New moon base concepts

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Published in magazines

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 attractive 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 water ice seemed to be readily available. The estimate of producing $40 billion worth of rocket propellant per year seems 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 to enable colonization of Mars. Hydrogen on the moon as 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. 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 for rocket transportation 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 to space habitats 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 enable the quick rides for astronauts or some rich people to Mars or the establishment of a millennium of prosperity by moving human trade and industry into orbit on a wave of cheaply provided lunar materials? It would require industry on the moon. It would require time money and hydrogen. The new moon base concepts seem to describe exporting hydrogen from the moon as a way to make money. I would rather it be described in different words. I suggest there be laws restricting the export of hydrogen from the moon so it could be called a crime. Oxygen as an export from the moon is much more sustainable. Almost every thing one sees on the moon is an oxide, making about 44% of the moon's surface oxygen by weight. People only need to separate the oxygen by processes like the FFC Cambridge Process or ilmenite reduction to get plenty of oxygen. Oxygen would be recycled only to save the cost of making more. Hydrogen should be recycled severely because when it is gone, hydrogen will need to be imported to keep lunar industry.

The philosophy behind the new moon base concepts above seems to be that the moon is worth nothing more than a tool to rocket some astronauts to Mars and a test to see if we have learned to survive in a deadly-in-seconds atmosphere. Chris McKay speaks of terraforming Mars as if it were something easy. Just manufacture some perfluoro carbons out of the Martian atmosphere and elements found in the dirt. Then frozen CO₂ would be released enhancing the warming effect and you would need to scatter some seeds. How many tons of perfluoro carbons would be needed? How large a nuclear electric generating capacity? How many centuries before this Martian industry can be built? NASA does not say. NASA does not estimate the cost of gardening the planet of Mars. The closest they have come to giving a cost was estimating $450 billion for a program including crewed missions to the moon and Mars for exploration only. The idea, I suppose, is that once we have spent $450 billion and any cost over-runs getting people to Mars, we will be obligated to keep financing a Mars development or we will have lost our investment. In only a few millennia we could have a breathable atmosphere on Mars. It is not unreasonable to guess that in thirty to fifty years a remotely controlled lunar industry could have produced a hundred mile long rocket-sled track to routinely ship cargo to orbit while recycling the great majority of the hydrogen. Lunar exports of oxygen, silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron, magnesium, titanium, sodium, glass, solar cells, and sifted regolith could make industry in orbit possible. Beside these plentifully available items there are things like helium-3 and rare earth elements which are less abundant on the moon but could be exported for high prices making their recovery and use for special purposes economically practical. People only need to commit to establishing reasonable large scale industry in orbit to create the market for lunar exports that would make cost of export low per ton. Low cost transportation to orbit is dependent upon a large market. When shipping lunar products to lunar orbit becomes a routine part of business, its costs should be comparable to air freight, because the aircraft are reused for years and a rocket-sled for launching things to orbit should be reused for years. Jet fuel is made out of petroleum pumped out of the ground. Rocket fuel could be made by recycling the rocket-sled exhaust. So rocket fuel would be somewhat more expensive on the moon than jet fuel on Earth. Air freight might cost $1.50-$4.50 per kilogram. I will estimate a cost of $20.00 per kilogram, $20,000 per metric ton, to put cargo into orbit around the moon. The support for a Mars mission that a developed moon base could provide will not be available if instead of developing the moon with remotely controlled industry NASA rapes the moon removing as much hydrogen as possible to burn it as rocket fuel without the recycling possible in a rocket-sled launch.

Quite apart from any harm done to lunar development by sending people to the moon before they can be economically accommodated, Chris McKay seems false to his goal of establishing a human presence on Mars. Any simulation of a Mars mission that can be done on the moon can, at this stage of lunar development, be done more cheaply on Earth. The idea of astronauts romping around the moon is not obviously connected to the mission of colonizing Mars. Astronauts are generally a savvy bunch. I doubt they will see the Popular Science moon mission concept as an integral part of a Mars mission. The U. S. general public should be polled on the question of whether they want a trillion dollars spent sending people to Mars or not because if it is done without first industrializing the moon and cis-lunar space, that is about what it will cost.