Private Moon Landing in the works?

[robertross]

Helium-3? Why?

I know, I'm having a hard time trying to see them justify a commercial endeavour centered around He3.

There is a big part of me inside thinking that something WAS found on the moon, something worth persuing, and this is the attempt to lay claim on it....

I keep telling you guys:

THERE'S GOLD IN THEM THAR CRATERS!!!

It's not quite commercially viable to bring gold back from the moon, nor Platinum. Now something like Iridium - maybe, but there has to be an absolute use & need for it, perhaps a new technology, that would be worth while.

Why bother bringing it back?  If you're going to use it as money keep it there and issue gold certificates.  It couldn't get more secure...

I'll respond to this e-mail, as you make a good point that I will conceded as to issuing gold certificates to minted gold left on the lunar surface.

But I was only referring to physical metals as it relates to non-monetary use, which is why I pointed out Iridium (though gold is apparently less abundant than platinum). And just because it sn't widly used, that is indeed because it is so costly or scarce. But if you do look at gold, it has found its way into so many items in todays society, and we simply give them away or trash them (computers, cell phones, ect - where the gold wires & plating is used inside). Times have changed. Imagine a world where a metal such as Iridium is more plentiful, or Helium 3.; as plentiful as say copper; it might revolutionize our society with the right application(s)

[Warren Platts]

(gold is apparently less abundant than platinum). 

I beg to differ. LCROSS initially reported "< 1.6%" Au by mass. This was later reduced by a factor of 5 in an erratum (thanks to Dr. Spudis for pointing that out to me personally), but still, 0.3% (3 ppt) is a nearly unheard of concentration of gold.

Now, I am the first to admit that the LCROSS measurement is most likely a massive overestimate (but keep in mind that the S. Alan Stern himself was the PI for the instrument on LRO that supposedly detected the gold and was a coauthor on the paper that reported the result--it's his baby!).

But even so, if it's off by an order of magnitude, 300 ppm is still huge. I saw Chris Lewicki imply that there might be 200 ppm of PGM's in certain (extremely rare) types of asteroids (that happen to be devoid of conventional elements used to make rocket fuel). Frankly, I don't believe. I have never seen a reference to a meteorite of any kind containing more than 100 ppm of Pt. If anyone can find a reference to a signficantly higher Pt concentration, I will eat my hat.

Moreover, the Au--detected by Stern's instrument--is in an easily accessible and easily processable form--it's literally gold dust mixed in a permafrost/dirty ice, just lieing at the surface waiting to be scooped up. We know where it is.

Meanwhile, while we know that metallic asteroid NEO's must exist within a reasonable delta v from Earth at least every now and then, I am not aware of any actual concrete candidates. In addition, it's going to take some serious, hard-core, hard rock mining to get at it.

With Lunar gold, however, once you extract the water and volatiles, you'll be left with a bone dry powder that merely has to be ran through an electrostatic separator a couple of times, and then washed in mercury, and you are going to have literally tonnes of gold.

But I was only referring to physical metals as it relates to non-monetary use, which is why I pointed out Iridium .And just because it sn't widly used, that is indeed because it is so costly or scarce. But if you do look at gold, it has found its way into so many items in todays society, and we simply give them away or trash them (computers, cell phones, ect - where the gold wires & plating is used inside). Times have changed. Imagine a world where a metal such as Iridium is more plentiful, or Helium 3.; as plentiful as say copper; it might revolutionize our society with the right application(s)

Iridium isn't widely used because there is no need for iridium. It is less expensive than gold. Repeat: iridium is less expensive than gold. And if iridium or He3 was as plentiful as copper, it would not be worth it to import it from space.

Any substance worth importing from space must be worth much more on a per kg basis than launch costs are on a per kg basis; precious few substances meet this criterion. Moreover, you will have to import a lot of whatever that is in order to recoup your capital and operating costs. Thus, of those that are also abundant enough that a major space operation won't crash the price there is only one: GOLD!

However, I agree that the "Golden Spike" consortium would seem to have an ace in the hole. I'm predicting that it's going to be something we haven't really heard about before. I'm probably wrong about that: they'll probably talk about looking for PGM's from crashed asteroids: that's been the stock MoonEx line all along. But we shall see. I've said my piece. No need to go on and on about it. The market will decide, as Martijn likes to say!

[robertross]

(gold is apparently less abundant than platinum). 

I beg to differ.

On Earth.

