Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday November 29 2014, @11:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the paging-Mannie-and-Mike dept.

The Conversation has an article on the case for mining the moon:

We need to think of a hierarchy of future applications. This begins with the use of lunar materials to facilitate human activities on the Moon itself. We can then progress to the use of lunar resources to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-Moon system. In this way, gradually increasing access to lunar resources may help “bootstrap” a self-sustaining space-based economy from which the global economy will ultimately benefit.

This article is by Ian Crawford, Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology at Birkbeck, University of London, and summarises a more detailed paper review of Lunar resources (preprint version available), by the same author published in Progress in Physical Geography.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday November 29 2014, @11:33PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Saturday November 29 2014, @11:33PM (#121184) Journal
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 29 2014, @11:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 29 2014, @11:58PM (#121187)

    message in subject

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday November 30 2014, @12:51AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 30 2014, @12:51AM (#121190) Journal

    Before we can mine it we need to get there, and unless we can get a lot of heavy stuff there mining anything is just not feasible.

    Given what little water there is on the moon using any of it for rocket fuel oxidizer, as the story suggest, is just irresponsible. Before we can meaningfully mine the moon we have to live there for years at a time, and that will require what meager water resources the moon might possess.

    In fact using rockets is just something people have to get past, just like we got past animal power after close to 4 thousand years of relying on it exclusively. Rockets are a dead end. We will just have to find another way to get there.

    We need to develop in-ground portable nuke plants, maybe like these: http://phys.org/news145561984.html [phys.org]
    And we need to develop transportable habitat, and we aren't going to build any of that on the moon for centuries to come.

    But first we have to develop lift vehicles that don't rely on rockets.

    In fact, the moon itself may be a dead end. Once you come up with a novel form of lift, sufficient to get all that mining equipment to the moon, the moon itself may not be where we want to go.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:36AM

      by cafebabe (894) on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:36AM (#121197) Journal

      The parts list for Moon colonization can be considerably reduced by taking a solar power sintering Fresnel lens. This would work like a 3D printer but with a focus spot of light to melt Moon dust. This doesn't solve all of the problems but it allows the bulk to be reduced. For example, fabricate the brains and joints of a Moon robot on Earth and then make the body of the robot on the Moon. Likewise, take a few Fresnel lens and make more solar sintering machines.

      --
      1702845791×2
    • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:36AM

      by gman003 (4155) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:36AM (#121231)

      Well, when you're in space, your choices are really limited to rockets, mass drivers and solar sails, with stuff like warp drives being "it isn't completely impossible but requires things we've never seen and have no idea how to create or work with".

      Fortunately, though, chemical rockets are just the tip of the rocket iceberg. Nuclear thermal rockets are pretty reasonable - we were working on them post-Apollo, but budget cuts killed development. They could be flying in five years if we really pushed for them. Ion rockets of various sorts are in active development, although they don't seem to scale well. Should help with station-keeping at least. Fusion rockets are a sort of holy grail, being high-thrust *and* high-efficiency, with the possibility of free fuel via Bussard ramjets.

      You do have a point that the Moon is probably not suitable for resource extraction - it's gravity is still too high, and resources too common, for it to really be worth it (helium-3 is the only remotely valuable commodity it has, and that's only if we get fusion working (just another ten years, right?)). But I still think it's worth colonizing on its own merits, even just as a test-run for Mars.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:40AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:40AM (#121232) Journal

      You send small robots that does the work. This eliminates the need for life support systems and larger amounts of water to electrolyze. Power is available from the sun at the tune of 1500 W/m². But I'll agree that the water on the moon shall be used intelligently.

      I think we have to get used to rockets for quite a while. Space elevators and mass accelerators aren't production time ready yet (perhaps acc).

      And most produce from the moon will most likely either be used in space or sent to earth. Which is way cheaper and easier that the other way around.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:41PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:41PM (#121305) Journal

        FWIW, a space elevator for the moon is quite build-able using known materials. This doesn't mean it would be easy or cheap, but there's no basic research necessary, no new materials, etc.

        OTOH, I suspect that most of the material would be headed up rather than down, and this means a "lunar launcher" would be a much better approach. It could even be relatively short if it was only intended to handle bulk freight, and wasn't intended to go beyond lunar orbit. You don't need a very long tube at 10G to reach lunar orbit. Choosing the site would be tricky if you wanted to minimize costs, though. (I don't really think you should plan to catch incoming and slow it down, though. That's occasionally proposed, but to me it sounds like an extremely bad idea.)

        The question is, how much of this could be built using only robots and telefactors. My guess is, currently not much. But in a decade that will probably change drastically, and do you really think we'll even get started on this kind of project in less time than that?

