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------------------------------ 2752 - MOON - mining the Moon?
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- Planning expeditions to the Moon is no longer just a NASA effort. The U.S. space agency along with private companies have plans for a moon-orbiting space station that would serve as a staging ground for Mars missions in the early 2030s. I hope my kids and grandkids get to see it.
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- The “United Launch Alliance“, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is planning a lunar fueling station for spacecraft, capable of supporting 1,000 people living in space within 30 years.
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- Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Robert Bigelow all have companies aiming to deliver people, or goods, to the moon. Several teams competing for a share of Google’s $30 million cash prize are planning to launch rovers to the moon.
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- Right now all space missions are based on, and launched from, Earth. But Earth’s gravitational pull is strong. To escape Earth’s gravity, a rocket has to be traveling 25,000 miles per hour!
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- Any rocket leaving Earth has to carry all the fuel it will ever use to get to its destination and, if needed, back again. That fuel is heavy and getting it moving at such high speeds takes a lot of energy. If we could refuel in orbit, that launch energy could lift more people or cargo or scientific equipment into orbit. Then the spacecraft could refuel in space, where there is little force from Earth’s gravity.
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- The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, which makes it an attractive alternative base. The moon also has ice, which we already know how to process into a hydrogen-oxygen propellant that we use in many modern rockets.
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- The “Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter” and “Lunar Crater Observation” and sensing satellite missions have already found substantial amounts of ice in permanently shadowed craters on the moon.
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- Those locations would be tricky to mine because they are colder and offer no sunlight to power roving vehicles. However, we could install big mirrors on the craters’ rims to illuminate solar panels in the permanently shadowed regions.
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- Depending on where the best ice reserves are, we might need to build several small robotic moon bases. Each one would mine ice, manufacture liquid propellant and transfer it to passing spacecraft. They would accomplish those tasks with three different types of rovers. They would also require a few small robotic shuttles to meet up with nearby deep-space mission vehicles in lunar orbit.
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- One rover, which we call the “Prospector“, would explore the moon and find ice-bearing locations. A second rover, the “Constructor“, would follow along behind, building a launch pad and packing down roadways to ease movements for the third rover type, the “Miners“, which actually collect the ice and deliver it to nearby storage tanks.
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- Once in the tanks an electrolysis processing plant that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The Constructor would also build a landing pad where the small near-moon transport spacecraft we call “Lunar Re-supply Shuttles” would arrive to collect fuel for delivery as newly launched spacecraft pass by the moon. The shuttles would burn moon-made fuel and would have advanced guidance and navigation systems to travel between lunar bases and their target spacecraft.
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- When enough fuel is being produced, and the shuttle delivery system is tested and reliable, the plan would build a gas station in space. The shuttles would deliver ice directly to the orbiting fuel depot, where it would be processed into fuel and where rockets heading to Mars could dock to top off.
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- The depot would have large solar arrays powering an electrolysis module for melting the ice and then turning the water into fuel, and large fuel tanks to store the fuel. A working depot could be ready in the early 2030s, just in time for the first human missions to Mars.
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- To be most useful and efficient, the depot should be located in a stable orbit relatively near both the Earth and the moon. The Earth-moon Lagrangian Point 1 is a point in space about 85 percent of the way from Earth to the moon, where the force of Earth’s gravity would exactly equal the force of the moon’s gravity pulling in the other direction. It’s the perfect pit stop for a spacecraft on its way to Mars or the outer planets.
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- (See review 1143 to learn about the Lagrange Points of zero gravity.)
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- Lagrange points would allow even less launch fuel and free up more lift energy for cargo items. First, the spacecraft would launch from Earth into Low Earth Orbit with an empty propellant tank.
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- Then, the spacecraft and its cargo could be towed from Low Earth Orbit to the depot at the first Lagrange point using a solar electric propulsion tug, a spacecraft largely propelled by solar-powered electric thrusters.
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- This would triple the payload delivery to Mars. At present, a human Mars mission is estimated to cost as much as $100 billion, and will need hundreds of tons of cargo. Delivering more cargo from Earth to Mars with fewer rocket launches would save billions of dollars and years of time.
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- Building a “gas station” between Earth and the moon would also reduce costs for missions beyond Mars. NASA is looking for extraterrestrial life on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.
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- Future spacecraft could carry much more cargo if they could refuel in space. Who knows what scientific discoveries sending large exploration vehicles to these moons could enable?
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- By helping us escape both Earth’s gravity and dependence on its resources, a lunar gas station and convenience store on the Moon could be the first small step toward the giant leap into making humanity an interplanetary civilization.
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- I hope my grandkids get good grades in school and could participate in these exciting space adventures. We launched two of our astronauts to the International Space Station this week. What a better picture than the rioting and pilfering of gas stations and convenience stores in major US cities here on Earth. Let’s hope we can keep it together long enough to accomplish some of these space missions for the grandkids.
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- May 30, 2020 2752
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--------------------- Monday, June 1, 2020 -------------------------
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