[robertross]

But I was only referring to physical metals as it relates to non-monetary use, which is why I pointed out Iridium .And just because it sn't widly used, that is indeed because it is so costly or scarce. But if you do look at gold, it has found its way into so many items in todays society, and we simply give them away or trash them (computers, cell phones, ect - where the gold wires & plating is used inside). Times have changed. Imagine a world where a metal such as Iridium is more plentiful, or Helium 3.; as plentiful as say copper; it might revolutionize our society with the right application(s)

Iridium isn't widely used because there is no need for iridium. It is less expensive than gold. Repeat: iridium is less expensive than gold. And if iridium or He3 was as plentiful as copper, it would not be worth it to import it from space.

No, it's because there's so little of it.

From wiki: "Iridium is one of the least abundant elements in the Earth's crust", and I believe that.

Many elements centuries ago were not even heard of, and yet now we have become dependant upon them. If Iridium were more common, we would likely find incredible uses for it, such as electronics & high tenp components.

Again, from Wiki: "The demand for iridium surged from 2.5 tonnes in 2009 to 10.4 tonnes in 2010, mostly because of electronics-related applications "

But this is all assuming the goal is for these noble metals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium

[go4mars]

Okay Warren,
I think your theory here is reasonable.  They might be after highly concentrated gold.  Stern lends credibility to the theory, and the name "golden spike" is also potentially suggestive. 

Out of curiosity, what do people figure the gold dust concentrating method is?  What process would account for parts per thousand gold in ice?  Where did it come from?

[Silmfeanor]

Please, just like the split-off about moon property rights, make a split-off or look at the old threads about mining on the moon.

There has been quite a lot of discussion about this again, and I would like to preserve this thread from 20 pages about how many PPM gold/titanium/iridium/He3/unobtanium is needed, how many there is, and how you get it out...

[Warren Platts]

OK yes, I understand we don't want to go on for 20 pages on PGM ppm's. That's why I said I've said my piece. On the other hand, speculation about the business case counts, and Grant asked a legitimate question, and he's a professional economic geologist as well as a well-versed amateur planetary scientist, so he deserves an answer.

Now, we could start a new thread, and I probably will in a couple of days, but for this: I know for a fact those guys at Planetary Resources monitor these threads because they threaten to sue Chris Bergin over any perceived libel/slander, and then Chris has to go back and delete the offensive posts.
 
So as a favor to them, I'm going to give them a freebee, in case they haven't figured it out for themselves yet.

So here goes as briefly as possible, and this will be my last post on this thread on the subject:

Background:

B1: LCROSS/LAMP/LRO team (that included S. Alan Stern, founder of "Golden Spike Company", as PI/coauthor) reported an upper limit of up to 0.3% by mass of gold (Au) in the LCROSS impact plume; other metals were also detected.

B2: They also found anomalously high mercury (Hg).

B3: They didn't really believe their own Hg results until they ran across George Reed's theory that Hg is volatile at typical Lunar temperatures, and will therefore be concentrated in the polar cold traps like water.
 
B4: Meanwhile, at the time, there was no published theory that could explain anomalously high gold concentrations, therefore, the reported Au concentrations were hard to believe.

BUT:

Premises:

P1: Electrostatic dust transport is a universally recognized process on the Moon and asteroids.

P2: Electrostatic separation is a universally recognized process for separating precious metals from the gangue (see attached diagram).

P3: It therefore stands to reason that voltage differentials on the Moon will affect different particles differently; in particular, conductive particles will accumulate more charges and therefore suffer much greater rates rates of acceleration than dielectric materials (aka "dirt").

P4: Gold particles will thus have a much higher mobility than ordinary dust particles.

P5: But when they land in a permanently shaded crater, the electrostatic transport/separation mechanism ceases, because it's driven by the Sun and the day/night terminator.

Conclusion:

C1: Gold will be concentrated in polar cold traps--not because they are cold, but because they are permanently shaded.

Supporting empirical evidence:

E1: Apollo 12 samples of pristine rocks averaged about 5 ppb Au concentration by weight, whereas regolith gold concentrations averaged only about 2 ppb, entailing that 60% of the gold in formerly pristine rocks went somewhere....

Beauty part:

BP1: the precious metal and the propellant required to send it home are found in exactly the same deposit.
___________________________________________

OK, that's the last I'm going to mention this in this thread. The speculation is that there may be something new this time. The above represents something new. My 0.4 milligrams of Au worth. YMMV Thanks.

