From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: Cost of lunar base
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 16:42:24 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Apr7.180532.16011@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:

>Well lets examine how we get to the compost heap. To make compost,
>you need dead plants. To get dead plants, you need live plants, to
>get live plants, you need fertilizer. Since fertilizer is heavy,
>you'd want to make it from materials on site. So to get a compost
>heap, you've first got to build a fertilizer plant. Since you now
>have the fertilizer plant, you don't strictly need the compost heap.

There are no materials available onsite for making fertilizer, except 
for those you bring with you or recycle.  The fertilizer needed to
start the initial crop will be made in factories -- on Earth. 

>Ah, if only organic chemistry were that simple all us poor farmers could
>retire. Also remember that while recycling is useful, no small scale
>recycling effort ever approaches 100% efficiency. 

There's a logical fallacy here -- that unless you can do something 100%,
it isn't worth doing.  That's nonsense.  If I could show you how to
reduce your mortgage payments by 90%, would you consider that worthless?

>Since processed cotton is nearly pure cellulose, ordinary 
>composting just doesn't do the job. You really need some termites in the 
>cycle. 

Then we'll bring termites.  They don't mass too much.  (Thank God we
don't need pachyderms. :-)

>Industrially, thread making isn't really done with spinning wheels at
>all anymore. They're too hard to operate automatically.

Okay, maybe I should have said "spinning machines."  If they're not
called wheels any more, that's fine with me.  As I said, I'll use
whatever technology is necessary to do the job.

>Well it's considered the number one source of water pollution in the
>South. You *could* distill it, but that's a tough and highly energetic
>way of recovering the water. 

Not tough at all.  The Moon provides an excellent free heat source (at
least, during the two-week lunar day) and an excellent heat sink.  Everything
else is just a matter of plumbing.

>Our machine replaced 37 seamstresses, 4 pattern cutters, and 2 layout
>people with 1 machine operator. Our waste was cut from 4% to under 1%.
>That savings alone paid for the system in under 6 months.

As Werhner von Braun used to say, "Better is the enemy of good enough."
You believe that because we can't take the best, most efficient
textile-manufacturing system (at least, the best if you're operating
on a scale with millions of customers) and transplant it intact to the
Moon, it's not worth doing anything at all.  I don't care about better
or best; I'll settle for good enough.

>In Colonial days, people rarely had more than one good suit of clothes.
>Everything else was patchwork. That's because hand production of cloth
>and clothing was so labor intensive and thus expensive. I'm suggesting
>that a similar situation would prevail on a Moon colony. 

In Colonial days, people rarely owned more than a few books, only listened
to music on special occassions when live musicians, communicated with
friends and loved ones only in person or through a rather slow and unreliable
postal service, and could die of a toothache.

Lunar colonists can and will do without many things, but not when they
have the ability to produce those things for themselves.  If the official
coony plan does not include a textile industry, you can bet some ambituous
entrepreneur will find a way to start one before long.  

>If the clothing were cotton, it would wear out
>much more quickly than some of the modern synthetics that could be
>imported for the same cost. 

Actually, there are few synthetics that are as durable and light-weight
as cotton.  Linen is even stronger than cotton, which is why I suggested
it as an alternative, but I haven't investigated the growing/processing
of flax to see which is more reasonable.

>Study the motions that you go through
>to pick a ripe tomato. It's really a lot more complex than it seems.
>The grasp requires force feedback to avoid having the tomato go squish.
>There is a twisting motion coupled with a pulling motion that requires
>careful coordination to avoid breaking the plant stalk. All with real
>time feedback. 

Or firmly grasp the stem and push down on the top of the tomato, which
drops (slowly, in 1/6-gee) into a bag.

>It'd really be a lot easier to *cut* the tomato from the vine, but that 
>damages the plant due to fluid loss while proper picking causes a rupture 
>that quickly self-seals. 

That may or not be significant, depending on the variance in the time it
takes the tomatoes on one vine to mature. 

>Oh my mind is made up. At $1,000,000 an hour, 

One million dollars an hour!  You are living in NASA fantasy land!  Nobody
in the real world can afford to spend money like that and still remain in
business (much less turn a profit).

>that 10 second tomato pick costs $2777.80. I don't think a teleoperator 
>can do it in 10 seconds, and I don't think the teleoperation equipment 
>can be built, delivered, and operated cheaper than that. 

Fine.  Don't submit a bid on it.  I expect there'll be plenty of people
who will.

>Indeed, at your lift cost of $250 a pound, an imported tomato only costs $251.

>Besides that
>10 second pick can be part of the transit time to the dinner table,
>so it doesn't cut into the worker's productive time.

Wait a minute.  If the tomatoes are going to be grown on Earth, how
can a worker on the Moon pick one on the way to his dinner table?

>Per passenger mile, a Piper Cub is *much* more expensive to operate than
>a 747, economy of scale. Your little picker is going to be more expensive
>than a big picker per each tomato picked.

Sure is.  By an order of magnitude at least.  But your mechanical behemoth
is not suited to supplying a 500-person colony on the Moon, just as a 747
is not suited to every job here on Earth.  That's why people still fly
Piper Cubs.  

>>>Now remember our on site human tomato picker. If he is doing *other* work 
>>>worth $19,346.79 an hour, he can afford to have $251 tomatoes *shipped* 
>>>to him. 

>>This assumes he has other work worth $19,000 an hour -- which would put
>>him in the Fortune 500 very quickly.  

>He'd *better* have high value work to do. Like workers in other inhospitable
>places, like the North Slope, where a hamburger is $25 and it's cheaper to
>*mail* concrete blocks than ship them by boat, most of his income is going
>to be consumed paying for life support. 

You have really departed into NASA fantasy land.  Check out what those
North Slope workers make some time -- it's a lot, by continental US standards,
but it isn't even *close* to $19,000 an hour -- not by two or three orders of
magnitude.  Except for being President of Microsoft or directing Star Wars, 
I can't think of *any* job that pays that much.  Your figures are simply
absurd.   

>>And since his body is going to be metabolizing that tomato and turning
>>it into carbon dioxide, someone else had damn well better be planting
>>*something* to absorb it!

>Or using chemical scrubbers, it could be cheaper. With oxygen available
>in the rock, it might be cheapest to simply dump the CO2 in a single
>stage pass thru system. 

CO2 is CO2 -- 12 pounds of carbon for every 32 pounds of oxygen.  The
oxygen is available from lunar rock, but the carbon (except in small
quantities for meteorites) ain't.  Chemical scrubbers would produce
tons of solid waste and require tons of replenishment.

>Closed cycle ecologies appear to be much more
>difficult than ordinary engineering solutions to most life support
>problems.

But a 90+% closed cycle is orders of magnitude simpler.  It's getting
the last 1-2% that's expensive.  Which is why the first colonies won't
do it.