Author Topic: Lunar Colony  (Read 30209 times)

Lunar Colony
« on: 06/08/2015 10:06 pm »
So, I want to know why we don't do anymore missions to the moon? I know that there is no much to explore but don't you guys think that will be a good idea building a station or maybe a colony on moon? So that we might advance to the space exploration?

PS: I'm Brazilian, so sorry if my english is not that well

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #1 on: 06/08/2015 10:40 pm »
If you're asking about human spaceflight, the answer is mostly political (and rather depressing). If you're asking about robotic exploration, the direction of that program is decided by "scientific need" and many other destinations in the solar system are seen as more scientifically interesting than the Moon. Our best hope appears to be private companies - but so far none of them have announced a launch date.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline kch

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #2 on: 06/08/2015 10:53 pm »
So, I want to know why we don't do anymore missions to the moon? I know that there is no much to explore ...

There's *plenty* left to explore.  We landed crews for short visits in 6 places between 1969 and 1972 -- they didn't cover much of the Moon's area.


... but don't you guys think that will be a good idea building a station or maybe a colony on moon? So that we might advance to the space exploration?

Sounds good to me.


PS: I'm Brazilian, so sorry if my english is not that well

Your English is fine ... and "Welcome to NSF!"  :)


Offline kch

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #3 on: 06/08/2015 10:58 pm »
Our best hope appears to be private companies - but so far none of them have announced a launch date.

We keep hoping, though, don't we?  (well, I do ... ;) )

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #4 on: 06/08/2015 11:00 pm »
We keep hoping, though, don't we?  (well, I do ... ;) )

The Google Lunar X-Prize have made it a requirement that they have to announce a launch contract by the end of the year, or the competition will end. Hopefully that will light a fire under them.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Oli

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #5 on: 06/09/2015 12:06 am »
So, I want to know why we don't do anymore missions to the moon?

Been there, done that. Human spaceflight is a propaganda tool and America wants to be first on Mars. The other space agencies do not have the budget (maybe not even NASA will have it).

« Last Edit: 06/09/2015 12:10 am by Oli »

Offline gbaikie

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #6 on: 06/09/2015 01:33 am »
So, I want to know why we don't do anymore missions to the moon? I know that there is no much to explore but don't you guys think that will be a good idea building a station or maybe a colony on moon? So that we might advance to the space exploration?

PS: I'm Brazilian, so sorry if my english is not that well

Well NASA currently has LRO in lunar orbit. And there some talk lately of NASA and Canada putting rover at one of the poles. Chinese are actively exploring the Moon [but it's slow decadal affair].
And there is Google Xprize which a number parties are engaged in winning.

And US congress when Bush was president, approve an approach of first exploring the Moon, and then to explore Mars. And Obama basically said we already been to the Moon and instead let's go to asteroid by 2025 [8 year after his second term ends- and he has not tried to do much and I would say the idea of going to space rock in 10 year time is basically a "plan"  not to do much]. And when campaigning Obama said he wanted to reduce NASA budget so as to spend it on something else. And Obama seems far more interested in "climate change" as compared to space exploration.
And suspect there is good chance, NASA will explore the Moon, once Obama leaves office.

As for what I would like NASA to do in regards to the Moon. I think NASA should explore the lunar poles to determine if there is commercially minable water. So I think NASA should have 40 billion dollar program lasting less than 10 years, and after 10 years, NASA should explore Mars to determine if and where there could be future Mars settlements. And while NASA is exploring Mars, perhaps money will be invested to mine lunar water and perhaps some lunar rocket fuel and water could sold to NASA for use in it's Mars exploration program. And if there is commercial lunar mining it seems other countries' space agency may want to have lunar bases near the mining- as having water available would lower the costs of establishing and operating such bases. 
And there are many things of research interests relate to the Moon. The history of our solar system is written on lunar surface, and variety of space rocks have impacted the Moon and small percentage of them have impacted at low velocity. And there research related to a variety of different things one could mine and process on the Moon.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2015 01:46 am by gbaikie »

Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #7 on: 06/09/2015 09:56 am »
First of all thank to all to reply and second, I'am thinking about human “living” in the moon just like mars, they will have to stay a number of days and switch with others to continue exploring, the construction maybe will maid by robots and the station will not be to big, so you think that this is possible?

Offline spacenut

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #8 on: 06/09/2015 01:30 pm »
I think the moon could be used to make lox and launch it to an L2 gateway fuel depot.  From what I read, the soil on the moon is about 20% oxygen.  Silicone and other minerals can be unlocked from the oxygen for other uses.  Lift off from the moon to L2 would be easier than bringing lox from earth.  Moon lox could also be taken to a LEO fueling station.  Almost all fuels used in rockets require lox.  Hydrogen, K-1, methane, all require liquid oxygen.  Also, lox is the heaviest of them all and is about 70-80% of the weight of rocket propulsion.  So it seems to me having a lox manufacturing base on the moon is logical from a standpoint of continuous feed to a couple of refueling stations. 

