To the moon, Alice! To the moon!

[KrazyHorse]

Errr...not necessarily. And distance isn't important. Delta-vee is. The solar system is full of junk. Wait for an iceball to get knocked into an appropriate orbit, then send mission.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


1) Launch mission to appropriate NiFe asteroid+comet
2) Move asteroid + comet to L5
3) Launch people, nuke stuff, some equipment to L5
4) ???
5) Profit

Have you considered the impact the time required to move the object to L5 might have on that profit? There might be a huge delay on seeing returns from those investments using any means of moving the object which isn't itself prohibitively expensive.


L5 is an *amazing* place for a space station but not a replacement for bases at the site of resource extraction. Maybe L5 would be an ideal site for space based manufacturing rather than an alternative to moon bases.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Errr...not necessarily. And distance isn't important. Delta-vee is. The solar system is full of junk. Wait for an iceball to get knocked into an appropriate orbit, then send mission.

too much required waiting can make a sound investment into a very unattractive one.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Geronimo


Have you considered the impact the time required to move the object to L5 might have on that profit? There might be a huge delay on seeing returns from those investments using any means of moving the object which isn't itself prohibitively expensive.

Timescale of a year? 2? to move **** into proper places. Not really important given the potential payoff.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Timescale of a year? 2? to move **** into proper places. Not really important given the potential payoff.

Are you saying that a means of manoevering almost any comet to L5 can be found that fits within such a time frame or that you already know of a number of comets/solar system bodies which could be brought to L5 in that time frame?

It seems as if more than a simple orbital nudge would be required to get the object to actually take up residence at L5.

for the 1 to 2 year time frame just how much space infrastructure is required to nudge at least one of these objects orbit such that it will arrive at L5 in a manner suitable to settle in there?

[KrazyHorse]

Stuff in eccentric Earth perisol Mars aposol would be suitale. There's not always a suitable object, but it's not that rare to see an iceball or NiFe object there.

Assemble a bunch of heavy-lift stuff in orbit, send it to iceball, blast at aposol.

It would be hellishly expensive, but it's the only rational plan for large-scale space exploitation I've seen.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It's harder to move the moon by launching rockets on it. You also have about half the surface area to seal/insulate (even less if you tunnel).

Why aren't you allowed to tunnel into your building material in L5?

[Kuciwalker]

I was assuming you were talking about space stations, not asteroids.

[Spiffor]

Re: To the moon, Alice! To the moon!

Originally posted by Zkribbler
All of them are far less habitable than either Antarctica or the Sahara Desert. Only Titan has an atmosphere, and the air there is poisoness. There's no place where food can be grown. If we mine any minerals, it will be far more expensive to transport them to Earth than if we just mined them here.

"Habitable" isn't really relevant when it comes to the exploitation of space. In all likelihood, resource-extraction operations will be fully automated.

On those moons, there are abundant natural resources which are rare on earth, such as Deuterium on Luna IIRC. These materials can be useful (and actually, deuterium is a key component to fusion power).

Launches are very expansive and polluting from earth. However, the lower the gravity, the cheaper a launch gets. And moons tend to have gravities significantly lower than Earth's.

Finally, there can be dramatic progresses in the launching technology. We're basically using the same technology as in the 50's, and reserch was mostly done about perfecting the tech (more reliable and able to deliver more payload), but not about looking for something new. If an actual effort is made into launching tech, you could see rapid progresses.

[Kuciwalker]

Finally, there can be dramatic progresses in the launching technology. We're basically using the same technology as in the 50's, and reserch was mostly done about perfecting the tech (more reliable and able to deliver more payload), but not about looking for something new. If an actual effort is made into launching tech, you could see rapid progresses.

There is a fundamental physical limit to those technologies, which is Earth's gravity well.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Stuff in eccentric Earth perisol Mars aposol would be suitale. There's not always a suitable object, but it's not that rare to see an iceball or NiFe object there.

Assemble a bunch of heavy-lift stuff in orbit, send it to iceball, blast at aposol.

It would be hellishly expensive, but it's the only rational plan for large-scale space exploitation I've seen.

What about a moon space elevator? We can make that using existing materials.

[Kuciwalker]

Also, Spiffor, there are really only so many ways to climb up that gravity well. One is shooting stuff down really fast. The other is climbing. Each has problems.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm uncertain about the stability of a moon space elevator. Tides. Big, giant ****ing tides.

I'm also uncertain that such a system would cost any less, and think it would probably cost more. Plus the L5 constructiojn site is scalable. You can only lift so much per day given one space elevator. To lift more you need another space elevator, far from the first one (otherwise they'll collapse into each other). Now you've got to build a whole new facility somewhere far away from the first one.

Don't get me wrong: I think that a space elevator is the ****, but I'm not sure it's the answer to this question.

[Dauphin]

You forgot magnets! Magnets I say!

[KrazyHorse]

The lunar railgun is another classic idea. But in both these cases I think the initial startup costs are higher than simply flying big dumb rockets out to a big, dumb piece of rock.