craters and going to the rims of craters ["peaks of  ethereal light/earth relay points] and shadowed polar regions [which would have smaller craters- or similar to the Apollo sites]. It's possible one mission could go to deep crater, and rim, and a place nearby- or two more different mission going to one particular location.
So idea isn't to first select one place and just go to that one site, instead choose multiple locations, and with further exploration narrowing the focus and in the end ideally having the ability quantify the difference between of say three different potential lunar water mining sites with the robotic part of lunar program and then having the option of manned missions going to them and returning with variety lunar samples.
And then NASA is finished with lunar program and begins Mars program.
So the NASA lunar program is determine if and where there is minable lunar water.
And with this information it help assess whether the Moon can be commercially mined.
And in terms of Mars program somewhere less than 1 billion dollar of rocket fuel and water per year might bought in LEO and/or high earth orbit.  Shipped from Earth or possible lunar water mining could ship it to high earth orbit
« Last Edit: 05/21/2015 09:54 pm by gbaikie »

Online Coastal Ron

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My idea would be NASA establishes LOX depot in LEO, first.
And perhaps depot evolve to be H2 and LOX depot.
The LOX depot is used for robotic lunar mission and later used for Manned lunar missions.
NASA explores both poles could evolve a focus one one of the Poles.

Why does the U.S. Government have to do this?  Does the U.S. Government have more experience than the private sector in resource extraction, resource refinement, and resource distribution?

If the U.S. Government wants to foot the bill for setting up a fuel depot system then they could just hold a competition for two or more service providers and guarantee a minimum amount of business.  Anything above and beyond the minimum would be for the service providers to market.  The quicker we get to a market-based system the better.

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The robotic missions could explore say around 6 to 8 different sites with at least a couple being
in different dark craters. So going in large craters and going to the rims of craters ["peaks of  ethereal light/earth relay points] and shadowed polar regions [which would have smaller craters- or similar to the Apollo sites]. It's possible one mission could go to deep crater, and rim, and a place nearby- or two more different mission going to one particular location.

The U.S. Government has different motivations when they do things than when the private sector does, so if you want something to be done quickly and at the lowest practical cost the answer is to incentive the private sector to get involved, not to hope that a politically-influenced government organization can somehow figure out how to get the job done within some artificial budget.

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And with this information it help assess whether the Moon can be commercially mined.

The U.S. Government has no idea whether something is commercially viable.  Only the private sector can do that.

And what determines that?  Well #1 there has to be a customer for whatever the product is, and #2 the price has to be in the range the customer is willing to pay.

Because keep in mind the Moon is not the only place to get water, and with launch costs dropping I have yet to see a compelling business case for mining water on the Moon when we have virtually free water here on Earth - all that needs to be paid for is shipping.

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And in terms of Mars program somewhere less than 1 billion dollar of rocket fuel and water per year might bought in LEO and/or high earth orbit.  Shipped from Earth or possible lunar water mining could ship it to high earth orbit

And how much are you spending in time and money to get to that point where you can support $1B in rocket fuel and water per year?  And how much would it cost to just ship it from Earth?

Are we suspending capitalism when we go into space?
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline gbaikie

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My idea would be NASA establishes LOX depot in LEO, first.
And perhaps depot evolve to be H2 and LOX depot.
The LOX depot is used for robotic lunar mission and later used for Manned lunar missions.
NASA explores both poles could evolve a focus one one of the Poles.

Why does the U.S. Government have to do this?  Does the U.S. Government have more experience than the private sector in resource extraction, resource refinement, and resource distribution?
My idea is NASA explore the Moon and NASA does not mine the Moon.
In terms of depots, military has done some testing of in orbit refueling, and NASA, has it's experience with ISS and also done some experiments related to it [lately, I believe].

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If the U.S. Government wants to foot the bill for setting up a fuel depot system then they could just hold a competition for two or more service providers and guarantee a minimum amount of business.  Anything above and beyond the minimum would be for the service providers to market.  The quicker we get to a market-based system the better.
Generally NASA gets bids.
One aspect is a depot in LEO would be at particular inclination. Or KSC should have a depot. Though I suppose it could have a few depots at that inclination

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The robotic missions could explore say around 6 to 8 different sites with at least a couple being
in different dark craters. So going in large craters and going to the rims of craters ["peaks of  ethereal light/earth relay points] and shadowed polar regions [which would have smaller craters- or similar to the Apollo sites]. It's possible one mission could go to deep crater, and rim, and a place nearby- or two more different mission going to one particular location.

