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To: boris
The proposals I've seen for SPS call for 99.5% of material to be of LUNAR origin, not Terran. You launch it using a mass-driver, not a rocket, and refine in orbit.

And since NASA's been studying the concept since 1972, I'd call it less science fiction than a Space Elevator, which requires mass production of materials which we cannot currently produce in sufficient quantity to make. . .
14 posted on 08/13/2003 7:04:31 AM PDT by Salgak (don't mind me: the orbital mind control lasers are making me write this. . .)
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To: Salgak
"The proposals I've seen for SPS call for 99.5% of material to be of LUNAR origin, not Terran. You launch it using a mass-driver, not a rocket, and refine in orbit.

And since NASA's been studying the concept since 1972, I'd call it less science fiction than a Space Elevator, which requires mass production of materials which we cannot currently produce in sufficient quantity to make. . ."

You and I will be long dead before any of this happens.

I was part of a major study on using (possible) lunar ice deposits (at the South Pole) as a propellant source.

It would be melted, electrolyzed, and shipped to an in-space depot for use by Mars missions.

The problem is that emplacement of the infrastructure (nuclear reactors, vacuum-tolerant digging equipment, supplies, spares, shops, mechanics, doctors, infirmaries, et al) make the payoff a distant (if ever) eventuality.

The same problem faces any scheme that purports to use Lunar materials for space-based construction: there is no infrastructure in place, and the costs of emplacing it kill you. The way I put it, "If God were to put the stuff there for us--for free--it might begin to make economic sense."

Better to work on a space elevator, which has a nearer-term likilhood of becoming real.

See:

http://www.liftport.com/
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/future-00n.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2188107.stm
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/elevator_update_020819.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/nanotech_pr.html
http://www.sciencenews.org/20021005/bob9.asp
http://www.elevator-world.com/magazine/archive01/0211-002.html
http://www.americanantigravity.com/highlift.html

15 posted on 08/13/2003 7:43:29 AM PDT by boris (Education is always painful; pain is always educational.)
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