[Robert Thompson]

You can have the gold. I'll take the mercury and make liquid mirrors larger than the space-based human-assembled apertures FISO has authored. The lunar poles point up out of the solar system and up out of the galaxy, and a symmetric array like GMT linked by fiber optics with CCDs just a bit above ambient cryogenic temperatures could integrate deep field cosmology in optical that neither Hubble, Keck, Gemini, LBT can do. If I want IR deep field cosmology, I'll need some gold to coat the mirrors. With TRL in off-axis secondary mirrors and lenses, I might be able to point the collecting power at targets up to 10 degrees off the lunar polar axis. Can you leverage gold simultaneously as financial and science instrument? 

[KelvinZero]

Are you sure this would pick up metals? Maybe the lunar poles are filled with polyester undergarments...

[JohnFornaro]

Are you sure this would pick up metals? Maybe the lunar poles are filled with polyester undergarments... :)

That theory has been debunked.  They are looking for a black monolith, as shown in the documentary film "2001".

[JohnFornaro]

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty provides for private property rights as currently written.

Here we go again.

No it doesn't. 

Review my posting history on the subject, where I support my opinion.

Many legal scholars claim that both the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) and the 1979 Moon Treaty outlaw private property claims in space. Simberg argues that the Outer Space Treaty only precludes land claims by sovereign nations---not by individuals or corporations. He also argues that the U.S. should repudiate the Moon Treaty (to which it is not a signatory), which does explicitly outlaw such claims.

I am not in total agreement with Rand Simberg on his proposal either, and have explained my reasoning on this issue here on the forum.  Some parties share some of my reasoning; here is Eric Dawson:

To grant a property right, a nation must have sovereignty or control over the property in question, otherwise the grant is meaningless. Assuming that the legislation is not intended to be meaningless, what would actually happen under this proposal is that the United States would essentially promise not to take military or other action to remove a private party from a portion of a celestial body.

The issue continues to be about private ownership or real property.  Those who continue to place personal property as the focus of this issue muddy the waters.

This aspect of the debate has several threads already.

[JohnFornaro]

Aren't big things made there. In segments. By a little company called ... ATK?

Huh.  So they've diversified into golden spike manufacture.  Whooda thunk

[JohnFornaro]

So if the 'goal' is extracting He3, and you look at Wiki (yeah, I know), there is the notion that Chandrayaan-I may have been looking for it.

I still do not think that would be a worthwhile endeavor.  However, I have made a mistake (back in 1977), and I may be wrong in my opinion on this.  If so, I like my crow plucked and gutted, sauteed quickly in EV olive oil with a smattering of salt, pepper and chives.

There is a big part of me inside thinking that something WAS found on the moon, something worth pursuing, and this is the attempt to lay claim on it.

Per the terms of the OST, first come, first served.  It is a race that is just now being acknowledged.

The "something found" part is also correct: they have found the "higher ground". The higher ground exists at the north and the south poles, due to their energy generation potential.  The shadows cast by the PV facility will be long and permanent, albeit slowly rotating, if they are developed to eventually support a large mining operation and thousands of people.  Simple sketches, illustrating the point are attached.

I'm pretty sure, barring ready to deploy nuclear energy power plants, that this is a good part of the business case, and maybe the most important part.

[Robotbeat]

Helium-3? Why?

Harrison Schmitt Talks Commercial Moon and Mars:-

In the book I wrote on the subject, "Return to the Moon: The Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space," is basically a business plan on how you would do that. And if you believe that business plan and you meet the milestones in the business plan, so investors continue to support you, I think within 15 to 20 years you could have a settlement on the Moon from the time you start your first investment-related activity.

But you need that first step. And actually, the first step has nothing to do with power production. The first step is probably one where you are going to use Helium 3-deuterium reactors, at about the current level of development, to produce medical isotopes. It turns out that the fusion product, the protons, are ideal for radiating certain kinds of elements to produce isotopes that are important to positron emission tomography (PET) - positron emitting isotopes that have short half-lives. Right now, PET diagnostics, which is the diagnostic of choice for a particular stage of cancer, uses a relatively long half-life positron emitter of Fluorine-18 isotope and it decays in a half-life of 110 minutes. And that's great. It doesn't seem too long but it's too long for children and pregnant women to be able to take advantage of that technology because of the residual radiation.

Whereas with proton irradiation, you can produce isotopes that have half-lives of 12 minutes or less so that changes the whole paradigm of how you do cancer diagnostics for children and pregnant women. That is probably the first business opportunity of this technology. It's on the pathway to producing power downstream but it is also a business opportunity that can attract investors.

Current demand is driven by neutron detectors (esp. homeland security applications).

Using alternatives or ramping up He3 production here on earth would probably be easier than scouring lunar regolith for the stuff.

