Subject: Space-tech Digest #130 Contents: Why go back to the moon? (10 msgs) Don't nuke MSFC (1 msg) Space Priorities (2 msgs) ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 09:46:40 -0800 From: Joseph Beckenbach Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? Reply-To: jerbil@ultra.com > Question: didn't someone write a paper on the use of rock-foam as a > lunar building material? If I remember correctly, you can make the > stuff with very little equipment but a large parabolic mirror and some > ceramic molds. Hmm, you need MOLDS? Whatever happened to the idea of simply sticking some rods into the ground and zapping it into a structural ceramic? A variation on the theme could also help isolate nuclear wastes, I think. I'll see if I can dig up the citation at home; hope I still have that conference's proceedings. In case anyone else wants to look, it had a four-color-printed painting extending to front-and-back covers, with a lunar mass driver in operation. The back cover had a whimsical touch: an adult and child in NASA-style suits were standing or sitting at the crater's edge, watching the driver in operation. (The conference was some number of years ago, was interdisciplinary, and had an article about [dwarf?] wheat growth rates as well.) Joseph Beckenbach --- Joseph Beckenbach jerbil@ultra.com 408-922-0600 x246 Speaking from, but not for, Ultra Network Technologies. Theater is life; film is art; television is furniture. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 12:47:35 -0600 (CST) From: SMITH@EPVAX.MSFC.NASA.GOV (The Ice-9-man Cometh) Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu This morning I wrote, with my brain in pre-coffee mode: >However, it's cheaper to just ship water. No cryogenic problems, higher >density and lower tank factor than shipping the ingredients, and easy >to crack if you need to on the Moon (given energy). Ungh. This assumes that there is no oxygen available on the Moon. If we can get oxygen out of the rocks, it's cheaper to ship LH2, because water is about 12 times heavier than LH2 but only about 75% of the stoichiometric bulk. Tankage factors are relevant but I don't think they're THAT relevant. :) Matter of fact, you might need a thicker tank for water, due to its density, even taking pressure into account; I'll check into it. At any rate, the cryotanks will be useful at the Lunar site, so they're not all parasitic cost. | James W. Smith, NASA MSFC EP-53 | SMITH@epvax.msfc.nasa.gov | | If wishes were fishes, we'd all smell like a can of sardines. | | Neither NASA nor (!James) is responsible for what I say. Mea culpa. | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 14:35:53 -0500 From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? Water is not the only hydrogen carrier. Polyethylene is lighter per mole of hydrogen, and requires no tankage. Ammonia is lighter still, and is a liquid at room temperature and moderate pressure (and would provide nitrogen for various purposes). Liquified methane has perhaps the most hydrogen per mass of anything other than liquid hydrogen, and, while cryogenic, should be easier to transport, as it has a higher boiling point and latent heat of vaporization. It is not obvious that tank mass should be minimized. Cryogen tanks can be made of composites, using such plastics as poly-ether-ether-ketone (PEEK). These materials can be burned after arrival to liberate their hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ From: avenger@wpi.WPI.EDU (Sam Pullara) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 14:14:32 EST To: henry@zoo.toronto.edu, space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check I would think that you could support a colony by selling rocks from the moon to "Earthers" for about $20 each. I mean people will buy just about anything. Look at how well the pieces of the Berlin wall sold. So lets see, send back 10 tons of rock a month (no need for any fancy return vehicle, just a parachute and someway for it to float) and sell it for $20 per cubic inch: $3.7 million dollars a month. Say 1/10 of the families in the united states eventually buys one then you could gross $180 million dollars off rocks alone! You could also act as a small country elimination service for other small countries, just deliver a rock (without parachute) to the respective country and collect a cool $100 million a pop. With 140 countries and only about 40 of them being of any size you could make up to $10 billion dollars with the investment of a rock accelerator. Lets see, charge 10 million dollars for group month long trips to the moon with 10 people per trip and some extra help to boot! Thats another 100 million dollars a month (minus expenses). For the Humor Impaired: :-) /------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Samuel J. Pullara / " ---- --- --- . . | | Worcester Polyinsta Technictute - o o | / . |-| --- / \ | | avenger@wpi.wpi.edu / |/ --- --- | \_____________-All my opinions were expressed or implied.