Quote
The U.S. Government has different motivations when they do things than when the private sector does, so if you want something to be done quickly and at the lowest practical cost the answer is to incentive the private sector to get involved, not to hope that a politically-influenced government organization can somehow figure out how to get the job done within some artificial budget.
Saying when NASA starts a lunar program it should first focus on getting operational depot.
Which it then uses sending robotic and manned missions to Moon and to Mars.

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And with this information it help assess whether the Moon can be commercially mined.

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The U.S. Government has no idea whether something is commercially viable.  Only the private sector can do that.

And what determines that?  Well #1 there has to be a customer for whatever the product is, and #2 the price has to be in the range the customer is willing to pay.
The US govt has played significant role in exploration for minerals on Earth- since the time US federal government was formed.

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Because keep in mind the Moon is not the only place to get water, and with launch costs dropping I have yet to see a compelling business case for mining water on the Moon when we have virtually free water here on Earth - all that needs to be paid for is shipping.
Earth orbit is about 9 km/sec and lunar orbit is about 1.7 km/sec.


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And in terms of Mars program somewhere less than 1 billion dollar of rocket fuel and water per year might bought in LEO and/or high earth orbit.  Shipped from Earth or possible lunar water mining could ship it to high earth orbit

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And how much are you spending in time and money to get to that point where you can support $1B in rocket fuel and water per year?  And how much would it cost to just ship it from Earth?
One would not commercially mine the Moon with idea of NASA being the sole customer.
A preferred customer is someone who needs rocket fuel to leave the Moon- so need to line these up first
before investing any amount of money, and as one increases in production one expands to Lunar orbit, and then finally expand it high earth and Mars orbit. With assumption high earth and Mars orbit would include NASA as customer.
So say 3 years after one begins mining lunar water, as a guess NASA could buy as much as 10 to 25%.
And with the first year one mostly uses the rocket fuel to increase your capacity to make more rocket fuel per year. But perhaps 1 or two customer which don't need much rocket fuel could get lunar rocket fuel in the first year. And I would say you would have show it's near viable within 2 to 3 years**- probably not selling anything to NASA within first 2 years.

Edit: it would be quite helpful if NASA were to buy lots of water at say EML-1/2. Or not much demand for water except possibly NASA going and returning from Mars. And water does not require all the electrical power which required to split it into rocket fuel. And getting enough electrical power will be major restraint in terms increasing production.  And of course lunar water would be the first thing to be competitive, which would followed by LOX. And Hydrogen could be pretty costly on the Moon- though with CH4 and H2
available in enough quantity, hydrogen could be less expensive.

**Edit: Quiz and as example. SpaceX started in 2002, at what point in time was SpaceX near viable?
And when was or will be SpaceX viable and btw, bonus question when would you guess SpaceX will be "taking over the world".
Same questions for Virgin Galactic.

Would you buy shares in Virgin Galactic at the moment?

[I don't think it's directly available nor is SpaceX, but seems likely at some point, it would possible to directly buy such stocks, but question is, if allowed to, would you buy shares?
Both have had "institutional" /insider type investment- I mean, in terms of public offering.]

« Last Edit: 05/21/2015 10:38 pm by gbaikie »

Offline Oceanbluesky

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What is needed in terms of mining lunar water is to export rocket fuel beyond the Moon, but also has it's own "protected" market at lunar surface.
How protected is the lunar surface market if water requirements per person are actually quite minimal given recycling...it may make economic sense to just deliver water along with tourists and fresh food from Earth rather than establish and operate any lunar mining whatsoever. At 95% efficiency water contained in imported food replaces water lost from the system. So as far as needs for tourists and their servants, mining lunar ice makes little sense. Water on the lunar surface may be such a minimal market that other destinations could meet such needs incidentally, without lunar overhead.

