New moon base concepts

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New moon base concepts

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 moon 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 a new idea. 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 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 necessary for reducing ilmenite and it 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 should public money enable the quick rides for astronauts or some rich people to Mars or should public money enable 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 running.

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 perfluorocarbons 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 perfluorocarbons 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 reasonably 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.

Why would NASA, as represented by its employee, Chris McKay, avoid economically sound ideas of lunar development and promote a program which would do considerable harm to the prospects for industrial development on the moon? Not being privy to the unpublished policy discussions at NASA, I can repeat unofficial excuses I have read, and then get to some real difficulties:

First, the excuse that NASA only does nonprofit missions such as robot probes to celestial bodies for scientific data and astronaut missions to celestial bodies to demonstrate the prowess of the USA. Profit making use of space is left to private industry.

NACA produced a great deal of economically useful research such as designs for air intakes, cowlings, airfoils, and superchargers. NASA continues to do research that helps the aviation industry. There is no reason that they could not do work that would help private industry in space. NASA just needs to imitate NACA.

Second, the excuses that developing industry on the moon would require actual industrial activity that should be left strictly to private corporations and industrializing the moon would not produce benefits for decades.

The government authorized actual industrial activity in digging the Panama Canal. In 1903 the USA acquired rights to build a canal from Panama. It took until 1914 for the first ship to cross the isthmus by canal. The fees for use of the canal were never intended to repay the USA the capital cost of the canal. Fees just paid operational expenses. The benefit to the USA came from increased passenger and cargo traffic by ship connecting the American Atlantic coast and Pacific coast with each other and with foreign ports from which the canal shortened the voyage. On the moon, the lack of any return on investment for probably more than thirty years makes the construction of industrial infrastructure and particularly construction of a rocket-sled to orbit very difficult for private industry to justify. The U. S. could do it if there were a will to do so. Other countries would likely be willing to join the project if the U. S. made a serious start. The USA needs to use NASA in the same way as the USA built the Panama Canal with government money.

Third is a real difficulty. Industry on the moon has inherent military applications. The nations of the Peoples' Republic of China, and Russia are not likely to just let the U. S. set up bases on the moon that are indistinguishable from military bases. We have already signed treaties promising that we would not use the moon for military purposes but some people would settle for nothing less than verification.

The U. S. should invite other nations to robotically observe what we would openly do in developing lunar industry in such a way that it is unmistakably nonmilitary. We should sell them electricity for their robots and allow them to share robot shelters at night. We should require similar rights of observation of any Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or European bases. It would be best if we could cooperate on industry to the extent that we have shared ownership of some industrial facilities with other nations. International law allows nations to share the use of the oceans of Earth for transportation. We share the use of the radio broadcast spectrum. We follow treaty obligations in the way we share the ability to place satellites into orbit. For industry on the moon and low cost launching to lunar orbit we should be able to work out something. ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) demonstrates some international cooperation.

Fourth, it is boiling hot during the day on the moon.

The extreme heat on the moon exists only in the sunlight. If an aluminum foil awning is stretched from east to west over a strip of regolith in the lunar equatorial region, that area will be permanently in shade as long as the awning lasts. A short wall on the north and south borders of the strip could prevent infrared heat transport to the strip from the surrounding area. It would be possible to mess this up by incompetence, but it is actually possible to produce very cold areas in the daytime lunar equatorial region by properly managing sunlight.

Fifth, it costs too much.

The cost seems commensurate with the benefits. It is impossible to give a very precise estimate of cost in the absence of sufficiently detailed ground truth for the moon and the absence of detailed plans to fit that ground truth. A guess of a $1 trillion seems reasonable for industrializing the moon up to the point of having an operating Rocket-sled to Orbit. Then $2 billion each for a couple hundred space based solar power satellites, beginning with one every year or two and ramping up to a few every year. These satellites in geosynchronous orbit would each collect 12 Gigawatts of sunlight and deliver power by microwave to a rectenna on Earth. The electric distribution grid would finally receive 2 Gigawatts. Cows could graze in the sunlight that passes through the rectenna, or wheat could be watered by the rain that falls through the rectenna. The problem would be marketing that electricity for the biggest expansion of wealth that the human race has ever seen. Criminals trying to get some of that wealth by their preferred means of selling opiates would still be a problem, but if the wealth gets spread over all the Earth, we should eliminate the problem of people in poor countries seeing no means but crime to gain wealth. The costs could be better known after sending robotic probes to the lunar surface and developing specific plans giving some detail in what would need to be done to build a rocket-sled to orbit. The USA should at least afford looking into the task to see what it would cost.

Sixth, We do not need it we have ITER.

The latest cost estimate for ITER that I have found was $20 billion for operation in 2020. This is less than the trillion needed for space based solar power by way of lunar development. However, ITER is only an experimental reactor. We are not assured that the commercial version will actually work. When Soviet physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov invented tokamaks in the 1950s, commercial fusion power was thought to be just a decade or two away. It has been two or three decades away ever since. If the commercial version does work it is likely to be more expensive per reactor than ITER and more expensive to operate than space based solar power. The fusion power community should be put on notice that they should look sharp, because there is a competing project that will not only make them unnecessary but lead to massive emigration from the planet Earth besides.

