From: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Date: 9 Oct 92 16:43:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: eng.1992Oct09.164335.27760
Reply-To: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu
Organization: Computer Aided Design Lab, U. of Maryland College Park

In article <1992Oct8.124009.504@techbook.com>, szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:

>  GTO is the halfway-point
>for commercial payloads to Clarke orbit.  Also polar earth orbit,
>Mars orbit and the lunar surface,assuming somebody can find the
>$100's of billions for FLO,

Nobody is claiming hundreds of billions for FLO. Your basic bigotry on the
subject is showing. 

>>A lunar colony needs to have PROFITABLE EXPORTS and a minimium of heavy
>>imports. The only profitable export of the near-term is going to be power. 
>
>You were talking about a lunar "base" with a few astronauts living
>in Winnebago-sized modules, not a lunar colony with potentially 
>self-sufficient families.  Let's not start misusing the word "colony"
>for PR, lest the very goal of space colonization be lost in the process.

Nick, if you're going to be a semantics snob, then call it the Lunar Bay
Trading Company. 


>Power export is  not near-term, because the up-front investment required is
>probably 1,000 times what commerce will spend on any new venture, even after 
>NASA gets done with FLO. 

Probably? Your typical response to any idea other than your own is 
"Multiply by 1000." 

> Furthermore, the amortization of that investment alone
>is far more expensive than building natural-gas and nuclear reactors earthside.

>The limiting factor on electricity costs, BTW, is capital cost of plants
>not energy supplies.  We don't win on capital costs by using $10 million 
>an hour construction labor on the moon.  :-)

Another mythical number, which is not representative of a downturn in costs
which would occur upon project startup.

>>Once you land the initial hardware, LunaOne should be able to use native
>>materials to generate its own oxygen and extract metals to produce more
>>machines. 
>
>No it cannot do this, because large volumes of volatiles are critical
>to such processes and do not exist on the moon.  Study your industrial
>processes, please.  

Forgive me. I was quoting some stuff out of Zubin's article in "Ad Astria."
Now you're saying he's wrong in his description of a scaled-down "Lunar
Direct." 

>>Where d'ya get $40 mil/ton, laddy? Is that NASA costs?
>
>No, it's an extrapolation of commercial costs by the extra delta-v
>needed to land on the moon.  If NASA will be building its typical
>astronaut-safety structures, I care not to imagine how expensive
>it will be.

Who said NASA will be in charge? I realize NASA is, in your eyes, the Great
Satan, but nobody said they're going to build. 

>>I'm going to subcontract
>>to the Russians.
>
>Not if NASA is helping, you won't, except for minor pieces of
>tech here and there.

You're funny. Go pick up an Aviation Week sometime. Germany and ESA are looking
to extensively cooperate with the Russians. The 

>><<buzzer>> WRONG! All my R&D has been done thanks to the folks at Freed 
>
>R&D is only a small fraction of SSF costs.

I'll let someone else take a crack at this one.

>  The cost of launching and
>maintaining astronauts dominates even for LEO, and will be even much
>more dominating a factor foor the moon.  Besides, FLO is redesigning 
>everything -- new suits, modules, etc.  It turns out that astronaut
>equipment is designed for special-purpose use; what works in LEO
>probably doesn't on the moon.  Besides, the whole purpose of NASA
>studying this is to design their next pork barrel project, and
>that won't work if they can't get the R&D boys in on it.

NASA is changing. I realize this is difficult for you to swallow, but they are
changing. 

>>If I don't like the costs here at home, I'll go talk to the Italians, who are
>>building smaller modules to be installed on Freedom.
>
>Even smaller than a Winnebago?   Are we now stuffing astronauts
>into Honda Civics for 90 days?

A scale-up of their current work. They already have the tooling and are
demonstrating they CAN build the hardware needed, and are gaining the
institutional experience necessary. 

Could you please take a cold shower? I know you're really hot to shoot this
down, but I think the hormones are overwhelming your brain here.

>>Or the Russians, who have
>>lots of leftovers, and hungry families.
>
>May not be a coincidence.

They're still going to build Mir 2. Despite their problems. Even if they need
to get money from the Germans to do it. 

I wouldn't be surprised if they set up a public stock company at one point. 
It'd be a pretty interesting investment. 

