From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Summary: A horribly inferior way to develop space
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 15:48:55 GMT

This is a misuse of the word "bootstrap".  The scheme does not substitute 
a major percent of native materials that would make ensuing steps much 
cheaper, as for example a earth-comet-earth-comet propellant bootstrapping 
scheme does.

In article <1992Oct05.171753.21017@eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes:

>Off the top of my head, any initial builds for a lunar base would require
>the following:

I've included below just the estimated launch costs for this scheme, at
$40 million per ton to the lunar surface.

>
>	o	"construction shack" & living quarters space

Based on SSF, presumeably.  $120 billion SSF cost + Apollo
cost = $270 billion (see my previous article on FLO).
Construction shack 200 tons, launch cost  $8 billion.

>	o	Caterpiller 2000+ Lunar Bulldozer (:-)

50 tons, $2e9, not including power supply, spare parts and tools.
N.B. must be totally redesigned for 1/6 normal force, electric
power, and vacuum-welding conditions, if "dozer" concept will even 
work at all.

>	o	Processing plant to extract O2 from lunar soil

This is a losing proposition.  $2e9 to set down 50 tons of equipment,
which will -- if your engineering is quite advanced! -- produce 50 tons
of LOX per year.  The LOX will have all leaked out in that time,
alas.

>	o	Solar furnace to melt soil for glass & construction material

50 tons, $8 billion.  It will break down before it's output a thousand
tons, though.  Astronauts won't be able to fix it, though, any more
than they've been able to fix a myriad of similar problems with the
shuttle over the years.

>	o	Power. Preferably two different means of juice for
>		redudancy; solar & fuel cells if you want to be GreenPeace
>		happy, nuclear otherwise. 

500 tons, $20 billion.

>	o	Some food production facility.

500 tons, $20 billion.   This will be a toy, though, since water, air
and organics have to be resupplied from earth as they leak from
the system.  Check out SSF resupply costs for estimates.

Space systems are typically 4*launch costs -- much more than that for
NASA, but let's go with commerce's 4.  That gives us  $240 billion + $270 
billion or $510 billion.  The base  is still totally dependent on earth for
air, water, and organics, not to mention spare parts, medicine, and
any signficant expasion of the base.   After $540 billion no mass driver 
or other way to get the LOX off, even if it was useful (it's not -- the market
for LOX in earth orbit is $1 billion a year with 100% penetration,
but this base amortizes to $50 billion a year if you can get in
on the current low interest rates, which you can't, because it's
a high-risk venture).

This method of "space development" has been beaten to death.
Give it up, already.  There are plenty of other, better ways
to develop space.

>[admits to problem with start-up costs]

No doubt.  This is more than 500 times the amount spent to start 
up comsats, which got a large purse for a new industry.
By comparison, an automated ice extraction scheme could come 
in under $10 billion, given some fairly easy advances in tech -- eg 
good deep-space electric rockets.  That's half the amount privately 
invested in the Chunnel, so we're in the range of commercial interest.  
Economically and commercially, there is no contest between the traditional,
obsolete approach and the commercial approach that concentrates
on the needs of industry.


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