Posted on 03/03/2003 3:52:27 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
China has revealed further details of its plans to explore the Moon - the first unmanned probe could be launched by 2005, say officials. They also hinted that the motivation for the missions is to mine the Moon's resources.
The lunar program, named Chang'e after a legend about a fairy that visits the moon, would be in three phases. First an orbiter would be sent to the Moon, followed by a lander, and then finally a sample return craft.
"We will be able to embark on a maiden unmanned mission within two and a half years if the government endorses the scheme now,'' Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar exploration programme, told The People's Daily.
However, a firm timetable for these missions has not been announced and funding has yet to be approved.
Mineral and energy resources
Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010.
Furthermore, Luan Enjie, director of China National Space Administration, hinted that China would be interesting in exploiting rare resources found on the Moon's surface.
"The prospect for the development and utilisation of the lunar potential mineral and energy resources provide resource reserves for the sustainable development of human society," he told the newspaper.
However, James Oberg, a space analyst and veteran of the US space program, believes the projects are more about national pride than scientific or industrial exploration. Nonetheless, he says the lunar missions are well within China's means.
Head of the queue
"They've already developed the capabilities to operate spacecraft around the Moon and even on its surface," he told New Scientist.
China has so far launched four "Shenzhou" spacecraft in preparation for a crewed mission into space. Such an achievement would make China only the third nation in the world, after the US and Russia, to place humans in space.
Oberg adds that China has set itself a number of ambitious goals. "As with their manned programme, they don't intend to recreate the US and Russian programmes," he says. "They intend to go to the head of the queue in terms of capabilities."
BTW, the "Moon treaty" is not ratified by "most nations of the world." Its current status is 9 ratifications (by such international space powerhouses as Uruguay and Morocco) and 5 signatures only.
Wrong, in so many ways. Has it not occurred to you that perhaps Zubrin has his own agenda, one that does not include doing anything with the Moon?
No doubt. But then again, don't we all?
..........lacks sufficient resources.........Wrong, in so many ways.
Water?
10 billion metric tonnes enough for ya?
................that will have to be harvested in very small amounts with a great expenditure of effort.
As I stated in my original Post.........please see Chapter 5 of ENTERING SPACE.
An engineering judgement. "Small amounts" could mean enough to support a small city. "Great effort" could mean no more than a typical industrial operation.
Zubrin wrote this book without any detailed knowledge of lunar resources, so his opinion on the amounts of resources and effort to mine them are uninformed.
What is that? One mile by one mile by 30 feet deep? It's a pond.
What?!? No buttah? Is bettah with buttah!
The space program sucked me in in the 50s and then proceeded to dither and delay throughout my entire working lifetime, so moon development is something I may read about from my bed at the retirement home but won't participate in.
But, it might be interesting to work on the problem of providing unlimited resources forever to the moon. How would this be done? Crashing watery comets and carbonaceous chondrite asteroids into the moon seems like a fine way to get started.
We go to the poles first because stuff there is concentrated and easy to use. Later, as we establish a foothold, we expand to use increasingly "lower grade" ores, exactly what we do in terrestrial mining.
Seeing as how the US sat on its laurels for the past 30 years, the Chinese are only 10 years behind. Add to that the Chinese are now advancing in space exploration and the US is not, and the 10 years will disappear soon.
On the contrary, Zubrin presents a detailed account of the chemical analysis of three separate types of lunar soil...............
Basalt{Apollo 11},
Breccia {Apollo 14}
and Regolith {Apollo 17}.........
in Table 5.1, page 80 of ENTERING SPACE so your assessment may be mistaken.
.........so his opinion on the amounts of resources and effort to mine them are uninformed........
This data is public knowledge and has been published by Haskin & Warren, "Lunar Chemistry", Chapter 8 of LUNAR SOURCEBOOK (Cambridge University Press). If he is 'uninformed' then so is the rest of the scientific community because these are the only samples available unless you are aware of anyone else landing on the moon and returning soil and rock samples for analysis.
I'm not going to try and type several pages of analyses, however.............."while the Moon's rocks and soils possess ample supplies of oxygen and several important metals, they are entirely lacking in such vital substances as organics, hydrates, nitrates, sulfates, phosphates and salts.......key primary biogenic elements of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are present on the moon but in general only in extremely rare quantities..........leading secondary biogenic elements, sulfur and phosphorous are also on the rare side" (My Conclusion: We will have to supply our own manure if we want a self sufficient colony; lunar soil will not support growth of plants........under domes, of course)...........
"..........leading secondary industrial elements, potassium, manganese, and chromium are reasonably common but nickel is scarce and cobalt even scarcer while copper, zinc, lead fluorine and chlorine are extremely hard to come by........."
He goes on to discuss the myriad of other problems with bases on the moon.
Hardly lacking in 'detailed knowledge' or written from an 'uninformed' standpoint. No?
No, actually I stand corrected. It's not "uninformed" -- it's irrelevant.
It does not address the presence of water ice in the dark areas, first discovered by Clementine in 1994 and then confirmed by Lunar Prospector in 1998. It's the water on the Moon that's valuable, both for human life support, but even more importantly, to make propellant for rocket engines.
BTW, "basalt", “breccia”, and "regolith" are descriptors of general rock types, present at all landing sites and widely distributed across the Moon. They are very common, but that does not make them "valueless" -- it depends on what you're trying to do. We wouldn't go to the Moon to mine common metals; but we would use common materials to build things on the Moon -- or in near-Earth space.
The definition of a "resource" is economic, not geological. It's anything you can make a profit on. You can make money on mining lunar water because it's cheaper to get rocket fuel from space than it is to haul it up from the surface.
Zubrin is blinders-on for his "Mars Direct" architecture, so he wouldn't think about using lunar resources to develop the Moon or build structures in near-Earth space. But those are real possibilities. And the Moon can provide the resources for it, regardless of what you find written in Zubrin's book.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some people are never impressed with facts.
Best,
Doc
It is a certainty that as long as the US has a monopoly on getting to the moon, the sclerotic NASA which is paterned after a 1960's style socialist bureaucracy would sit on its duff and do virtually NOTHING. We got to the moon because the RUSSIANS scared us into it, and we will only get to Mars if the CHINESE scare us into it.
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