the energetic advantage of some asteroids will be tiny compared to the operational advantages of the Moon (3 days away, all resources in one location instead of spread out over multiple orbits)
The operational advantage of an asteroid - especially a chunk placed at EML2 - seem to far exceed those of the moon. Vehicles constructed at asteroids already in zero g do not need to be reenforced for launch, or, supported within a gravity field...launch costs are avoided for vehicles whose final operational environment will be zero g...EML2 can deliver materials anywhere on the lunar surface probably as efficiently as hops from its poles..."three days away" doesn't really matter to telerobots..."all the resources in one location" also might not matter since their synthesis will probably take place in dedicated, centralized zero g facilities...it seems far from clear the moon has an operational advantage as a construction site

A small asteroid, yes it very well could alter it to somewhere you don't want it. 
we don't need to worry about altering the orbit of the moon with the sizes of asteroids we will retrieve...(if that is your concern?)

I for one, think that even if SpaceX fields MCT at the price point they are claiming, the most economically lucrative part of the Solar system will still be within cislunar orbit, not on the surface of Mars.
The most "profitable" off-Earth locations for resource development in the near-term if there were a Mars settlement effort would probably be the moons of Mars...cyclers would refuel there for round-trips back to Mars via depots on the moons teleoperate from the Mars surface stations. (No need for lunar water-ice for Mars and the Outer-Solar System if Phobos and Deimos have considerable amounts of water-ice/clays.) Furthermore, inexpensive reusable rockets may restock LEO fuel depots from tap water in Brownsville rather than from gigantic multi-billion dollar lunar mines.

The third thing we clearly need is confidence in a DSH that can support humans for multiyear missions.
Multi-year missions to where? What if a DSH just becomes a high-altitude ISS on another multi-decade mission to nowhere, stranding humanity for a half-century in cislunar space, at extraordinary expense and minimal return?

Put these together and we have a very moderate plan of a DSH in high lunar orbit, investigating ISRU with asteroid materials captured with a SEP tug, and likely serving as a base for near realtime teleoperation to a growing international robotic base at the lunar poles to investigate ISRU there.
I wonder if we would be better served by making the second generation ISS/DSH a Mars cycler? focusing upon resources from Deimos and Phobos rather than those down a lunar gravity well? And apart from testing the effects of cosmic radiation/shielding on humans, why do we need a human crew in Earth telespace? Why are astronauts anything more than passengers to settlements? Or tourists and their servants?

It is very misleading to describe lunar ISRU as a way of getting to mars IMO.
right, it seems insincere...and furthermore as the public becomes marginally more space-literate it will become obvious to them that lunar resources are unnecessary for Mars settlement, and, that lunar scientists who insist we develop the moon first have their own dated agendas

I only value mars for it's potential ISRU anyway.
interesting...for settlement? to be brought back to near-Earth space? to be used to refuel eventual craft headed to the Outer Solar System?

Sure, a manned lunar base could lead [to Mars], but firstly it would be a big project of its own, practically a town...
A lunar base would seem to be a gigantic fantasy make-work project since the moon is well within Earth's telespace. The value of sending humans to the moon to accomplish what telerobots can do better - apart from serving tourists - seems zero.

Mars may become an easy target from all this experience but solar system colonisation will already be underway with or without it.
Where else in the solar system do you hope to see humans settle? (Just out of curiosity...)

So since the Moon is nearby [relative to speed of light] I am generally oppose to the requirement of a lunar base for the purpose of exploring the Moon.
Exactly. As will be the public. It will seem strange to insist astronauts drive a lunar rover when our cars self-driving...the value of sending humans anywhere in Earth's telespace is questionable. The real purpose of human space flight may only be to send humans beyond Earth's telespace to operate telerobots at distant locations: Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, etc.

if you scale up to O'Neill type multi-thousand ton architectures which may include mass drivers, the moon becomes more attractive
It's interesting to think of the state of knowledge about our solar system in which O'Neill wrote...he was utterly unaware of the 10,000+ near-Earth asteroids we've discovered since the 1980s, he did not use the term "near-Earth asteroid" at all (I think), and, he even suggested that as off-Earth economies flourished lunar mines would be left as ghost-towns in the wake of asteroid belt development. It is unfortunate his contemporary followers do not have the critical thinking skills to be as flexible as he was....the moon was not an ideal long-term resource for him.

if most of the demand in cis-lunar space ends up being on the moon (for example, a bigelow hotel with a swimming pool on the moon), that does improve the prospects of lunar ISRU
recycling is so efficient and human water needs so minimal, and launch costs declining so much, that lunar facilities will probably forego any on site resource development...instead opting to import their supplies from Earth. "Please go to the bathroom before returning to Earth"...literally.

