Off Earth
Erika Nesvold 2023 Beav. Lib 629.442 NES
==== Preface ===
- vii "We'll worry about that later" is not something I ever expected to hear from a leader in the space industry."
vii "now defunct" ... Perhaps Deep Space Industries CEO (2012-2017) Daniel Faber. I'm skeptical of Faber as a self-appointed "leader", and it is unlikely that he has ever had enough resources or funding to worry about many things now, especially in response to an out-of-the-blue question from an unknown attendee. OF COURSE this is a topic that should be addressed long before design and deployment, but NOT long before a lunar mining startup struggles to learn whether lunar mining makes sense.
- I don't think lunar mining makes any sense at all, not even for filling sandbags. Lunar crust is oxide minerals; reducing it to Silicon, Aluminum, and Iron requires electricity and carbon electrodes. Practically zero carbon on the Moon. Photovoltaic electricity? Not with a two week night.
- Besides those drawbacks, the Moon is covered with highly abrasive glass fragment dust, which ruins optics and would rip holes in sandbags. The dust is launched upwards by solar UV, perhaps many kilometers, to settle on upward facing surfaces; this has rendered the Apollo retroreflectors almost useless.
- Lunar escape velocity is 2380 meters per second. Less than Earth, but more delta V than delivering materials from Near Earth Asteroids (a threat worth eliminating) or even Deimos, orbiting distant Mars.
- Deimos may also be useless slag, but it will not trap abrasive impact bubble dust, and may be cold enough to trap water ice. Sure, Deimos is "years away", but after a delivery "pipeline" is filled (filling may take 20 Earth years), it will be a reliable pipeline. Yes, this is an annoying delay, but annoying is better than absurd.