Yeah, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you.

cheers, Martin

This is wishful thinking...

You can easily use protons (or deuterons, etc) for medical isotope production quite easily with a particle accelerator. It's not even that expensive to do it, certainly not worth going all the way to the Moon to extract very minute amounts of it from the lunar regolith. Heck, I am working with a particle accelerator in school that does this exact thing.

This is not the golden ticket. It has got to be something else.

[HIP2BSQRE]

Helium-3? Why?

Harrison Schmitt Talks Commercial Moon and Mars:-

In the book I wrote on the subject, "Return to the Moon: The Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space," is basically a business plan on how you would do that. And if you believe that business plan and you meet the milestones in the business plan, so investors continue to support you, I think within 15 to 20 years you could have a settlement on the Moon from the time you start your first investment-related activity.

But you need that first step. And actually, the first step has nothing to do with power production. The first step is probably one where you are going to use Helium 3-deuterium reactors, at about the current level of development, to produce medical isotopes. It turns out that the fusion product, the protons, are ideal for radiating certain kinds of elements to produce isotopes that are important to positron emission tomography (PET) - positron emitting isotopes that have short half-lives. Right now, PET diagnostics, which is the diagnostic of choice for a particular stage of cancer, uses a relatively long half-life positron emitter of Fluorine-18 isotope and it decays in a half-life of 110 minutes. And that's great. It doesn't seem too long but it's too long for children and pregnant women to be able to take advantage of that technology because of the residual radiation.

Whereas with proton irradiation, you can produce isotopes that have half-lives of 12 minutes or less so that changes the whole paradigm of how you do cancer diagnostics for children and pregnant women. That is probably the first business opportunity of this technology. It's on the pathway to producing power downstream but it is also a business opportunity that can attract investors.

Current demand is driven by neutron detectors (esp. homeland security applications).

Using alternatives or ramping up He3 production here on earth would probably be easier than scouring lunar regolith for the stuff.

Yeah, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you.

cheers, Martin

This is wishful thinking...

You can easily use protons (or deuterons, etc) for medical isotope production quite easily with a particle accelerator. It's not even that expensive to do it, certainly not worth going all the way to the Moon to extract very minute amounts of it from the lunar regolith. Heck, I am working with a particle accelerator in school that does this exact thing.

This is not the golden ticket. It has got to be something else.

I agree--we are missing the "golden ticket" that closes the business case--remember we are talking of an investment of at least $1 billion.  Would it not be cheaper to just finance t/space?  If I remember correctly t/space's plan was to have 2 ships land on the moon  so if something goes wrong you have a backup.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

This is where I add my 2 cents on the business case for private Lunar surface operations. Any materials produce on the Lunar surface that is then used on the Lunar surface has a minimum value of $20,000/kg. Using regolith as radiation shielding on the Lunar surface for a cost of $100/kg makes it "dirt cheap" compared to bringing anything from Earth. So a simple front loader that can move regolith around to wherever it would be useful would be for the developer and operator of the front loader a very valid business case but only if there were some one to sell its services and "dirt" to.


A semi or permanent base will create many needs for innovative equipment to provide services to the base. But first someone needs a business case to build the base itself.


In Paul Spudis article he talks about how TRL is misleading funding of innovative ISRU. This is mainly because of the fact that the experimental hardware using the tech has never flown in space or used in micro or low gravity.

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/


If a regular transport to the Lunar surface opens up, then experiment packages of 100kg costing $6.25M in transport costs starts to look very reasonable to innovative space tech investors. Where $10M in total can result in hardware tested on the Moon. Currently it would cost you several $100'sM to do the same. If it cost $250M to land 4mt of payload on the surface then that’s a price of $62,500/kg. If a business offered a service at that price to deliver a payload to the Lunar surface then that in itself is a business case that can close. A flight rate for such a business of 1 a year would net the company ~$50M in profit per year ($125M for the launch, $75M for the lander, and $50M in profit). NOTE: The cargo landers are nearly identical but scaled up in size from the first successful one landed, an outgrowth of the Lunar X-prize. Five years of operation is enough to payback the initial development investment of ~ $250M.


The result is that a factor of 10 drop in cost to do R&D on the Lunar surface would net a >x10 increase in customers. $10M is in the range of Universities receiving Grants and other sources of funding to do a 100kg experiment package sent to the Moon. Even solely private funded new-space start-ups could easily afford it. $10M is a lot easier to raise than $100M.

[RocketmanUS]

Helium-3? Why?