Asteroid water has this same problem competing with Lunar water at the Lunar surface if both cost approximately the same to make then Asteroid water would not be competitive at the Lunar surface.
Sale Price at Location $115 kg asteroid water at EML2
http://clowder.net/hop/TMI/FuelDepot.jpg etc
First that chart doesn't distinguish between EML1 and EML2, and, I think it overstates Delta-V of Phobos?  Anyhow, can't bulk non-perishable mass traveling to and from Deimos to EML2 take advantage of multi-year gravity assists? Resources from the Martian moons could also just "hitch a ride" on a Mars cycler - and be used in transit - thereby negating much of their propellant and opportunity loss costs, right?

When we are moving outward from LEO electric propulsion is possible which will cut costs hugely, it is also very likely to be used for going to and from asteroids.
Why do most electric thrusters use Xenon rather than the much less expensive, prevalent Argon? Just curious?

___

Quick and dirty lunar polar ice extraction: a lightweight Dragon lands (without an ablative heat-shield), a clunky low tech telerobotic rover rolls out, a pad heated by RTGs flops down on crater ice, volatiles evaporate then freeze on nearby cold plates, these are scraped clean, this ice is collected by the rover then shoved in the Dragon...this repeats until the Dragon is no longer hungry and flies away to regurgitate its volatiles into another slightly modified Dragon serving as a fuel electrolysis refinery/depot at EML2. ...That seems super cheap and easy. All telerobotic, zero lunar overhead. Doable. Not necessarily ever profitable, but...even if the Dragon's legs freeze to the crater, the RTGs fracture, ice builds up everywhere, and so on, it would still prove: lunar resources exist, massive infrastructure is ridiculous, and humans on site for mining is absurd.

The issue then is whether we can avoid the cost of landing and launching a modified Dragon from the lunar surface by docking with nearby asteroids already in zero g instead...or, by minimizing the opportunity cost of time-to-market for ice harvested from Martian moons, which are already in zero g and along a trajectory we want to send supplies anyway. Could cyclers use and then resell water from Deimos and Phobos in Earth orbit?

Perhaps this original post should be retitled: "How can lunar water-ice compete with water-ice from Martian moons? Especially anywhere but the lunar surface? Why then would we mine Luna rather than Deimos?"

Finally the spreadsheet by oldAtlas_Eguy is great...if it were a Google Sheet (free doc hosted in the cloud readable by invite or by the general public) it might obtain more exposure...there are a few cells which return the error message "empty cell" etc (and I'm unsure what the take away is though and how to adjust improvements in vehicle dry mass and reusability)...great start though, thanks!

Offline Rhyshaelkan

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It would seem asteroid resources spiraled down to various locations on the lunar surface would be competitive with resources harvested from the lunar poles - especially if they had to be launched from the poles to various locations on the moon.

Why do advocates of lunar resources so rarely discuss asteroid resources? If their intention is to justify humans returning to the moon - why not argue for that directly, rather than use the pretext of requiring humans to mine lunar resources - especially at a supposed profit in comparison to asteroids??

Thanks

I do not see lunar resources competing with asteroid resources. They are just stepping stones to making mankind extraterrestrial.

To have this discussion you have to identify why you are doing this.

Are you trying to make money?

Are you trying to explore, help exploration?

You can make a flow chart going from Humans on Earth ---> Extraterrestrial Humans(self sustaining)
Many paths, possibilities, factors, techniques.
Do you start with manned? Unmanned? Teleoperated? Self directed according to program with occasional input?
Where does your funding come from? To whom do you answer, for results, profit, data, goods, services?


A billion more questions to answer before you can come close to answering the question of the Original Topic.

I am not a professional. Just a rational amateur dreaming of mankind exploiting the universe.

