Enterprising the moon...

[Mr Cabal]

     This is an idea I've been playing with for a little while now. Most of its off the top of my head since I have a bad habit of not writing things down once I've thought of them. The goal is to build a mostly automated, if not completely automated, lunar base to mine lunar soil for private enterprises.
     I've done a little research and determined that there are sufficient amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, potassium, thorium, uranium, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, silicone, iron, titanium, and helium 3 on the surface. The base needs to be able to collect lunar soil, refine lunar soil, send refined material back to earth, and dispose of processed lunar soil and still maintain its self. To make things cheaper the moon base needs to be almost completely built out of material that are already on the moon (iron, titanium, silicon etc.), so that the painfully expensive process doesn't upset anyones budget.
     I figured that the first bots (assuming that automated bots complete the first step) would begin by refining the metals out of the soil into usable construction materials (Beams, sheet metal, etc.). Then next landing would be composed of a small manned group to begin constructing the beginning of the base and to bring along a few bots to help. The second stage will be mostly to set up a place for future crews to live in while performing construction on the other stages.
The third stage will be the the building of the refinery and other processing facility's. The fourth and final stage will be to construct a launch platform of some kind to launch refined materials (like He3) back to earth and to begin processing lunar soil.
     Now everything is really vague as to how this would be accomplished so i was looking for input from everyone else. I figured launching capsules from the moons surface that were designed to burn off layers when entering the earths atmosphere would work but the feasibility of it isn't certain as far as I'm concerned. So any suggestions, comments, or criticisms are welcome.
     Some of the other concerns would be life support systems, power supply (I was thinking of solar to start with), research labs, observatories, communication equipment, and other misc. stuff. An effective way to mine the soil, would a shovel work, a drill, or maybe something else?What would be the most effective way to heat the lunar soil to the 1500 some odd degrees to mine the minerals and elements?Would the materials on the moon be sufficient to build a shelter reliable enough to contain a breathable atmosphere? What could be used to launch capsules back to earth, would hydrogen powered cannon work, or can a rail gun suffice? Could there be lunar farms that produce enough to support lunar crews indefinitely, would genetically engineered plants be possible? Are we capable of developing and building a working lunar mining facility sometime in the near future with the technology we have now? What equipment would be needed to start the process?

[ijuin]

I've done a little research and determined that there are sufficient amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, potassium, thorium, uranium, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, silicone, iron, titanium, and helium 3 on the surface. The base needs to be able to collect lunar soil, refine lunar soil, send refined material back to earth, and dispose of processed lunar soil and still maintain its self.

Sending radioactive materials back to Earth would be a political nonstarter--environmentalists would scream that a payload might crash onto a populated area or reenter improperly and vaporize to spread uranium vapor across whole continents. Uranium, thorium, etc. should probably be used for fueling in-space reactors to power installations or spacecraft--a NERVA (solid core nuclear-thermal) driven vessel could be used to deliver crew and payloads between Earth and Moon orbits for example, and the lunar landing craft can be NERVA driven as well.
    

Some of the other concerns would be life support systems, power supply (I was thinking of solar to start with)

Solar is probably the easiest and cheapest to do, especially since the environmentalists are going to do everything they can to block the launch of nuclear fuel, so your nuclear reactor would need to be fueled with lunar-produced fuel.

An effective way to mine the soil, would a shovel work, a drill, or maybe something else?

Take a look at the kind of machinery they use for strip-mining on Earth--they don't just use the big scoops, but also machines with big steel teeth that grind at rock surfaces to break off gravel-like chunks. Smaller, electrified versions of these would probably be the tools of choice for industrial-scale stuff.

What would be the most effective way to heat the lunar soil to the 1500 some odd degrees to mine the minerals and elements?

Aluminum is already refined on Earth using an electric arc furnace, so I would expect that you would want to go with one of those, since a lunar operation can't spare the oxygen for a traditional blast furnace.

Would the materials on the moon be sufficient to build a shelter reliable enough to contain a breathable atmosphere?

Again, aluminum and silicon are the most common minerals on the Moon, just as on Earth. An aluminum-walled building, with about half a meter of lunar soil piled over the top to provide a radiation shield, should be sufficient, provided that you also have stuff like synthetic rubber for sealing your airlock doors (this can be brought from Earth).

What could be used to launch capsules back to earth, would hydrogen powered cannon work, or can a rail gun suffice?

A rail gun would be fine for launching unmanned payloads, but for humans, the need to keep acceleration down to about 10 g's would require that the rail be about one hundred kilometers long. For crews you are better off just refueling the vehicles you used to land in the first place and using those to get back to orbit.