Harrison Schmitt Talks Commercial Moon and Mars:-

In the book I wrote on the subject, "Return to the Moon: The Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space," is basically a business plan on how you would do that. And if you believe that business plan and you meet the milestones in the business plan, so investors continue to support you, I think within 15 to 20 years you could have a settlement on the Moon from the time you start your first investment-related activity.

But you need that first step. And actually, the first step has nothing to do with power production. The first step is probably one where you are going to use Helium 3-deuterium reactors, at about the current level of development, to produce medical isotopes. It turns out that the fusion product, the protons, are ideal for radiating certain kinds of elements to produce isotopes that are important to positron emission tomography (PET) - positron emitting isotopes that have short half-lives. Right now, PET diagnostics, which is the diagnostic of choice for a particular stage of cancer, uses a relatively long half-life positron emitter of Fluorine-18 isotope and it decays in a half-life of 110 minutes. And that's great. It doesn't seem too long but it's too long for children and pregnant women to be able to take advantage of that technology because of the residual radiation.

Whereas with proton irradiation, you can produce isotopes that have half-lives of 12 minutes or less so that changes the whole paradigm of how you do cancer diagnostics for children and pregnant women. That is probably the first business opportunity of this technology. It's on the pathway to producing power downstream but it is also a business opportunity that can attract investors.

Current demand is driven by neutron detectors (esp. homeland security applications).

Using alternatives or ramping up He3 production here on earth would probably be easier than scouring lunar regolith for the stuff.

Yeah, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you.

cheers, Martin

This is wishful thinking...

You can easily use protons (or deuterons, etc) for medical isotope production quite easily with a particle accelerator. It's not even that expensive to do it, certainly not worth going all the way to the Moon to extract very minute amounts of it from the lunar regolith. Heck, I am working with a particle accelerator in school that does this exact thing.

This is not the golden ticket. It has got to be something else.

I agree--we are missing the "golden ticket" that closes the business case--remember we are talking of an investment of at least $1 billion.  Would it not be cheaper to just finance t/space?  If I remember correctly t/space's plan was to have 2 ships land on the moon  so if something goes wrong you have a backup.

t/Space for using their CEV as an OTV ( orbital transfer vehicle ) could work out just fine ( no landing gear as would only go between orbits, less mass and eliminates a part that could fail ). Could have the landing gear if they used it for crew landing instead of another type of lander.

The CEV could be modified to carry cargo on the outside LEO to LLO  or EML1/2. Not volume limited, but could not return cargo this way as there would be not heat shield for the cargo, just for the CEV. Cargo could be sent back when it is stored in the inside of the SEV. These packages to be sent back would probable be small so could be put in the crew lander.

Problem with it bringing cargo to the surface is that the CEV has to take off in order for most of the cargo pod to be accessible. Plus the pod would have to handle the flames from the engines when the SEV takes off. And there is the limited volume of the cargo too. The engines are in the way for side access.

For crew and cargo landing on the moon they could use the
http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/SEV-L2-Lander-Presentation_1Oct2012.pdf
Than is without the in space stage as it only would need to go between LLO and the Lunar surface if not using an EML-2 gateway.

Stretch the tanks length to make it a tanker for a LLO depot.

[Nathan]

http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/SEV-L2-Lander-Presentation_1Oct2012.pdf[/url]
Than is without the in space stage as it only would need to go between LLO and the Lunar surface if not using an EML-2 gateway.

Stretch the tanks length to make it a tanker for a LLO depot.

Sei do amazing work. The note at the end of the presentation about partnering with industry and nasa for future work is interesting- I'd be surprised if they weren't involved even as a contractor.

[KelvinZero]

There is a claim in this thread that the ESA lander has been cancelled.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=22770.msg980779#msg980779

The last paragraph of the translation mentions that Germany would not continue the project without a partner.
(im not saying the report is confirmed.. I have no idea)

That would be a pretty good international partner though. Is there any plausibility in germany dealing with an american commercial company directly? Normally I figure a nation wishes to use local launchers, since this ploughs money back into its own economy and tech development, but do german businesses get anything out of a soyuz launched from a french site?

(totally uninformed speculation on my part, I know even less about european space politics than american)

[go4mars]

Warren,

Highly informative post!

You just started a space race if it wasn't already happening. 

Today was a travel day for me.   I couldn't reply at the time I read it, but 20 minutes later I noticed myself still grinning like the cheshire cat. 

I find your mechanism highly plausible.  Well done!

I look forward to your thread on the topic, though I'll be very busy over the next couple weeks.