It is what I have said before. 10,000,000 space fans and proponents chipping in $100 a year would make a $1B/year private space program. That could buy say 4 Falcon Heavy launches and the payload for them per year. 200+ tons of stuff to grow your Lunar endeavors.
The NASA study members were probably hoping the stimulus to private entities such a public private Lunar mission would result in this sort of private services competing for NASA business where NASA just buys individual services from various providers or a re-seller sells them a complete package of transport and housing with cargo support on the Lunar surface for scientific exploration.
Because a [manned] base on Mars is needed to explore Mars.
Putting humans on the surface is a terrible way to explore Mars.
Quote from: gbaikie on 12/27/2015 06:52 pmBecause a [manned] base on Mars is needed to explore Mars.No it isn't. Putting humans on the surface is a terrible way to explore Mars.For exactly the same reasons that it's not necessary to put a manned base on the Moon to "determine if there's minable water-ice on the Moon".
I couldn't be bothered to go through the entire thread so this may have been addressed already.SpaceX is currently developing a Methalox architecture, possibly replacing the Kerolox Falcons later this or early next decade. Using Kerolox/Methalox for Earth launch and Hydrolox for in-space propulsion is bound to increase costs as two separate propulsion systems have to be developed and maintained. Relying purely on Methalox would allow for increased commonality across the board, all the way from Earth to the Moon and to Mars.In this light, an interesting question is: could sufficient quantities of methane be mined from Lunar polar ice to sustain a cislunar architecture based solely on Methalox propellant?
So large quantities of LCH4 could potentially be produced on the Moon ... that certainly is good news.Fundamentally however, whether Lunar mining makes economic sense depends on a range of factors: geology, technology, launch costs and production volumes. A fully and rapidly reusable BFR could very well ruin the business case for any near-term space-based propellant mining operation, be it on the Moon or a NEA.
Quote from: DLR on 12/31/2015 07:22 amSo large quantities of LCH4 could potentially be produced on the Moon ... that certainly is good news.Fundamentally however, whether Lunar mining makes economic sense depends on a range of factors: geology, technology, launch costs and production volumes. A fully and rapidly reusable BFR could very well ruin the business case for any near-term space-based propellant mining operation, be it on the Moon or a NEA.IMO there is a far more immediate reason why mining the moon to reach mars does not really make sense.(a) The primary argument for Mars as a HSF destination is that it has the volatiles and other elements we need to make living there possible.
(b) The amount of volatiles needed to run your rockets far exceed what the volatiles you need for basic living requirements.
So.. if you can produce enough volatiles on the moon to reach Mars, you have just proven you don't need to go there. You have a glut of resources to begin learning how to live of the land right there on the moon, four days from earth.
Sure, Mars is big whereas the lunar poles are just patches of icy turf, but master the lunar poles and all the asteroids and beyond are yours as well, an endless field of patches of icy turf that extend from here out to the Oort cloud.
Not if you include farming as a basic living requirement.In space environment where crew are shipped supplies to live, per crew in ISS one needs about 10 tons of water per year. And if crew stay at ISS 6 month, each crew uses more than 100 tons of rocket fuel getting to and from ISS. Or uses more than 100 tons of LOX per year per crew per year by the rockets to get them there and back.But anyone living on Earth is using about 1000 tons of water or more to live for a year. Or:"Overall, the world is using 9,087 billion cubic meters of water per year. "
For purpose of crops, Mars can get more solar energy than earth can get for growing crops- unless Earth grow crops in the oceans. Or per acre, on Mars one can get more sunlight for crop use- because Mars doesn't have thick atmosphere and lacks clouds.
Above the Earth's atmosphere the solar irradiance is slightly more than 1300 W/m2 (1300 watts per square metre). The Earth's atmosphere is not perfectly transparent to sunlight and about one quarter of the Sun's light is absorbed or scattered before it reaches the surface.At the Earth's surface, with the Sun directly overhead at local noon (clear dry atmosphere), the solar irradiance is reduced to about 1000 W/m2 (1000 watts per square metre). This value is highly variable depending upon such things as the amount of dust and water vapour in the atmosphere.At local noon on Mars, with Sun directly overhead, the solar irradiance is 590W/m2 (590 watts per square metre).All the above measurements are taken with the incident light perpendicular to the absorbing surface. Of course if the sunlight falls on the surface at an angle, less energy will be incident (per square metre) on the surface....The Sun's intensity on a horizontal patch of the Earth's surface of 590W/m2 occurs when the Sun is a mere 36 degrees above the horizon.