Could there be lunar farms that produce enough to support lunar crews indefinitely

Experiments with lunar soil samples have shown that many food plants can grow in it if they are provided with nitrates (i.e. normal agricultural fertilizer) along with Earth-normal levels of atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Would genetically engineered plants be possible?

That would require some experimenting, but it is reasonable to expect that we could engineer strains of food crops that could tolerate the two weeks on / two weeks off lunar sunlight cycle (typical Earth plants left in darkness for two weeks on end will tend to consume a large fraction of the food stores that they built up during the sunlight cycle, so they will have to be engineered to "hibernate" during the dark periods). Don't ask me how long it would take to develop them though--it could be ten years after we start trying, or fifty.

Are we capable of developing and building a working lunar mining facility sometime in the near future with the technology we have now? What equipment would be needed to start the process?

The primary thing that we need to build such a facility is the ability to get the setup equipment to the Moon without spending US$10 billion or more to do so. In other words, cheaper launch costs by an order of magnitude from what we have at present.


edit: moderator fixed quote formatting

[Johno]

. . . Which ultimately requires governments and private corporations to take research and development of space hardware far more seriously than they do.  Cheap launching requires a lot of time, effort, capital and will expended.

I have no doubt that cheap launching will ultimately happen (I personally suggest that the answer lies mostly in economies of scale), but I thinkg we'll have to wait until the current downturn is good and over before we see significant amounts of capital invested.

Another thought: the game changes radically once people discover how much money is to be made in orbital applications.  I suggest that orbital Solar Power is probably the killer app here . . just imagine how much green credential one could gain by generating electricity at base-load level with a negligible Carbon footprint!

[DonPMitchell]

I think unless one believes the bogus idea of mining helium-3, there just is nothing on the Moon that makes mining and transportation of material economically interesting.  More valuable ores and minerals on the Earth have been formed by hydrological processes like fractional crystalization or even by biological processes (the Minnesota hemitite deposits).  Nothing like that has ever happened on the Moon.  It appears to consist mostly of cheap light metals.

It's ultimately why I don't think anyone will go back to the Moon.  The political motive has already been achieved by the USA, and at a huge cost.  I'd rather see the next big national project be aimed at something new, like energy independence.

As for space, there are so many fascinating open science problems to focus on.  The large moons of Jupiter and Saturn, sample return missions from planets and moons, space telescopic study of extrasolar planets.  There's plenty to do.

[Mr Cabal]

I wouldn't be so quick to call the Helium 3 theory bogus. It doesn't seem to be that plausible, considering that there is a working reactor the size of a basketball. The quickest way to get private and public organizations to back space exploration is to prove that there will be a profit from it. As much as i wish people would give selflessly for the advancement of science, its not going to happen. If there is to be a renewed interest in space exploration and the economic backing to pursue them there has to be a drive or motive. The quickest way to fund anything is to prove to those providing the funding that there is profit to be made. Even if you don't think that Helium 3 will result in anything there could be something up there that will and as history has shown, many of the greatest discoveries were made by mistake. The idea is to show the people with the money and the influence that there is a reason for going up there.

[DonPMitchell]

A working reactor the size of a basketball?  I'm not sure what you mean.

First, there is no real evidence that Helium-3 exists in large quantities or sufficienct density to be harvested on the Moon.  Second, helium fusion is much harder to achieve than hydrogen fusion, because of the higher coulombic repulsion between the nuclei.  And practical hydrogen fusion is nowhere close to existing yet.

I agree there is much to discover, but I'd rather put a rover on Europa than a man on the Moon.

[Mr Cabal]

First of all i will apologize for being so vague on the helium 3 subject.  I should have provided more information than that. This link gives a pretty good idea of how much 3He is on the surface of the moon (keep in mind that doesn't include how much is underneath the surface).

http://www.answers.com/topic/helium-3

Under extraterrestrial suppies it specifically states that the moons surface contains concentrations of 0.01 ppm. The basketball sized 3He reactor is located at the University of Wisconsin.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html


The the basket ball sized reactor is successfully producing a reaction. Its not enough to produce electricity (after all it is the size of a basket ball), but it does prove that the theory works. As for putting a rover on Europa, the fastest way there is to prove theres money up there. A lot of this information is available by googling helium 3, or you can use metacrawler.com, its a favorite of mine.