Seventh, the plan for industrializing the moon makes use of robots and would put astronauts out of work.

This is a political problem. There is work for people to do on the moon once a rocket-sled to orbit system is available to transport them home again without wasting tons of hydrogen burning it as rocket fuel. It is the work in space suits that can be dispensed with. The desire to preserve the self esteem of a politically powerful group should not prevent economic progress for the human race. I understand that some people want to fearlessly risk their lives going where no one has gone before and conquering space. However, for the moon this is not needed. Astronauts on the moon assisting with the initial industrial set up would be like a ball and chain as a requirement on a 50 meter race. It will take some years to build the infrastructure necessary for people to do useful work on the moon. Until then the best thing that astronauts can do for establishing a human colony on the moon is to stay home and work on the engineering problems or work controlling the machines on the moon remotely. All profit making activities in space have been exclusively robotic. All astronaut involved activities in space have consumed taxpayers money. To make the future different the human spaceflight program should be cancled for a couple of decades.

Eighth, the sale of rocket fuel will earn money, that is a benefit.

To the people selling the rocket fuel that is a benefit. To the U. S. taxpayer who buys the fuel or pays the contractor who buys the fuel it is an expense. None of the uses of rocket fuel that McKay suggests have any net benefit to the people of Earth. The same spend, spend, spend ideas with no suggested economic benefit, the same things McKay is reported saying in Popular Science, are also found on MarketWatch. The justification is that the cost is only $10 billion to set-up a manned base. I have heard of under-estimating the cost of a program to sell it to the government, but even $10 billion is too much if there is no eventual benefit to planet Earth. People could conceivably redesign station keeping rockets to use lunar hydrogen and oxygen or they might be redesigned to use oxygen in an electro-thermal thruster. However this small benefit will not justify the expense of a manned base on the moon and a rocket transfer system to lift the fuel from the moon and distribute it to Earth orbiting satellites. NASA has been spending government money and the contractors it hires help in this task. Building industrial infrastructure on the moon and using it to build space based power stations would require reforming NASA. Difficult but conceivable.

Ninth, we have been educating children and encouraging them to think of becoming astronauts. It is their dream. We need a human spaceflight program. It honors astronauts who have died for human spaceflight.

Children have dreamt of going to the moon or Mars since before people could fly airplanes. They should learn that personally dressing in a space suit and riding a rocket to orbit does not, in the current technological circumstances, help mankind establish colonies off of the Earth. The lessons learned by the human spaceflight program are that living in weightlessness is unhealthy and there is no foreseeable benefit that can be achieved through working in a space station limited to the current space station technology. It does not honor those who have died in the process of learning lessons to ignore the lessons so learned.

Tenth, there has been increased length of telomeres in astronauts who have been in orbit. Perhaps studying this in the space station will lead to increasing the human life span.

Those about to fall down a slope will grasp at straws. There might be something learned about increased telomere length extension in weightlessness at sometime in the future but the slim chance of increasing human lifespan does not justify $10 billion per year spent on a human spaceflight program.

Eleventh, Mars just has more and better resources for a colony than the moon has. If the moon can provide some rocket fuel, that is all it is good for. We should use the rocket fuel and colonize Mars.

This whole article has been about what the moon is good for besides rocket fuel. In particular it is good for establishing a colony on Mars. Some Mars colony enthusiasts propose only a way for people to get to Mars and return, completely ignoring the difficulty of establishing the industry necessary for a colony on Mars. Some seem to think that the establishment of a colony is so easy it is beneath their dignity to consider the details. If they had transportation to Mars, that would be soon enough to think about how to build a colony. So they concentrate on getting the rocket fuel in orbit as cheaply as possible. However, Mars is deadly-in-seconds to someone outside without a space suit and a space suit is very difficult to do any work in. The Apollo astronauts did little work while on the moon simply because a space suit is hard to work in. When an astronaut fell down, it was difficult to stand up again. An auger was used to try to sample the moon a ways below the surface. The auger got stuck. Remote controlled equipment will be needed for industrializing Mars as much as it will be needed on the moon. The difference is that people will need to be either on Mars or in orbit about Mars to operate remote controlled equipment there. Equipment for industrializing Mars includes: Earth moving equipment; liquids handling equipment; equipment to use plastic or metal sheets to build pressurized vessels for factories and habitation; mining equipment; equipment to sort the paydirt from the tailings; pressurized factories to take in the dirty ice through an air lock, melt it, and put out the tailings at another air lock; pressurized factories to produce iron and shape it into stock. There are many items of equipment that I could name. An industrialized moon could make equipment and launch it into lunar orbit while recycling the hydrogen. An industrialized moon could provide material to build a shielded livable space habitat as a space ship for traveling to Mars with a massive load of equipment. People have said such a large space ship is not needed, but they must under estimate the task of colonization by extremes. If the real goal is colonizing Mars an industrialized moon can help it succeed. Just claiming that colonizing Mars is easy will not get the job done.