Quote from: gbaikie on 12/31/2015 07:47 pmFor purpose of crops, Mars can get more solar energy than earth can get for growing crops- unless Earth grow crops in the oceans. Or per acre, on Mars one can get more sunlight for crop use- because Mars doesn't have thick atmosphere and lacks clouds.Sunlight on Mars per unit area is much less on Mars, since Mars is at about 1.6 AU, which means sunlight is about 60% less.
The atmosphere on Earth doesn't reduce the amount of sunlight by that much, except in the presence of clouds. The Mars atmosphere can also greatly reduce the amount of sunlight due to dust storms.
Sorry gbaikie I just couldn't process most of that. You have to find a way to argue more succinctly.
A 100mt production of water from a source with 5% concentration by mass that exists only in the first 10cm of regolith depth would require a processor/digger that digs a 1m wide swath to travel at .7cm per minute or 2.5m/hr. This is using a digger processor that rolls out an umbilical that provides power and has a tube to pump back water to the storage and power facilities on the crater rim. The processor would dig up the 10cm's of regolith 1m wide process it cool it back down and then deposit it back onto the surface.This is an example that 100mt of water mined in 1 year is not a very high rate for a small machine. Water produced is 190ml/minute so the tube in the umbilical would not have to be very large ~1cm diameter at most for low pressure levels for significant volume.What I am saying is a single crawler processor machine can easily produce water at this rate. It is only then a matter of additional power to support more crawler processors or ones that cut a wider swath 2m, 5m or even 10m to greatly increase production over 10 years to 5000mt/year. With a fully reusable Lunar lander Xeus based on the Vulcan ACES doing 20 round trips per year carrying 100mt of prop per trip to EML2 making available 2000mt of prop/year at EML2 for interplanetary HSF missions. All of this is probably doable (just the mining equipment and operations part) with $2.4B in investments (~$1.2 for development and exploration, and $1.2B for mining systems and deployment) spent over 15 years. At 20 years total profits have reach $2.35B on the total investments of $2.4B at a water sale price at Lunar surface of $500/kg.Estimated price of prop (LH2/LOX) at EML2 to be $2,600/kg. Best price for prop from using a FHFT reusable at $75M per launch (15mt per launch delivered to EML2 at a time) is $5,000/kg at EML2. So the price is durable over long period possibly as long as 20 years of operations until new LV's with >1/2 the costs of $/kg or other sources (asteriods) are developed. Even then value of water and prop on Lunar surface would still be under any other competitor for possibly longer than even 20 years of operations. 10 years of operations at 5000mt/year at $500/kg price for water at a 20% profit margin is $5B in PROFIT or a revenue amount of $2.5B/year. This would not be a small company.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 01/02/2016 09:58 pmA 100mt production of water from a source with 5% concentration by mass that exists only in the first 10cm of regolith depth would require a processor/digger that digs a 1m wide swath to travel at .7cm per minute or 2.5m/hr. This is using a digger processor that rolls out an umbilical that provides power and has a tube to pump back water to the storage and power facilities on the crater rim. The processor would dig up the 10cm's of regolith 1m wide process it cool it back down and then deposit it back onto the surface.This is an example that 100mt of water mined in 1 year is not a very high rate for a small machine. Water produced is 190ml/minute so the tube in the umbilical would not have to be very large ~1cm diameter at most for low pressure levels for significant volume.What I am saying is a single crawler processor machine can easily produce water at this rate. It is only then a matter of additional power to support more crawler processors or ones that cut a wider swath 2m, 5m or even 10m to greatly increase production over 10 years to 5000mt/year. With a fully reusable Lunar lander Xeus based on the Vulcan ACES doing 20 round trips per year carrying 100mt of prop per trip to EML2 making available 2000mt of prop/year at EML2 for interplanetary HSF missions. All of this is probably doable (just the mining equipment and operations part) with $2.4B in investments (~$1.2 for development and exploration, and $1.2B for mining systems and deployment) spent over 15 years. At 20 years total profits have reach $2.35B on the total investments of $2.4B at a water sale price at Lunar surface of $500/kg.Estimated price of prop (LH2/LOX) at EML2 to be $2,600/kg. Best price for prop from using a FHFT reusable at $75M per launch (15mt per launch delivered to EML2 at a time) is $5,000/kg at EML2. So the price is durable over long period possibly as long as 20 years of operations until new LV's with >1/2 the costs of $/kg or other sources (asteriods) are developed. Even then value of water and prop on Lunar surface would still be under any other competitor for possibly longer than even 20 years of operations. 10 years of operations at 5000mt/year at $500/kg price for water at a 20% profit margin is $5B in PROFIT or a revenue amount of $2.5B/year. This would not be a small company.I generally don't think the entire operation is done by one company. And biggest company maybe the company that sells electrical power at lunar surface. So it's either solar or nuclear- probably solar.