-_______________/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 13:36:48 -0600 From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) To: SMITH@epvax.msfc.nasa.gov, space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? We'll probably want to ship methane. Not only is the tankage not as heavy, but there's no carbon on the moon either. pgf ------------------------------ From: ssi!lfa@uunet.UU.NET (Louis F. Adornato) Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check To: uunet!cs.cmu.edu!space-tech@uunet.UU.NET Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 13:50:24 CST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] First, a short flame: Tim Edwards writes: > There is a Saturn V on it's side outside the Johnson manned Space flight > center... NASA put it there in the hopes that they would never be called > on to produce anything but reports... This is grossly unfair. NASA put those Saturns at KSC, JSC, and MSFC when Nixon ordered the cancellation of the Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions. There where no funds to put them into "hot" storage. I don't like to think of them lying there either (imagine how it feels to be leaving the center at 0500, after spending a shift on console supporting a shuttle mission, and to drive past that big, white, gleaming Saturn, pointing almost directly at the setting moon), but I like them there a _lot_ better than in a scrap heap. I understand that the NASA Employee Activity Association kicked in a chunk of the cash needed to put them on display. I personally think of them as the space enthusiast's version of the Western Wall in Jerusalem; I stand before thee and weep at the beauty of glories past and the pain of glorious beauty lost... hey, don't laugh, they _still_ might decide to send up a poet. End flame. Nick Szabo writes: > Lunar "colony" reality check: > > * The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen, > or carbon. Wishful thinking about polar volatiles or > scrounging solar wind particles are hardly significant. > * A livable atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen. > * Plants and animals need copious amounts of hydrogen, nitrogen, > and carbon. There have been experiments at the University of Minnesota on the possible use of regolith for growing plants. As I understand it, the reults look promising, but it's a slow process; you start with sterile, sandy soil and have to gradually build it up to humus. I think a big part of the problem can be solved by starting out with a large biomass asset. Being in Wisconsin, I'll volunteer to see just exactly how high a cow _can_ jump... (see my signature) > * There is no affordable way to crack oxygen out of lunar > rock or to recycle it. This would cost, at bare minimum, > tens of millions of dollars per astronaut per year. Long duration submarines manage to have enough oxygen on hand. I beleive they use a molecular seive (like those used on Skylab). Or do they electrolyze seawater? Worst case, you can recycle oxygen with a big, shalllow tank of algae fed on the wastes of the humans. Of course, I get to have the Airwick concession... > * Because of transportation costs for recycling equipment, > recycling on the moon is far more expensive than recycling on > earth. Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable, > working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks > over tens of tons of air per year. Well, I wouldn't call BioshpereII the _best_ at much of anything. Besides, their equipment designs weren't optimized for mass. Further, it's a lot harder to detect a leak when the ambient difference is only a few g/cm^2 than when it's a whole atm. > * Hydrogen is extremely innefficient to transport from > earth. The stoichiometric volume of LH to make water is > _larger_ than the volume of oxygen; huge amounts will > be wasted on tankage. Much of the LH will leak before > it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive > to store even for the few days trip. So how about it gets shipped as water, and is electrolyzed at destination? > * The annual per capita consumption of water in the > U.S. is over 500 tons. In this as in many other > areas, the "colony" will be living in abject > poverty despite the $billions spent on its > construction. Kind of depends on the initial asset and the efficiency of the recycling, doesn't it? > * It takes more than a rocket payload full of hydrogen > to make the water needed by industry. If we're to have any > significant manufacturing industry in space, we're going to need > tons of volatiles. For example, here is the water used to make > a few kinds of products on earth: > >>excellent<< citations deleted It would certainly be necessary to examine the manufacturing processes and determine if there might be methods to replace the use of water. For example, there's no shortage of hard vacuum and UV. This may well fall into the category of "transient technology challenge". (Or, it may haunt process engineers till the end of