An MCT could refuel methane in LEO if it had enough lox still in it's tanks, then go to the L2 station to refuel lox for it's journey to Mars. 

This would allow us to have a permanent moon base, a permanent L2 facility, and a permanent LEO refueling station.  Stations could expand for experimentation, layovers for trips to and from various destinations, and a place to refuel large deep space probes to the outer planets and moons. 

A moon manufacturing base would also need power (possibly nuclear especially for nighttime operations), and solar power for day operations.  Maybe even manufactured fuel and lox could be used for power production during the 14 day nighttime operations.  Food could be grown to help with supplies from earth.  Also, the moon isn't so far away a supply ship could bring food, water, or other badly needed supplies within days in an emergency instead of months like on Mars.

The only reason not to use the moon is if NEP is used in large Mars transport ships which probably will not happen anytime soon. 

Offline The Amazing Catstronaut

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #9 on: 06/09/2015 04:31 pm »
First of all thank to all to reply and second, I'am thinking about human “living” in the moon just like mars, they will have to stay a number of days and switch with others to continue exploring, the construction maybe will maid by robots and the station will not be to big, so you think that this is possible?

Construction by robots is extremely difficult if you want the construction to be mostly via ISRU.
Resident feline spaceflight expert. Knows nothing of value about human spaceflight.

Offline gbaikie

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #10 on: 06/09/2015 05:49 pm »
First of all thank to all to reply and second, I'm thinking about human “living” in the moon just like mars, they will have to stay a number of days and switch with others to continue exploring, the construction maybe will made by robots and the station will not be to big, so you think that this is possible?

It's possible, but it's expensive.
It's expensive to go to the Moon and it's more expensive to stay on the Moon.
On Earth, people use about 100 gallons of water per day- for drinking and cleaning.
And in terms of making food- food is mostly water, and requires a lot water to make food.
Water on Earth is very cheap- it falls from the sky. A large rain storm may drop a billion tonnes of water.
And there are rivers of it. And water can got from the ground by digging a well. To live humans need water
and a lot of it.
So if one could mine water on the Moon at low cost, this would dramatically lower the costs of living on the Moon.
And other then clean, drink and grow food from water, one can make rocket fuel from water.
So if water can be bought cheaply** then one make rocket fuel cheaply.
And having rocket fuel on the Moon makes the cost of going to the Moon much cheaper.
Or with the Apollo the vehicle which landed people on the Moon was basically rocket fuel truck which carried 2 people and large part of why it had so much rocket fuel, is it needed to bring rocket fuel in order
get the people back to Earth.
So if if there is rocket fuel on the Moon, this reduces the mass needed from Earth and brought to lunar surface by about 1/3. Or basically cuts costs of sending people [who need to return to Earth] by about the 1/3rd the costs.
And there other aspects about having rocket fuel on the moon which lower the costs of getting to the Moon.
Or if there was rocket fuel on the Moon, one lower costs of getting to the Moon by about 1/10th, and in terms staying on the much more than reducing the cost by 1/10th.

If there were to be commercial mining of lunar water, then the consequent of that would other commercial mining of other stuff on the moon, and you will get research bases, lunar hotels for lunar tourist. And people living and working on the Moon.

Water on Mars is far more abundant and Mars has 25 trillion tons of CO2 in it's atmosphere. And to grow food one needs water and CO2 [and little bit of other stuff]. So Mars could be much better place to grow food- could have water as cheap as water is on Earth and could get food as cheap as on Earth. And have enough water and food to support billions of people. Though unlikely millions of people could live on Mars within say next 2 centuries. But point about Mars is there is a lot water and CO2.

*** Cheap water on the Moon is about 1 million dollars per ton. On Earth water is about $1 per ton.
And cheap water for human settlement on Mars  is about $1 to $10 per ton. And for Mars exploration cheap water would be around 1 million dollar per ton. In first decades of people living on the moon [bases, hotel] cheap water would $10,000 to $100,000 per ton. And in terms of water used in Lunar exploration, water would not be cheap, but say around 10 million dollar per ton would be on the cheaper side- or probably end up paying more than this, but could need less than 1 ton of water {or there is no reason for humans to spend much time on the lunar surface if exploring the Moon to find minable water}. Or Robotic exploration could exceed mass of crew [and their life support and their return fuel] which land on the Moon.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2015 08:13 pm by gbaikie »

Offline Nilof

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #11 on: 06/09/2015 10:51 pm »
[
On Earth, people use about 100 gallons of water per day- for drinking and cleaning.
And in terms of making food- food is mostly water, and requires a lot water to make food.
Water on Earth is very cheap- it falls from the sky. A large rain storm may drop a billion tonnes of water.
And there are rivers of it. And water can got from the ground by digging a well. To live humans need water
and a lot of it.