>The inflexibility of astronauts for fixing the myriad Shuttle problems, 
>even those that could have been fixed in a shirtsleeve environment, 
>demonstrates that this stuff can't be fiexed. 

Exqueeze me? Why do you think they pack duct tape and Swiss army knives? If the
astronauts WEREN'T there, how many experiments would have been unsalvagable? 

None. Zero. 

> We have to have stuff 
>that works autonomously, whether astronauts are there or not. 

Sure. Can you build a machine which will pick up a hammer and slam itself on
the side? Or use duct tape? Realllly. 

>  Mining and extraction of specific elements
>from soils takes hundreds to thousands of specialized craftsmen and
>millions of tons of tools and equipment to do in shirtsleeves,
>air-filled environments on earth.

Which you seem to think can be done by Mr. Roboto.

> We have to start bootstrapping
>with the simple processes, and unfortuneately that means leaving
>the tough stuff like breaking apart silicate regolith until later.

Metals processing is a necessary and vital process infrastructure. You need
metal to construct storage tanks, and to build things, like ships. 
 
>Alas, this lunar scheme doesn't just fail the basics of
>business economics; it also fails frosh chemistry.

Thank you Mr. Cheap Shot. However, O2 is a vital component. It doesn't make it
the ONLY thing which is needed.

>>[solar cell beaming, I'm castigated for "ignoring it"]
>
>I didn't mention it because the budget was already above $500 billion even
>before we started to try to pay for things like mass drivers, big
>solar cell plants, etc. 

*yawn* by your calculations. Once you build the initial infrastructure, you
have a declining amount of external inputs necessary, because you have building
materials on sight.

>  The prereqs were sufficient to demonstrate the
>absurdity of the project. A solar cell plant alone would more than
>double that budget -- we are talking huge amounts of chemical
>plant to purify the silicon, for starters. 

No, it doesn't. Suggest you look up some of the research which has been done in
using native moon soil to make solar cells. 

>  Furthermore, just
>passing the safety hurdles and building the rectennas will take
>up most of the typical powerplant budget, if the ecofascists will
>even allow it at all.
>
>>I'm going to skip this, because there's no "market."
>
>Well then who is shelling out the $500 billion, and why?  Congress
>won't even pay four orders of magnitude less than that for SEI, last 
>I heard.

A) It's not $500 billion. B) I'm marrying Ross Perot's daughter, and C) The
Japanese would put out for it. 

>I never denied government as market. The military is our primary user of s
>pace; both its current and future operations would benfit greatly from
>cheap propellant.

You're dreaming. Current operations do not consume large amounts of propellant.
As for future operations... it's all pipe smoke. 

> Moon
>base would benefit tremendously, as well, but it's not likely to
>be an initial market, since it just doesn't make any economic
>or political sense until the cost of large-scale space operations
>has been radically lowered, primarily with a cheap supply of
>volatiles.

Volatiles don't build space structures. They don't build tanks to store
volatiles. Szabo Astroid Mining Ships won't be built out of ice.

>BTW how is the need to protect against $trillions in damage and
>millions of lives lost from a small nuclear war "inflated"?

Suggest you take a look at the ABM treaty and how it relates to SDIO. Also
suggest you review current support in the Senate for deploying space-based
systems. (HINT: NON-EXISTANT. There's NO money). 

>There are many large commercial markets as well. Comet organics can 
>be turned into a wide-variety of materials, including urea-formaldehyde 
>resin and carbon fiber, for building very large comsats. 

Russians nee Soviets looked at this. Basically as something to use Energia for.
No demand for very large comsats. Now, this was for an assembled huge-sat
assembeled on orbit. 

Of course, processing comet organics and turing them into products requires
some sort of infrastructure somewhere. How do you build the chemical factories?
Do you assemble in zero-g? Hmmmmmmmm. 

Got some metal and glass I'll sell you, real cheap. Finished products require a
little more effort. 

>Volatile extraction would greatly lower the cost of doing this
>lunar base.  If you want to help make it a reality for that reason,
>that's great.  Let's work together to fund Spacewatch, an asteroid
>and comet composition survey, NEAR, and a comet sample return. 

I see. So after you spit on me, you want my help? 

>All that put together is less than 1% the cost of FLO; you
>wouldn't even notice the funds.  I'll even help work for
>Artemis and Lunar Scout as a return favor.

Actually, they should all be funded. 

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