[Satanic Mechanic]

Taking a break here.  Don is right we have not achieved a stable sustainable fusion reaction.  That basketball sized reactor, I have seen before.  It is not a true fusion reactor.
The nasty side of fusion reactors are the neutrons that are thrown out from the reaction.  Those neutrons strike the reactor itself and create various radioactive materials.  If you use steel for magnetic containment, the neutons will strike and create a nasty Colbalt-60.

SM

[DonPMitchell]

Answers.com is wikipedia, which is not a particularly reliable source of information, but let's take 0.01 ppm for granted.

Today the USA has 104 fission reactors, generating a total of 100 gigawatts of power.  That's equivalent to converting 35 kilograms of mass into energy each year, and nuclear power (fission or fusion) are about 0.1 percent efficient, so you need to get about 35 tons of fuel per year.

So, do you get that by extracting deuterium from sea water?  Heavy water costs about $1000 a liter.

Or do you operating a massive mining operation on the Moon, processing 3.5 trillion tons of rock per year?  Assuming the solar wind only deposits helium in the upper meter of crust, that means strip mining 700 square kilometers of lunar surface per year.  Do I have to keep going here to spell out how expensive that would be?  It's beyond any engineering effort ever undertaken even on the Earth.  Could that even be done on a power budget of less than 100 gigawatts?  So it seems unlikely that it could even produce net surplus of energy.

[Mr Cabal]

OK, harvesting several tons of regolith for a ton of 3He isn't as feasible as i had hoped. That and i never persued how deuterium was collected or how much it cost. So ill settle for that, on the other side though i do believe (and i think I've shown that I'm not an expert by now) that the whole reason 3He was a prime candate for fusion is because it emits such a low amount of neutrons. I'll have to check on it, but i do believe it was a fraction of what hydrogen is.

(By the way thanks for the input, i always appreciate good input .)

[ijuin]

Or do you operating a massive mining operation on the Moon, processing 3.5 trillion tons of rock per year?

0.1 parts per million means 1 gram per one hundred tons of soil. 35 tons of He3 would thus require 350 million tons of soil.

[DonPMitchell]

That's 0.01 ppm.  But I mistakenly said tons when I meant kilograms.  So it's 3.5 billion tons of rock.  So one would only have to process on the order of a square kilometer to supply 20% of US electricity needs.  It's still a crazy expensive idea.

I don't know how to estimate the cost of operating on that scale on the Moon.  Deuterium is about $8000/kg.  I'm guessing Lunar Helium-3 would be something like 1,000 to 1,000,000 times that cost.

Personally, I think by the time people have this kind of technology, solar and wind power will be even easier.

[Johno]

If you're going to go for crazy expensive power generation, you're best to go for the kinds that have the most potential return.

I have already mentioned orbital solar in this thread.  Solar electricity is already a well-developed method of obtaining energy.  Orbital collectors would have more time to collect sunlight as well as being far less limited in size.  The only real limitation is the efficiency of the microwave transfer system, and that has been estimated at 85% efficiency, which compares favourably with moving electricity over long distances through wires!

The big selling point for me is that this isn't a technological problem for us; all the technology needed already exists.  It IS a cost and engineering problem, and unfortunately those two are likely to keep such a simple and effective power source as orbital solar from being implemented for a good long stretch yet.

[DonPMitchell]

Wikipedia (not a reliable source) says 85% microwave receiver efficiency, but there is also the transmission efficiency and the solar-to-electricity efficiency.

My guess is that the cost of building a space-base power generator of this size, plus the cost of building vast microwave collector fields would not be less than just building vast solar power collector fields.

What surprises me about alternative energy is the apparent practicaly of windmills.  A few years ago I would have said that was a totally hippy dippy idea, but that seems to be where the economics is going, the thing that people are actually building.

I watched a congressional committee on the new power grid a few weeks ago (incidenly, almost none of these "infrastructure" plans Obama talks about are really being funded...sigh).  Buiding powerlines is a legal nightmare, between the eco-leftists and the NIMBY (not in my back yard) lawsuits.  But the representatives from the Northeast power companies weren't interested.  They're excited about offshore windmills.  Apparently you can go miles out to sea on the east coast and only be in a hundred feet of water, and get almost constant wind.

[Mr Cabal]

A little more about this space-based power generator. I tried to find out a little more on-line, but only got a few sites that gave me a vague idea of it (possibly the keywords I'm using.) Some information on how everything would work would be nice. As for the windmills, i think there is more promise in the generators using the underwater currents than the windmills.  The surface of the ocean has much more environmental and man made hazards than the sea floor (boats, hurricanes, misled environmentalist, etc..) Other than that i just see most of the oceans as space that has yet to be utilized (in an environmentally friendly way of course.)