Mining rare metals on the Moon for profit is a very old idea.
If the moon is going to make a buck, mining high margin metals that are rare on earth [and for all those jokers, I am not including unobtanium, or any MCU equivalent.... so lets be real!].... certainly we can put a couple large radio telescopes on the far side from earth, but I posit it is mining that has the greatest potential to make a return on investment....
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/04/2022 11:00 pmQuote from: DrHeywoodFloyd on 08/04/2022 07:11 pmMy take on this...To make space a profitable business, there will be need for a re-launcher and usable re-entry vehicle larger than any current launcher currently in development.This may be what "New Armstrong"will be.. this will be to space, what bulk ore carriers are to shipping... moving high margin rare earths and other minerals from mining on the moon back to Earth. This thing would need to be BIG, VERY, VERY BIG, FAAARKING HUGE!It would be launched from the ocean, and re-enter back to the ocean.....Right now, New Glenn is what Blue Origin needs, but from this, there is a whole architecture that they know that they are not fully sharing, but dropping bread crumbs for....Don't need large LV to return large quantities of raw materials from space. Only a heatshield and fuel both of which come from ISRU, also propulsion but this can be small high performance engines eg BE7. The BE7 power spacetug can stay space and reused multiple times.Evolving my thoughts ... Using the Blue Origin LV naming convention as a guide... I suspect New Armstrong will be as a earth based launch vehicle ... whereas New Glenn is about shifting cargo to low earth orbit, New Armstrong will be about shifting cargo to the moon, and so as a guide the Nova Family of rockets would be a good starting point for New Armstrong...http://www.astronautix.com/n/nova.htmlBeing a business, I am sure Blue Origin are thinking of how they can make the Moon a profitable business for itself and supporting the businesses in orbital around earth rather than just being a trucking company on government hand-outs from Nasa... so I posit that the business case for this LV will not be justified for at least 10-20 years ... I suspect New Armstrong would use evolved BE-4 engines equal in performance to the Aerojet M-1 or even bigger, rather than the Russian N-1 30+ engine approach that Space X are using....It would be big, and re-usable, but re-entering and landing into the ocean, and so handled like a ship.... It depends on the size of the cargo ...Yet I do posit in order to make an enterprise on the Moon profitable it would be mining that would be the business case. I am not including Helium 3, as this just conjecture at present, and I do not see Fusion energy becoming practical in the next 1-20 years [as much I would like !]. It would have to be extremely rare elements such as Iridium and others that are extremely rate, but have a high value; so mining them on the moon would be economic. There would need to be processes on the moon to refine the ore, and there would be some kind of "bulk carrier" that would return the mined product back to earth ..... "Ladies you are not in Kansas! "
Quote from: DrHeywoodFloyd on 08/04/2022 07:11 pmMy take on this...To make space a profitable business, there will be need for a re-launcher and usable re-entry vehicle larger than any current launcher currently in development.This may be what "New Armstrong"will be.. this will be to space, what bulk ore carriers are to shipping... moving high margin rare earths and other minerals from mining on the moon back to Earth. This thing would need to be BIG, VERY, VERY BIG, FAAARKING HUGE!It would be launched from the ocean, and re-enter back to the ocean.....Right now, New Glenn is what Blue Origin needs, but from this, there is a whole architecture that they know that they are not fully sharing, but dropping bread crumbs for....Don't need large LV to return large quantities of raw materials from space. Only a heatshield and fuel both of which come from ISRU, also propulsion but this can be small high performance engines eg BE7. The BE7 power spacetug can stay space and reused multiple times.
My take on this...To make space a profitable business, there will be need for a re-launcher and usable re-entry vehicle larger than any current launcher currently in development.This may be what "New Armstrong"will be.. this will be to space, what bulk ore carriers are to shipping... moving high margin rare earths and other minerals from mining on the moon back to Earth. This thing would need to be BIG, VERY, VERY BIG, FAAARKING HUGE!It would be launched from the ocean, and re-enter back to the ocean.....Right now, New Glenn is what Blue Origin needs, but from this, there is a whole architecture that they know that they are not fully sharing, but dropping bread crumbs for....
Assuming that the New Glenn rocket makes its maiden launch next year, it is possible that Blue Origin could market New Armstrong as a launch vehicle to carry nuclear-powered interplanetary and interstellar space probes into outer space.
Still don't see case for NA. For BLEO missions most of payload is fuel to get beyond LEO. The $Bs spent on NA development could be spent on Lunar ISRU fuel production.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/07/2022 07:19 pmStill don't see case for NA. For BLEO missions most of payload is fuel to get beyond LEO. The $Bs spent on NA development could be spent on Lunar ISRU fuel production. Fully reusable NA would be cheaper per kg than lunar propellant. Also, Bezos has enough money for both.
