Talk:Lunar Electrothermal Oxygen Rocket

Priorities in production

It would be very important to understand the real value/price of the things manufactured on the Moon. It is possible to run simulations on the flow charts from moonminer... and see. I have the feeling that Oxygen (for the thermoelectric rocket) would be scarce and expensive at the beggining of the settlement. Still If there is going to be a market economy on the Moon, prices will be decided by the invisible hand... Of course, without proper manufacturing implementation data and proper process simulation we are blind.

Without this data all propositions are extremely speculative. This rocket is impossible in a small settlement.

The article is being neutral and correct when states that the thermoelectric rocket might be implemented as a result of a large manufacturing moon settlement.--Jose Giraldez 01:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

You will find that nowhere in the article does the word settlement appear. This is deliberate because to have a settlement there must be settlers but an industrial establishment can get by completely by remote control. Settlers should come only when their work can pay for their expenses, which would be considerable. There could be a massive industrial establishment with only ten workers doing the most urgently needed hands-on tasks and everything else being done by remote control from Earth. This would be a small settlement except that the workers would likely be there for temporary duty, not residing there. The electrothermal oxygen rocket, if it is ever economic, would likely predate any settlement because of being cheaper than supporting settlers. - Farred 06:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Yet, you assume that a rocket will be always cheaper than supporting settlers... "would likely predate any settlement because of being cheaper than supporting settlers." I ask how you know that... I believe that one day it would be cheaper to support settlers than to build a rocket... But what I believe doesn't matter. The simulations will give us an approximation.

Even in the case that there is an industrial establishment prior to the settlement, there would be a market. I mean... Would it be cheaper to produce such or such... It would cost to people on Earth or whoever is monitoring, adjusting, implementing, maintaining the remote control industrial establishment. Think about it this way... Even if a new system is implemented. Say, a rocket factory on the moon. You would have to pay the designers, architects, engineers, even the technician sending the orders to build that factory... remotely. You could argue here that it will always be cheaper to have someone doing that here than on the moon (intuitively true)... but again... I ask how you know that?

We need simulations on cost! And those simulations are very expensive man-hours for a group of engineers that will perform a theoretic FMEA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis) on the model... I guess If nobody does it in the next future (say next 5 years) I will end up doing them... It would take me forever to do them alone... However, before that happens perhaps someone on the Moon Society will do it before me. To even design the simulations it would be necessary more models than the ones that David Dieztler has and we would need an economist.--Jose Giraldez 03:16, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

You have a point. I do not know that building a rocket would be cheaper than supporting settlers. The article should reflect this. What I want to bring out is that a rocket could possibly be used in making a profit. Settlers might do something profitable, but before putting settlers on Luna one should know what that profitable activity would be. People compare space exploration to the Lewis & Clark expeditions or to the first European voyages to America. However, in the earlier explorations people had clearly in mind how they intended to make a profit on their explorations. New settlements sometimes failed to make a profit. All of the settlers of some colonies died with no descendents. However, people never before just decided to send settlers to some different land with no idea of how they intended to make a profit. It seems to me that considering settling the moon or Mars without first determining how a profit would be made is taking things in the wrong order. Do you see a reason for considering settelment first before considering how to make a profit? Do you have some idea of making a profit without some system to launch stuff to orbit from the moon?

By the way, I did not suggest the "rocket factory on the moon" that you wrote of above. In the article, I clearly wrote: "The rocket, made on Earth,..." What would be made on Luna would be the oxygen for fuel, the electricity for power, the rails to guide the rocket and conduct electricity, and the helium 3 for export. - Farred 06:23, 21 May 2012 (UTC)