        FWIW, human occupancy of off-Earth will not happen until we GREATLY improve closed cycle ecology. The current space station needs monthy supply packages. This isn't acceptable for any long term habitation. Even though they have no local raw materials that needs to be reduced by at least an order of magnitude before anything permanent can be contemplated.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday November 30 2014, @09:40PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Sunday November 30 2014, @09:40PM (#121329) Journal

          The space elevator require a wire that have above a specific strength vs weight factor. And that implies nanotubes that are too short currently. Perhaps there will be a breakthrough, but that hasn't happened yet. Other materials will break before the wire is long enough.

          Sending stuff from lunar surface into space using accelerators sounds right. Because one can use solar cells to power it and it will use no material fuel that has to be transported there. Aiming it right, one might target the correct descent path on earth directly from the lunar surface.

          Remotely operated robots is build able right now. It's the cost of getting there in the range of 20 000 US$ per kg. And most importantly minerals valuable enough to mine and ship back that is blocking such operation. Even missions that is supposed to support lunar activities is in the end dependent on profitable missions or governmental subsidy.

          Human occupancy of off-Earth will happen once the finances are there or technology improves enough to fit into the financing that exist.

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 01 2014, @08:31PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 01 2014, @08:31PM (#121625) Journal

            The space elevator cable strength required depends on both the strength of gravity that its trying to lift against and the height of the orbit (depends on rotational speed). For the Moon even a Kevlar cable would be strong enough. For the Earth there are doubts that nano-tubes are strong enough. (Ideal nanotubes are right on the edge of strong enough.)

            OTOH, there are ways around this. It may not be possible to build a Vanilla Tower, but it should be quite possible to build a pinwheel, or series of them The benefit of the Vanilla tower construction is that if there is a net tension pulling the cable up, then you aren't restricted to loads up equaling loads down in order to retain orbital stability. Pinwheels cannot avoid that limitation except via station keeping (ion rockets?) Also pinwheels don't actually descend below the stratosphere (as high as you can make it) to avoid atmospheric friction. On the other hand, They aren't always over the same position (they're in a orbit, possibly even a Low Earth Orbit) so one of them can serve the entire globe. But you need a chain of them to hand-off to each other if you want a rapid trip. Still, they can launch packages at high speed to designated locations. And you could build dozens of pinwheels for the cost of on Earth based space elevator, even presuming that such a thing becomes possible. (The moon is a good location for a space elevator, but I have my doubts that even there it would be worth the effort until lots of people (or cargo sensitive to shock) are making the trip. Mars is nowhere near a good a location, but it could be much more useful there, as atmospheric friction prevents ground based catapults. But it would be a *LOT* easier to build on on the moon. Space "elevators" are much easier to build if there isn't a lot of gravity to overcome.)

            P.S.: A PinWheel is a heavy spinning weight with a set of arms extending away from it that have points of attachment at their ends. They can dip down into the upper atmosphere with minimal friction and if something attaches to them it can lift it out and up and if you release at the upper end you can depart at high speed in a chosen direction. Or you can attach at the upper end and be lowered down to the upper stratosphere (presuming it's in LEO). You let go at the bottom. (Note that the arms are also not exactly lightweight except, perhaps, near the very end. Their mass acts to ballast the momentum.) Various devices are needed to trim momentum at various places...I think they use a lot of ion rockets both for station keeping and to maintain proper rotational velocity. It's basically a combination shock-absorber and spring that can store momentum and return it when needed. It's much more expensive to get into space using a pinwheel than using a space elevator, but the device is build-able using known materials and techniques. And compared to an Earth based space elevator, it's incredibly much cheaper. On Mars the space elevator might pay for itself by eliminating the need for rockets to get off the surface. On Earth you can do that in an airplane. (Also the cable of a Martian space elevator is a much more reasonable construct. Lower gravity combined with slower rotational velocity (since you want an upwards pull on the cable at ground level). I'm not sure about the Martian moons, though. One would need to ensure that they would never encounter the cable. Perhaps they could be used a the orbital mass.

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
            • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday December 02 2014, @01:52AM

              by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday December 02 2014, @01:52AM (#121706) Journal

              How would you keep the pinwheel balanced when cargo is attached or detached without using up loads of fuel?

              Getting into orbit on other mentioned planets are easier due less gravity and air resistance. But the main factor is that Earth - space is the travel likely to be heavily used thus most savings can be made there. There's also some environmental issues with atmosphere disruption and sot emissions that can be avoided with other means than rockets.

              Btw, could there be any benefit by lifting rockets to a helium balloon 30 km up and then release the rocket there to be lit and go the rest of the distance? The benefit being less gravity and atmospheric resistance.

              • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 02 2014, @06:57PM

                by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 02 2014, @06:57PM (#121968) Journal

                Like any skyhook, it depends on orbital mass. To keep it balanced over time the cargo down needs to equal to cargo up, but that isn't necessarily true at any one time, as long as the cargo delta mass is significantly less than the orbital mass. Alternatively you can station keep with an ion rocket, but that limits the amount of cargo, so it's best if the mass (well, momentum actually) down equals the mass up.