Offline gbaikie

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What is needed in terms of mining lunar water is to export rocket fuel beyond the Moon, but also has it's own "protected" market at lunar surface.
How protected is the lunar surface market if water requirements per person are actually quite minimal given recycling...it may make economic sense to just deliver water along with tourists and fresh food from Earth rather than establish and operate any lunar mining whatsoever. At 95% efficiency water contained in imported food replaces water lost from the system. So as far as needs for tourists and their servants, mining lunar ice makes little sense. Water on the lunar surface may be such a minimal market that other destinations could meet such needs incidentally, without lunar overhead.

Let's start from the beginning.
Mining lunar water is all about having rocket fuel at the surface of the Moon. If rocket fuel is available on the Moon then you don't need to bring it from Earth.
The vehicle which landed 2 crew on the Moon and return them to lunar orbit, called the LEM consisted of descend stage which landed a ascent stage. The descend stage gross weight was  22,783 lb (10,334 kg
and ascent stage was 10,300 lb (4,700 kg). Together they weighed about 32,000 lb.
If you did not need to bring rocket the vehicle from earth instead of weight 32,000 lb could weigh 10,000 lb. So one needs to lift a 1/3rd to the mass from Earth. Which basically means it's going to cost about 1/3rd of the price to go to the Moon.
So you want to mine water, to make rocket fuel so the cost is about 1/3rd the cost for tourist to go to the Moon.
To lower the cost further if make rocket fuel on the moon and ship to lunar orbit, then also need less mass brought to Moon. And it also allows lunar vehicles to be reused. Which means rather needed 32000 lb, or 10000 lb, one needs to bring the weight of the passenger to lunar orbit.

What meant by protected was is rocket fuel made from  asteroids  or some other way to get cheap rocket fuel at lunar orbit, is that at surface one could still sell rocket fuel at same price as cost of rocket fuel at lunar orbit plus the cost of shipping it to lunar surface. Or if rocket fuel were as cheap as 500 per lb at lunar orbit, it cost about 500 per lb to ship it to lunar surface so at lunar surface rocket would worth 1000 per lb. Or you sell lunar made rocket fuel at $900 per lb and it cheaper than shipping the 500 per lb rocket fuel from lunar orbit to surface.
And at such price the cost to send lunar tourist would be about 20 million per seat- or cheaper than current price of going to ISS. So one might have 50 to 100 people going to the Moon per year and selling a fair amount of lunar rocket fuel. And water would be about 500 per lb or less at lunar surface and again cheaper than one ship from Earth or where ever if rocket fuel was $500 per lb at lunar orbit.

Of course due to lunar competition, the price of rocket fuel or water could be cheaper- and meant protected from cheaper prices from someplace other than the Moon.
« Last Edit: 05/26/2015 04:53 am by gbaikie »

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Ok here is a more detailed costing/prices of water and prop produced at lunar surface.

Note: the cost of equipment includes its development, manufacture, launch/delivery to destination and operations over total life of the equipment.

Cost of equipment to produce water$2,000,000,000
Total water produced over life of equipment 4,380,000
Life  time of equipment5
$/kg to produce water$457
-----------
Cost of equipment to produce prop$1,000,000,000
Total prop produced over life of equipment 13,140,000
Life  time of equipment15
$/kg to produce prop + water cost$533
-----------
Sale price of Water (cost + 30% profit)$594
Total profits per year on producing water$156,000,000
Sale price of prop (cost + 20% profit)$639
Total profits per year on producing prop$112,000,000
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Prop used per round trip with 40mt of down cargo(equipment/supplies/people)80,000
no of trips per year based on produced prop11
prop cost per round trip of lander$51,141,553
cost of lander$1,000,000,000
life of lander in trips33
total cost for lander ops per round trip$81,444,583
Price of Lander per round trip (costs + 20% profit)$97,733,499
Sale price of water $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,212
Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,258
Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2  manufactured from delivered water in 30mt lots$3,288

A note is the interesting quirk of the eco model is that it costs less to manufacture the prop on the lunar surface than to produce it on orbit. But the difference is only 1% of sale price. This gives a feeling for the price that an asteroid produced water/prop must beat.