Americans living in water rich areas consume that much water - most of it goes towards maintaining perfectly green lawns. While that may eventually be desirable on the Moon as well, It isn't exactly a bottleneck to colonization. The ISS astronauts use very little water and with the ISS water recycling equipment could make do with only the water contained in food as input, if an alternate source of oxygen was available, such as from a Sabatier + Pyrolysis CO2 to Oxygen recycling process.

The main reason why you'd want to extract water or at least oxygen from the lunar surface is to power rockets - which are much thirstier than humans.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2015 10:51 pm by Nilof »
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 Alexsander

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #12 on: 06/10/2015 03:16 am »
With cheaper rockets (like FH) available, soon someone will design a few automated mining robots and send them to the Moon. They could work on solar power + RTG (for keeping them warm during the long nights), for example. A small fleet of these could mine water and other materials and form a supply line that could work 24/7, at least during the lunar day.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #13 on: 06/10/2015 05:38 pm »
It's not FH will do it its an FHR and a cis-lunar refuelable tug that will do the significant reduction in transport costs to L1/2 and lunar surface. Also in order to get to the Lunar surface you would need a reusable lander which there are a lot of concepts but no firm ones really in existence that has any level of planning to actually create.

The FHR looks to be a reality soon.

But the space tug is still just power point presentations. The best one so far is the one by LM. It is easily refueled and reused has the accessories to make cargo transfers easy and does not actually have a fuel amount or payload amount limitation. You just attach a bigger fuel tank along with a bigger payload. This same tug could transport equipment and refined material from cis-lunar space back and forth to a asteroid. This is a generic deep space capable cargo tug.

The reusable lander is still way out there.

Offline spacenut

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #14 on: 06/10/2015 08:08 pm »
I see the moon as a mining colony only, mostly making lox out of the soil, not water, since water is rare on the moon.  Moon soil is about 20% oxygen.  Oxygen is the heaviest of the space fuel needs.  Methane is lighter and requires less, so does kerosene, both less per amount of oxygen needed to burn.  Weight is the reason for lox manufacturing on the moon.  Far less fuel needed to get it to moon orbit and to L1 or L2 than from earth's gravitational pull and atmosphere.  Water for the mining workers will initially probably come from earth and be recycled.  Some food might be grown at the moon mining colony, but most will probably come from nearby earth. 

Mars is another story since it is so far away, so trying to compare lunar colony to Mars is like apples and oranges.  The moon might have other materials beside oxygen, like silicone might be a by product, or even aluminum.  The moon can supply liquid oxygen for ships going to Mars via L2.  Mining and lox making only, might not take so many people.  Later maybe helium 3, depending on how robotic the equipment is and how much lox will be needed.  Methane and hydrogen will initially come from earth, as well as argon or xenon for SEP tugs. 

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #15 on: 06/10/2015 10:01 pm »
Probably the most overlooked export product from the Moon is computer chips. In order to manufacture computer chips you need vacuum, silicon, and rare earths. all of which can be found on the Moon. At a value of $100/gram or $100,000/kg that makes such a product a viable export to earth. The reason I mention this is one of the problems with computer chip manufacturing is the significant toxic waste produced in the process. Transferring this off Earth would meet a favorable investor climate.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #16 on: 06/10/2015 10:20 pm »
In order to manufacture computer chips you need vacuum, silicon, and rare earths.

Plus billion dollar machines that take up whole factories.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline gbaikie

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #17 on: 06/10/2015 10:41 pm »
I see the moon as a mining colony only, mostly making lox out of the soil, not water, since water is rare on the moon. 
The Moon doesn't have much water. And one would correct to characteristic Mars as a very dry and cold desert. BUT I think it's possible that Mars has more fresh water than Earthlings use.
Or most of Earth's freshwater is in glaciers- and we don't use much freshwater water from glaciers- mountain seasonal snow is not glacial water.
So Earth the water planet could have less freshwater which used by humans than the freshwater of Mars that humans could use on Mars.
Or unless you want to mine Earth polar caps, Mars could have more freshwater to use.
So earth has lakes- Mars could have bigger and more lakes. Because water in lakes is the small portion of freshwater that human on Earth actually do use.
So Mars *could* despite it being a cold dry desert planet, it could have enough available water to make vast [and fairly shallow- about 100 meter deep] ocean-like lakes.
Or our oceans are so vast that if Earth were flat the ocean would completely cover everything to depth of 3000 meter. And with Mars maybe all available water [say within 2 or 3 km of surface- or not going to count water 10 km or deeper] may only cover entire surface of Mars [if it was flat] by 20 to 30 meters.
But *if* the water is fresh, it far more freshwater on Earth [if don't count polar glacier water or ground water below 2 km [and btw, since gravity is 1/3rd, lifting water costs a 1/3 the energy as same depth on Earth].
So nature has made Mars a cold dry desert, but humans could make it into a place with a lot of water.
And not even counting importing water from space- which has many Earth oceans worth of freshwater [and impacting them on Mars surface releases that water].

