The Moon Society Forum

Future developments might make the job of space industrialization much less expensive. For instance:

1) today we do 3D sintering with plastics, titanium, steel and aluminum. Tomorrow we might be doing it with Mg, iron, ceramics including materials like basalt or plain regolith, glass, who knows what else. This tech will be central to "Santa Claus" machines. We don't make really big parts with 3D sintering, but theoretically you could print up a battleship if you had a machine big enough!

2) in vitro meat production is in the experimental stage now. In the future we might be growing our hamburgers in petri dishes instead of trying to raise cattle or other animals on the Moon and in other space habitations

3) by 2050, what if we have AI that rivals the human brain? Space robotics would have very little need for human help!

4) bioleaching is real-20% of the world's copper is now produced by using bacteria. Will we be able to use microbes to get many if not all the trace elements in lunar regolith that are now impossible to extract?

5) nanotechnology is forging ahead. While I don't think a few kg. of "grey goo" is going to grow into lunar cities, who knows what will be possible? Nanofabrication and nanostructured materials will certainly be a part of the outer space future.

6) medical advances might make our worries about muscular atrophy in low G and cancer from radiation exposure no problem at all

7) combined technologies might make the dream of cheap access to space a reality and the cost barrier could be broken. Don't have a certain material on the Moon? Just launch it up there! What do i mean by combined tech? i am thinking of lean manufacturing, mass production, automation, new materials, etc. Another thing to consider-the big dumb booster concept. A racy LH2/LOX rocket is a difficult beast. Kerosene and LOX rockets might be cheaper to operate in large numbers of launches.

8) commercial fusion might be here in 2050. Whether it will be possible to fuse helium 3 I do not know, but if we could just fuse deuterium and tritium we could launch a fusion reactor and some D and T to the Moon for nightspan power with no fear of a radioactive material release disaster as with fission and uranium. While tritium is slightly radioactive there really would be no danger if some got released by a rocket explosion.

9) Will we use rockets or will we use fully reusable super duper space planes that breathe air during part of their ascent and are as safe as jet liners today? Will we have nano-super materials and set up a space elevator by 2050? Nothing too far fetched, just a cable that hauls up 10 or 20 tons at a time.

10) We might have extended life spans. An engineer now works for about 40 years and retires. Imagine a guy who is about 100 and has been at it for 80 years-that guy could really solve some problems, especially if he has AI computers at his fingertips.

11) Mass customization is a growing field. In the future everything could be custom made largely by robots and CNC machines instead of "off the rack" but be just as cheap as off the rack stuff found in catalogs now. Need a part for a machine you are designing and it isn't in the catalogs? Just send in your specs and they'll make it for you cheap. That would make a lot of engineer's jobs easier.

12) 3D holography. Imagine teleoperating robots this way. Of course, with stereo cams and 3D goggles we can just about do this today. 3D holographic video for examination of finds in space, on the Moon, Mars, etc. Inspection of work done by robots, etc.

14) super batteries and/or super capacitors. They are working on them for cars. By 2050 this kind of tech could make fuel cells and associated plumbing and reactant tanks outdated. Storing power for nightspan on the Moon could be no trouble at all

15) super solar panels-there's a lot going on in this field, "they" are even printing them from ink based on indium, selenium, copper and other Moon rare elements, but if we could bioleach rare elements from regolith, who knows?

16) high temp superconductors-we now have commercially available 77K SC wire. What's next? And if we have cargo space planes as reliable as a jet liner or a space elevator or cheap rockets for cheap access to space, the cost of upporting large tonnages of SC wire to the Moon won't be too high and we could wire the Moon

17) genetically engineered microbes and plants for producing all sorts of substances from drugs to plastics merely from water, CO2, NH3 and some minerals

18) new ways to extract metals. There ain't much C, Cl or Fl on the Moon for Al processes but there is plenty of sulfur and processes for the electrolysis of aluminum sulfide are now patented (although they need some C, Cl and Fl but not as much as we'd need for conventional Hall-Heroult or the AlCOA process for the electrolysis of AlCl3) see: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080202939

The Price of Progress

I didn't know where to put this so I am putting it here. Large sums of money scare people. The Apollo program of the 60s cost from $25 to $45 billion. That's $100 to $200 billion in today's money. The US GDP is now something like $10 trillion a year. So the cost of the great project was 1% to 2% of one year's GDP, spread out over ten years, so only 0.1% to 0.2% of the GDP every year was dedicated to this investment in the future. Now we are talking about $100 billion for Return to the Moon. Seems like a lot of money, but it will lead to the development of new launchers, manned spacecraft, and tech for survival on the Moon. If only we can inspire the planners to go further than an intermittently manned base and get into ISRU and bootstrapping with long term goals for everything from science to asteroid deflection to Mars colonization to tourism to exploration of the solar system and beyond.

I've said this enough times that the Houston chapter members can probably quote it better than I can, but I look at the problem as one of overcoming the disconnect in the numbers. Bear in mind that I haven't done detailed cost/benefit analyses, but even so I still think that my figures are in the ballpark.

We face no major technical or engineering problems which could not be overcome with a hundred billion dollars in today's money. That's figure #1. Given current capital markets, we could probably raise a hundred billion today if we could show a payback of five hundred billion in twenty years. That's figure #2. However, at present, the only payback we can realistically show (largely space tourism) would be on the order of two to five billion dollars. That's figure #3.

The things to keep in mind: Figure #1 is never going to get any larger (except, of course, with inflation). The challenges are not going to get any bigger. Figure #3 is never going to get any smaller. The rewards and the payback are never going to get any poorer. Figure #2, now, may fluctuate with inflation, the performance of the market, and the cost of money—but with that in mind it is by and large tied directly to figure #1.

Our challenge, then, is to find ways to either bring figure #1 down by proposing solutions and procedures which simplify the problems and challenges we face, or else to bring figure #3 up by coming up with benefits and rewards which can only be gained by going to space. It's nice to talk about the possibility of He-3 fusion financing a Moon colony, for example (and I've done just that in the story I'm writing), but when someone actually figures out how to do it it will bring figure #3 up by at least an order of magnitude.

If we can come up with ideas and techniques to bring figure #1 down, even little by little, and at the same time bring figure #3 up and up by hook and by crook, eventually someday figure #3 will exceed figure #2. And that is when the human race goes to space for good.

Good comments, Eric.

We also have to consider the value of asteroid deflection forces. While they won't be any more profitable than fire houses, they could stave off disaster. A near miss or another Tunguska near a populous region would stir things up. Hopefully we will prevent this. And what about the long term value of a terraformed Mars? If international government efforts dedicate 0.1% to 0.2% of their GDPs to space it will be worth it. If we can get solar energy going...that would be wonderful. We must keep in mind, barring a he3 fusion breakthrough, that we have competition. Imagine ground based solar farms in the Sahara and Arabian deserts and superconducting grids transmitting the juice to Eurasia and Africa. Vast storage systems would be needed for when the Sun doesn't shine.

The estimated 2008 US GDP was $14.33 trillion. So $100 billion over ten years is chicken feed, and it would create good jobs.