time). > * There is no signficant economic resource on the moon. > Revenues as a percentage of costs will be 0%. With all due respect, that sounds like it could be lifted from the transcripts of the Court of Spain, circa 1491. I agree that this is an awfully large investment for an unknown return, but I won't accept that it would stay at 0%. A large part of the problem is that it's being approached by scientists and engineers thinking as scientists and engineers. We need to think like business men/women (btw, _are_ there any women on this list?), and MAKE a market. Wouldn't any source of building material fbo LEO or at the L5/L6 points be valuable? If a lunar colony could ship construction material massing less than the food/water/trace chemicals/etc it needs to survive, then there's a potential profit margin. 100 tons of building materials for the cost of lifing 10 tons of colony essentials (including the overhead to provide the TLI delta-v and lunar softlanding). Profit is 90 tons times launch costs per ton should look fairly attractive. Of course, this implies that there's an even _better_ profit margin at L5/L6. > * SSF bare-bones habitat operations costs will be $2 billion > per year. Scaling for transport costs gives over $10 billion > per year for a bare-bones lunar "base". Redesign will cost > even more than SSF cost, since industry has no reason to > participate beyond the usual NASA-contractor mode. A large fraction of the cost of SSF systems lies in the fact that it'll be an orbital installation and not a fixed planetary installation. For example, exterior systems need a much higher IFM capability due to atomic oxygen erosion, fluid handling systems need to be microgravity capable, a reaction control system is needed, the entire system must be stable through attitude corrections, there's no local resources for radiation and thermal sheilding, etc. It's probably better to compare a lunar colony to a long range submarine than to SSF. Another major SSF cost comes from the fact that its "modular" construction requires that each construction step leaves a functional spacecraft behind. In other words, it has to be able to generate power, reject heat, and maintain station from the moment the first module is delivered onorbit, even though it won't be completed until somewhere around the tenth delivery. > * Calling a few astronauts huddled in a Winnebago a "base" is > a major exaggeration. Calling it a "colony" is an abominable > misuse of the word. Actually, a bunch of miserable zealots huddled in a cold, drafty hovel is about how I picture the early New England colonies. > > There are dozens of other pathways to space colonization. (Please Note: sarcasm light is OFF) I'd love to hear them. I missed most of the recent flame war re: your cometary capture scheme, including the original scheme. Please send me a copy of that, if you still have it handy. > Fixation on obsolete concepts like the "lunar base" and oxymoronic > concepts like the "lunar colony" is one of the main reasons why > the space colonization movement lies mired in failure. You raise a lot of good points, Nick, the most important of which (IMHO) is the revenue question, but I think it's premature to rule out _anything_ in this area. At least, not without ruling out _everything_. A critical look at the real progress in space exploration since Apollo makes any long range space project look like a pipe dream. The only way it'll happen is if some people are willing to ignore that and continue to dream on (and some fraction of them do something more than dream). Given that, I don't think it's fair to place anyone who still holds onto The Dream in the problem space, even if their vision lies more in the realm of fantasy than reality. Lou Adornato | "Sure, the cow may have jumped over the Supercomputer Systems, Inc | moon, but she burned up on reentry" Eau Claire, WI | The secretary (and the rest of the company) uunet!ssi!lfa or lfa@ssi.com | have disavowed any knowledge of my actions. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 13:45:26 -0600 From: ewright@bach.convex.com (Edward V. Wright) To: SMITH@EPVAX.MSFC.NASA.GOV, space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? >Ungh. This assumes that there is no oxygen available on the Moon. If the low density of liquid hydrogen poses a problem, and you don't need the oxygen, you could "package" it with carbon or nitrogen instead. Liquid methane or propane could be burned in fuel cells to produce CO2 (which you'd recycle through green plants) and water. Liquid ammonia is also a possibility, although it's pretty nasty stuff to handle. Of course, Nick Szabo will tell us this won't work because methane and propane cost several times as much as water. ;-) ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 15:03:11 EST Subject: Re: Why go back to the Moon? To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >>However, it's cheaper to just ship water... > >Ungh. This assumes that there is no oxygen available on the Moon. If we >can get oxygen out of the rocks, it's cheaper to ship LH2... Ship liquid ammonia (NH3) or wax (CH2), then. Oxygen is available on the Moon, but nitrogen and carbon are scarce. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 11:19:08 -0600 From: ewright@bach.convex.com (Edward V. Wright) To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu, szabo@techbook.com Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check >* The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen, > or carbon. Well, carbonaceous meteorites are so common on the Moon that NASA specifically instructed the Apollo astronauts *not* to collect them. Can you guess from the name what carbonaceous meteorites are made of? >Wishful thinking about polar volatiles or >scrounging solar wind particles are hardly significant. Well, the "wishful thinkers" who believe that solar-wind particles are significant are PhDs who have actually measured their abundances in lunar material. Please present your data, *Doctor* Szabo, so that we can compare them. >* A livable atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen. Total biological ignorance. Humans can live quite well in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. In fact, prior to the Shuttle, every US spacecraft had a 100% oxygen atmosphere. >* There is no affordable way to crack oxygen out of lunar > rock or to recycle it. This would cost, at bare minimum, > tens of millions of dollars per astronaut per year. Just saying that doesn't make it true, Nick. Your sources, please? (Of course, it's interesting that you believe robots can easily and affordably perform tasks that equally complex, provided they're done in the asteroid belt and there are no humans on hand to handle maintenance. Apparently, designing machines so that they don't need to function, unattended, for years without maintenance, greatly *increases* their cost, in the wonderful wonderful of Nick Szabo.) I am willing to believe that *you* couldn't design a system that didn't cost tens of millions of dollars per person, Nick. That's because, despite your pretensions to being a "libertarian" (who wants the government to finance his R&D program) who hates NASA, you are firmly committed to NASA's philosphy of using ultra-high-technology no matter what and goddam the cost. But, difficult as it may be for you to understand, Nick, private enterprise can sometimes do things *cheaper* and more efficiently than government can. >* Because of transportation costs for recycling equipment, > recycling on the moon is far more expensive than recycling on > earth. "Because of transportation costs, toilet paper is far more expensive on the North Slope than in the lower 48. This has prevented men from working on the North Slope, right? Can you get any sillier than this? Sure, recycling equipment is more expensive on the Moon, so what? It's also much more valuable. Besides which, transportation costs don't really figure into it since anyone who is acting like an engineer and looking for *solutions* would realize that it's possible to build most of that equipment in situ. >* The annual per capita consumption of water in the > U.S. is over 500 tons. Wrong again, Nick. The United States may *use* that much water in a day, but almost none of it is *consumed* in the process. Virtually all of it is recycled through the biosphere. Only a demagogue would estimate the amount of water needed on the Moon by looking at the total amount of water used, including the amount flowing over hydroelectric dams, on Earth. >* It takes more than a rocket payload full of hydrogen > to make the water needed by industry. !!! So, like, you mean, maybe we'd have to launch two rockets? Well, everyone, that's it, guess we'd better give up. Nick's convinced me it's impossible. >* There is no signficant economic resource on the moon. True, once you ignore aluminum, titanium, iron, oxygen, etc. >* SSF bare-bones habitat operations costs will be $2 billion > per year. Again, it may be hard for a "libertarian" like you to imagine, but private industry has been known to do things cheaper than NASA. As G. Harry Stine said, "A mouse is an elephant built to commercial specifications." >* Calling a few astronauts huddled in a Winnebago a "base" is > a major exaggeration. Calling it a "colony" is an abominable > misuse of the word. Bullshit. You don't own the trademark on "space colony," Nick. To quote G. Harry Stine again, a space colony is any facility in space where humans can live, reproduce, and raise families. Moreover, your use of the word "astronaut" -- which implies government employees -- for any space colonist shows how close- minded you are. >There are dozens of other pathways to space colonization. Yet there's only one that you'll admit is viable. A scheme that requires large numbers of autonomous mining ships with robotic and AI capabilites so far beyond the state of the art that no one can even give a time table for their development. You may wish for a magic technology, like AI, that will allow us to go from zero base to Gerard O'Neill's gigantic cities in space with no intermediate steps, Nick, but while you're wishing, the rest of us would like to roll up our sleeves and do the real work to make it happen. ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 17:54:49 EST Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >This is grossly unfair. NASA put those Saturns at KSC, JSC, and MSFC >when Nixon ordered the cancellation of the Apollo 18, 19, and 20 >missions. There where no funds to put them into "hot" storage... Actually, they *were* in protected storage in the VAB for several years. That was discontinued when it became clear that they were never going to be launched. I'm not sure just when that was, although an obvious bet would be when -- in about 1976, I think -- it was finally decided that modifications to KSC facilities for shuttle use would be done without any attempt to retain Saturn launch capability. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 17:11:46 -0600 (CST) From: pgf@srl06.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check > Well, carbonaceous meteorites are so common on the Moon that > NASA specifically instructed the Apollo astronauts *not* to > collect them. Can you guess from the name what carbonaceous > meteorites are made of? I wish they were that common. They weren't. From the documentaries etc. I've seen, they seemed to be looking _for_ carbonaceous rock... > I am willing to believe that *you* couldn't design a system > that didn't cost tens of millions of dollars per person, Nick. > That's because, despite your pretensions to being a "libertarian" > (who wants the government to finance his R&D program) who hates > NASA, you are firmly committed to NASA's philosphy of using > ultra-high-technology no matter what and goddam the cost. But, > difficult as it may be for you to understand, Nick, private > enterprise can sometimes do things *cheaper* and more efficiently > than government can. I think he believes that NASA couldn't design something that didn't cost tens of millions of dollars. And he has a point, since noone here really seems to be advocating a "nuke JSC and Marshall and start a _real_ space program" sort of approach. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 8:50:14 -0600 (CST) From: SMITH@EPVAX.MSFC.NASA.GOV (The Ice-9-man Cometh) Subject: Nuke MSFC? To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >From: "Phil G. Fraering" >...he believes that NASA couldn't design something >that didn't cost tens of millions of dollars. And he has >a point, since noone here really seems to be advocating a >"nuke JSC and Marshall and start a _real_ space program" >sort of approach. If someone does propose that approach, please email me forthwith so I can evacuate. :-/ Don't nuke us here at MSFC, just get most of the regulations off our backs so we can do our jobs.... Here's an interesting anecdote. Apparently a fellow here at Marshall needed some hot-fire engine testing done, but no money was available. Using nothing but excess, scrap, and in-house labor, he built and operated a test stand for two years with NO funding! Eventually the GSA caught him; they forced him to tear down the stand, find funding, and rebuild it again under official sanction. Continuous Improvement at work. *snork* | James W. Smith, NASA MSFC EP-53 | SMITH@epvax.msfc.nasa.gov | | "This is your pilot. We are going down. We are all going down together." | | And I said "Uh oh...this is going to be some day...." | | --Laurie Anderson, _From the Air_ | | Neither NASA nor (!James) is responsible for what I say. Mea culpa. | ------------------------------ To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Priority? From: can2can@ziggys.cts.com (Tim Edwards) Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 07:50:55 PST Which is more important? 1) Permanent, manned Lunar settlement 2) Lunar rail-gun or tether launcher 3) Phased array chirp-radars at L4 and L5 as near-Earth watch 4) Fleet of asteroid/comet mining robots with telerobotic 'mother's to strip-mine any close-pass bodies 5) Science team _on_ Mars 6) Continued employment for NASA managers ( the techs moved on...) In my opinion, all but six deserve our support. can2can@ziggys.cts.com - BBS (619)262-6384 Ziggy's Den Of Iniquity ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 10:25 PST From: jean@opus.dgi.com (Jean Y. Kim) To: can2can@ziggys.cts.com Subject: Re: Priority? Cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Tim Edwards writes: >6) Continued employment for NASA managers ( the techs moved on...) > In my opinion, all but six deserve our support. you were joking, right???? right??? The first five, in the numerical order and priority, I like. Let's kick the #6. The government supported monopoly NASA enjoys is the only reason #6 will continue to exist. You are absolutely right. The Techs have moved on! Jean Y. Kim jean@dgi.com ------------------------------ End of Space-tech Digest #130 *******************