And likewise the Moon is very very dry. But one could mine football field of area for  water to depth of 1 meter and get more water than human could need within a decade.
Or 1 square km one meter depth with 10% volume of water is 1/10th of a million cubic meters- 100,000 tons of water. And currently we don't need 1000 tons of water per year. Currently if you find a demand for 500 tons lunar water per year, then it "practically" it become instantly minable.
Really needing lunar water means water is worth more than 2 million per ton- so 1 billion a year gross. Invest 4 billion and get 1 billion per year and you have a moon goldrush.
Instead getting  demand for 100 tons of lunar water per year, will require lot's work- druming up customers offer them a low price for water [at or less than 2 million per ton]. So if you sell 50,000 tons of lunar water in 10 years, you would be profitable mining lunar water.
And there is probably millions if not billions of ton of lunar water which could be profitably mined- but by the time you selling the one millionth ton, lunar water would probably be less than $100,000 per ton.
And there will be many trillionaires, maybe.

You want to mine lunar water because it's the least energy cost to get LOX. And you also get Hydrogen.
When people want tons of aluminum on the Moon [will buy it for 1 million per ton] than you make LOX from oxidizes of  aluminum.
But there is somewhere around 100 tons of pure aluminum in the form of dead satellite, that no one appears to want at this time. But once start mining lunar water and making rocket fuel - people going to want the aluminum  in those dead satellites and aluminum on the Moon.
Anyways, the hardest part of about mining lunar water [other than getting enough demand for lunar water] is getting the electrical power one needs to split  50 to 100 tons of water per year.
And if getting LOX from rocks you would use far more electrical power to make 50 to 100 tons of LOX [and you would have around hundred tons of aluminum that have to find a buyer for].

Edit: Part about Mars being cold desert. You all have been preached about global warming- and maybe you don't realize there is a fair amount disagreement about the "greenhouse effect". But what may not be mentioned much, but there is not disagreement about, is that water vapor causes about 95% of the greenhouse effect. Or most warming which supposed to be caused by CO2 is caused because a doubling of CO2 is suppose to cause a significant increase in water vapor. So to keep it brief, if cover Mars with surface water, it causes a greenhouse effect. Or you don't need a dense atmosphere to make Mars much warmer, you need water vapor- and you will get it, if one has large lakes on Mars.
So "solves" the dry and cold desert aspect of Mars.
I don't think it matter much to make Mars warmer, but having large amount of water on surface would result in greenhouse effect. Now some may want to go outside on Mars and not use spacesuit. I would suggest staying on Earth if that is what you want. [Oh, but you can scuba dive without a spacesuit- if like scuba diving, that would very similar on Mars- except on Mars you can go 3 times deeper].
« Last Edit: 06/10/2015 11:51 pm by gbaikie »

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #18 on: 06/10/2015 10:46 pm »
Probably the most overlooked export product from the Moon is computer chips. In order to manufacture computer chips you need vacuum, silicon, and rare earths.

The support infrastructure that is needed for a high-end semiconductor fabrication plant is massive.  It takes a small cities worth of people and support to keep them going.  All of that would have to come from Earth, and some of it has to be supported directly on the Moon, causing a ripple effect of the infrastructure that is needed to operate just one factory.

As someone that has spent most of their career in manufacturing, talking about factories of this level of complexity anywhere off Earth at this point in time to me is just fantasy.

And why would we manufacture semiconductor products off Earth?  What economic benefit would there be?

Quote
Transferring this off Earth would meet a favorable investor climate.

Just the opposite I'm afraid.  Semiconductor manufacturing is a commodity business, and off-world manufacturing today is a hole where you pour money down into hoping that at some unknown point in the future it comes back.  I don't know if many investors would enjoy that type of ROI...
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 Patchouli

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Re: Lunar Colony
« Reply #19 on: 06/11/2015 05:26 am »
In order to manufacture computer chips you need vacuum, silicon, and rare earths.

Plus billion dollar machines that take up whole factories.


The only place I can see chip manufactures to going in the near future is LEO as one of their biggest problem is defects in the silicon caused by gravity convection.
Of course that would only be one step the rest would still happen in billion dollar factories on Earth.

In fact a Lunar or Mars colony may have to use some older technologies for domestic use such as CRTs or projection displays in place of large flat panels because these would be easier to manufacture on site.

A city on the Moon or Mars could vary well look a lot like the world of Fallout before WWIII with an eclectic mix of old and new technologies.

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