Another note is that prop delivered from Earth at $2,000/kg is cheaper at EML2 (if the price only doubles) than this prop produced at Lunar surface.  The exception to using Earth prop at EML2 for the Lander is the Lander purchases prop for its operations at the Lunar surface price and not at the EML2 price. $700/kg vs $2,000/kg.

Another note is that the price of prop delivered increases for a transport leg by a factor of ~4 not the high efficiency/long lifetime system factor of 2 for an initial transport system. So Earth prop at EML2 would be ~$4,000/kg not the earlier estimated $2,000/kg based on prop prices at LEO of $1,000/kg.

Offline Nilof

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The moon is not a step towards Mars any more than reaching India by sailing south of Africa was a step towards the Americas. It is a destination in its own right.

Sure, the Moon may not be useful initially to reach Mars since SEP and Martian ISRU sort of kill the demand for lunar fuel in the first place. But on the flipside, I could point out the equally inane statement that Mars isn't particularly useful as a stepping stone to the moon.

My general feeling is that the moon will be permanently settled before Mars simply because settling the moon has more potential to be profitable. You can reasonably offer rich tourists a two week vacation on the moon. You simply can't do that with Mars. The is effectively no business model that works on Mars that wouldn't work better on the Moon. The lunar resources are mostly something you want to have for lunar use.

While as far as in-space resources are concerned, I think that asteroids will indeed initially beat the moon in industrial value, the moon has the advantage of scale. As soon as you start looking at large scale colonization projects which involves a million tonnes of anything, the moon will tend to have the best value, regardless of whether you view it as a source of volatiles or building materials. When the scale is large enough to justify landing a Mass driver on the moon, exporting obscenely huge quantities of stuff becomes very feasible.

With that said, I'll make the bold prediction that the number of people in space at any time will never be exceeded by the number of people on any planet except Earth. In-space projects including asteroid stuff will likely keep having priority over planetary surfaces for some time.
For a variable Isp spacecraft running at constant power and constant acceleration, the mass ratio is linear in delta-v.   Δv = ve0(MR-1). Or equivalently: Δv = vef PMF. Also, this is energy-optimal for a fixed delta-v and mass ratio.

Offline Paul451

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No-one seems to have questioned the premise of the original post...

It would seem asteroid resources spiraled down to various locations on the lunar surface would be competitive with resources harvested from the lunar poles - especially if they had to be launched from the poles to various locations on the moon.

By definition, a suborbital hop will require less delta-V than landing from low orbit. (And the delta-V from beyond-lunar-orbit to lunar-landing will be more than LLO-to-landing.) So sending fuel from the poles to another lunar installation will always require less velocity than sending it from asteroids.

(Spiraled down?)

Offline TrevorMonty

Here is link for calculating DV for lunar hops. The spreadsheet gave 1.5km/s for 90degrees eg polar to equator. A 30km hop is 1degree or 220m/s

As rough guide a hopper tanker would use 0.6kg to deliver 1kg to equator from poles. Hopper can be very simple and light for fuel delivery eg Masten Zombie. Round trip <2hrs with 4 burns so tank insulation can be light.

http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4413/lunar-sub-orbital-trajectories
« Last Edit: 05/26/2015 11:13 pm by TrevorMonty »

Offline gbaikie

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Ok here is a more detailed costing/prices of water and prop produced at lunar surface.

Note: the cost of equipment includes its development, manufacture, launch/delivery to destination and operations over total life of the equipment.

Cost of equipment to produce water$2,000,000,000
Total water produced over life of equipment 4,380,000
Life  time of equipment5
$/kg to produce water$457
-----------
Cost of equipment to produce prop$1,000,000,000
Total prop produced over life of equipment 13,140,000
Life  time of equipment15
$/kg to produce prop + water cost$533
-----------
Sale price of Water (cost + 30% profit)$594
Total profits per year on producing water$156,000,000
Sale price of prop (cost + 20% profit)$639
Total profits per year on producing prop$112,000,000
----------
Prop used per round trip with 40mt of down cargo(equipment/supplies/people)80,000
no of trips per year based on produced prop11
prop cost per round trip of lander$51,141,553
cost of lander$1,000,000,000
life of lander in trips33
total cost for lander ops per round trip$81,444,583
Price of Lander per round trip (costs + 20% profit)$97,733,499
Sale price of water $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,212
Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,258
Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2  manufactured from delivered water in 30mt lots$3,288

A note is the interesting quirk of the eco model is that it costs less to manufacture the prop on the lunar surface than to produce it on orbit. But the difference is only 1% of sale price. This gives a feeling for the price that an asteroid produced water/prop must beat.

