To the moon, Alice! To the moon!

[DanS]

I doubt the water comet idea at L5 would make much sense, due to the Δ-v required to nudge it to L5. But here are the Δ-v costs to get around our immediate neighborhood.

As you can see, it costs the most to get something from Earth to Low Earth Orbit, but there are still lots of reasons that it might be most convenient to schlep something from Earth to Low Earth Orbit rather than use something available from the immediate neighborhood.

Abbreviations
C3 = Escape orbit
GEO = Geosynchronous orbit
GTO = Geostationary transfer orbit
L5 = Earth-Moon fifth Lagrangian point
LEO = Low Earth orbit

[Kuciwalker]

There is no free aerobrake for an asteroid coming into the Earth-moon system. That's just a bad idea.

[DanS]

Correct.

[KrazyHorse]

The map is also incomplete. L5 to C3 (earth escape velocity) is cheaper than it would seem from the map. I don't have the figure, but it's necessarily smaller than 0.7 km/s

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
There is no free aerobrake for an asteroid coming into the Earth-moon system. That's just a bad idea.

Trust me, I wasn't contemplating doing that. Could you imagine the lawsuits?

[DanS]

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

Originally posted by Zkribbler
but is there any economic motivation to leave Momma Earth??

We don't know. At a minimum, it is cool and fun to leave Momma Earth.

[Zkribbler]

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

Originally posted by Spiffor
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.

Yes, but to launch stuff from the moons, you first have to launch them from Earth to those moons (unless, of coruse, you're just moving rocks around the solar system).

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse




Trust me, I wasn't contemplating doing that. Could you imagine the lawsuits?

What lawsuits? All the lawyers would be dead...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs


What lawsuits? All the lawyers would be dead...

I was assuming a "successful" maneuver, where the only problem is the giant chunks of crap that would fall off the rock...

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
... giant chunks of crap ...

Oh great....more lawyers.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs


What lawsuits? All the lawyers would be dead...

Roaches and lawyers would live on.

[reds4ever]

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

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Yes, but to launch stuff from the moons, you first have to launch them from Earth to those moons (unless, of coruse, you're just moving rocks around the solar system).

yep, you'd have to manufacture/ fabricate on the moons.

[Whoha]

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

Originally posted by Zkribbler
At last count, there are 95 moons in the solar system. Why do we want to go to any of them??

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.

I can understand wanting to have a few research stations to do pure scientific research....but is there any economic motivation to leave Momma Earth??

It won't become economically viable any time soon, but if we just sit on our butts and contemplate our navels it will never be economically viable.

[Zkribbler]

When will it become economically viable?

The point of my opening post is that economically viablity isn't foreseeable...excpet maybe in the most distant future. On Earth, we have air, water, food, warmth, building maeterial, etc. In space, on moons, on other planets, etc., we will have none of these -- or if we have them, they will be very very expensive.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Vesayen


Roaches and lawyers would live on.

Not if the roaches eat them...