New moon base concepts

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Published in a magazine

Popular Science magazine recently published a couple of articles on a potential moon base for which the cost to maintain 10 people on the moon is said to have been reduced from $100 billion to only $10 billion. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay said that the reductions of cost were due to the planned use of recently developed technology such as self driving vehicles and waste-recycling toilets. To McKay the main advantage of colonizing the moon is the testing of technology and methods which would be similar to what would be used for a colony on Mars. McKay said that to him the moon per se is about as atractive as a spherical chunk of concrete.

Various papers concerning the colony were made public on the 10th of March 2016. McKay was the editor of that portion of New Space in which they were published. One team estimates that food for 10 on the moon could be provided for a year for $350 million. The waste-recycling toilet, Blue Diversion Toilet, is being developed for use on Earth by a company financed through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The possible extraction of water from lunar ice at the poles and the use of such water to produce rocket fuel by electrolysis is not new. However a group gave a figure of $40 billion worth of propellant per year that they expected they might be able to extract from the moon.

Criticism

The above base concept certainly includes preliminary robotic probes that would assess, among other things, the difficulty that accessing hydrogen on the moon would entail and how much seemed to be readily available. The estimate of producing $40 billion worth of propellant per year is premature in coming before the robotic probe data is available. However, if ice is plentifully and easily available, it might still be unwise to use this resource as rocket fuel to enable colonization of Mars. Hydrogen on the moon is rare. Once the easily accessed deposits are used up they will be gone. Hydrogen could be used to further industry on the moon in the role of supplying hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells for electricity during the lunar night. Hydrogen is essential for a Lunar Rocket-sled to Orbit which would recycle the hydrogen and the rocket-sled both, launching cargo and passengers to cis-lunar space. Hydrogen is a necessary part of sulfuric and nitric acids that are to be used industrially on the moon and hydrogen is needed to reduce ilmenite. It might be better to use scarce lunar hydrogen in industry on the moon to benefit the whole population of Earth rather than to enable an elitist colony on Mars like the one Elon Musk envisions establishing while charging colonists $200,000 each for transportation. Elon Musk does not advertise plans to use lunar hydrogen in his transportation system to Mars so the whole idea of exporting lunar hydrogen may be unnecessary. Wait a few years and develop an eddy-current-braking to orbit (ECBTO) system to put people and cargo into cis-lunar space and the number of colonists sent could be in the billions. This requires lunar industry to supply the materials for building the ECBTO systems in low Earth orbit and lunar orbit. Lunar materials could also help Earth with space based solar power as well as enabling the building of massive space habitats. The question is do we want public money to finance the quick rides for astronauts or some rich people to Mars or the establishment of a millenium of prosperity by moving human trade and industry into orbit on a wave of cheaply provided lunar materials? So far Mars colony proponents have not suggested benefits to Earth to provided by a Mars Colony beyond getting rid of those people who leave Earth for Mars and receiving communications from Mars that could contribute to human technological and intellectual development.