Another note is that prop delivered from Earth at $2,000/kg is cheaper at EML2 (if the price only doubles) than this prop produced at Lunar surface.  The exception to using Earth prop at EML2 for the Lander is the Lander purchases prop for its operations at the Lunar surface price and not at the EML2 price. $700/kg vs $2,000/kg.
I think what you deliver from the Moon to EML2 is water and LOX.
So you might not even deliver LH2 to lunar orbit, instead just LOX and bring H2 [or Methane, even Kerosene] from Earth. Or at least at the beginning.
I think LOX will be much cheaper on Lunar surface than LH2. And obviously water is cheaper than LOX.
I generally assume [guess] the difference in price of H2 and LOX is 4 to 1. It could be larger or less difference, of course.
And there is the difference on Earth, LOX about 5 to 10 cent per kg and H2 is about $4.50 per kg. So greater difference on Earth and with the launch cost more or less equalizing their cost in Space if delivered from Earth.
Another aspect of difference of price, is one gets paid more for splitting water on the Moon.
Or if could get paid 1$ per kg for oxygen one gets from splitting water on Earth then one could economically make H2 by electrolysis. Because one would get more for the oxygen produced as one gets for the Hydrogen. Or from 9 kg of water you get 8 kg of oxygen and 1 kg of Hydrogen.
And rockets uses around 6 kg of LOX per 1 kg of LH2.

Edit: As far as costs and prices of chart above:
Cost of equipment to produce water: 2 billion
Cost of equipment to produce prop: 1 billion

I tend to think the cost  produce prop is more expensive than cost to mine water.
And cost of equipment to produce prop is largely solar panels or whatever power supply. And it seems
one making about 1000 tons of rocket fuel on average per year. Which would be huge solar farm.
Now if had to mine 1000 tons of water in first year, that would more water than one could use and 2 billion
cost for the mining equipment might about this cost. But I think one going to start off with about 100 tons of water needed in first year, and by time of 5 years when mining equipment reaches your life expectancy
one might be needing as much as 1000 tons per year.
So if talking about 5 year time period, what seems aggressive, is 100, 200, 400, 800, 2000 tons of water mined per year. And one is in the red at least for first 2 years. And by end of 2 years, the cost of lunar mining might be somewhere a billion dollars spent and not much return yet, and then one sink another billion dollars into it so you reach 2000 ton per year production.
Meanwhile the problem is getting enough electrical power on the Moon.
But before spending the added billion, one needs enough demand for rocket fuel [or LOX, H2, H20].
And don't think one ship anything to EML-2 within first 2 years.
Or one start with market of lunar surface, and try to get to Lunar orbit as soon as possible- because then you use that shipped rocket fuel to land more stuff on the Moon- mostly solar panels.
And to solve lack of lunar water demand, the lunar water mining company could mine other stuff than water- like iron. And iron is Fe and oxidized iron, and is collected with magnet as one mining "water ore".
With less market and/or less aggressive, it could be 50, 100, 200, 200, 300 tons of water in first 5 years.

Of course if one has company processing Iron and making iron stuff, the lunar water mining could use the iron products for mining water [so don't need it shipped from Earth]. And someone making iron could value iron oxide more than pure iron, and one get oxygen from making the pure iron. Or oxygen could worth as much as the metal iron per kg.
Some think PGM is possible to mine on the Moon [ship to earth]. lunar dirt at earth is worth more than gold
[$50 per gram] so these some things which could a customer for rocket fuel at lunar surface.
Main thing about exporting to EML-2 [or lunar orbit] is increasing demand for lunar water and lunar rocket fuel. And if there was enough demand at lunar surface, one doesn't export the rocket fuel or water. Or doesn't export it until one needs more market.
« Last Edit: 05/27/2015 03:42 am by gbaikie »

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