                OTOH, the efficiencies of an ion rocket mean that even if the masses aren't equalized, it still save a tremendous amount over a straight rocket lift-off. (But note that an ion rocket only contributed to momentum slowly...so that does limit the allowable imbalance.)

                Still, there's a lot to be said for something that CAN be built over something that may possibly be eventually buildable.

                --
                Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by dltaylor on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:04AM

    by dltaylor (4693) on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:04AM (#121192)

    There's not a lot of highly useful AND scarce on Earth material in that Lunar ore list. Contrary to "Outland"'s story line, Titanium isn't particularly rare on this rock.

    I suspect we'll see more "Belters" (Niven) than "Loonies" (Heinlein), since the asteroids appear to have more heavy metals, and, other than the distance, easier to access. The Moon has a relatively deep gravity well so some fairly powerful rail launcher or a lot of chemical energy is needed to escape it with a useful payload. Asteroids can be brought to a leading or trailing Trojan (let's, at least, TRY not to hit the planet with one) for processing with low-thrust engines.

    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday November 30 2014, @03:31AM

      by deimtee (3272) on Sunday November 30 2014, @03:31AM (#121202) Journal

      One of the things the moon does have, is a consistent gravity. Despite all the cool things you can do in zero-gee, there are a lot of processes that are easier with some gravity.
      Separation by density, distillation, and just having things stay where you put them are all important.
      The Moon would be interesting because all the heavy stuff only weighs one sixth, making materials handling easy, but without the problems of zero-gee.

      I suspect we'll see more "Belters" (Niven) than "Loonies" (Heinlein), since the asteroids appear to have more heavy metals, and, other than the distance, easier to access. The Moon has a relatively deep gravity well so some fairly powerful rail launcher or a lot of chemical energy is needed to escape it with a useful payload. Asteroids can be brought to a leading or trailing Trojan (let's, at least, TRY not to hit the planet with one) for processing with low-thrust engines.

      I'm not sure. I suspect we'll see both. Until we get to the point of large O'Neills I think almost all of the space manufacturing will be on the moon. The belters will be miners only, for a long time. mostly of volatiles.
      Also, the Moon's gravity well isn't that deep. http://xkcd.com/681_large/ [xkcd.com]

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday November 30 2014, @04:24AM

        by tftp (806) on Sunday November 30 2014, @04:24AM (#121205) Homepage

        Despite all the cool things you can do in zero-gee, there are a lot of processes that are easier with some gravity.

        Gravity can be made with a simple centrifuge. They are used on Earth as well, as a lot of processes require gravity that exceeds 1g. However at this point nobody knows how to unmake gravity. Settlements in the Belt could exist simply because travel between outposts on various asteroids will require very little energy. 0g environment also makes it possible to set up huge solar arrays, and to maintain them without a massive crane. Plants will grow taller in 0g. Availability of rare metals in the Belt will finance the economy and will create a nearly infinite living space (comparable only to the Ringworld in useful surface) for anyone who does not want to stay on Earth for one reason or another. All those are very good reasons to develop settlements in the Belt.

        The Moon has gravity, and one could land on it only using a rocket engine (wasting fuel.) The escape velocity is smaller than on Earth, but it hardly matters because you still need lots of km/s to go anywhere else, except Earth. Moon has no metals in industrially significant quantities. Transportation between settlements on the Moon is possible only by using surface vehicles or by rockets, which is very expensive. The Moon is hit by a lot of asteroids that are attracted by the Earth-Moon system, so even walking outside is dangerous - a 1mg speck of dust at 10 km/s can ruin your day. As there is nothing to make on the Moon and nothing to sell, the colonies cannot become financially balanced - and that is important because no colony (at this point in human history) can become self-sufficient. Colonists on the Moon would be locked in one settlement simply by high costs of going anywhere else, by lack of reason to travel, as the Moon is the same everywhere, and by low income (if they have any at all.) The Moon can be successfully colonized, but it will require a far greater technological prowess than it takes to colonize the Belt - you would need autonomous (nuclear) power sources, tunnelling robots, and probably matter synthesizers that can convert useless sand into metals and organics.

        I think almost all of the space manufacturing will be on the moon

        In order to support manufacturing on the Moon you need technology that makes this manufacturing already obsolete. It's like solving the problem of London's horses in 1900's by inventing robots, powered by dark energy, that collect and remove the waste. If you can build these robots, you don't need horses anymore. If you can manufacture things on the Moon, you can manufacture the same stuff elsewhere. A station around a gas giant, or on one of their satellites, could manufacture organic materials for the entire star system - and it would be far more practical than to send people onto a lifeless rock to literally pound sand.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 30 2014, @05:24AM

          by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 30 2014, @05:24AM (#121209) Journal

          In order to support manufacturing on the Moon you need technology that makes this manufacturing already obsolete. If you can manufacture things on the Moon, you can manufacture the same stuff elsewhere. A station around a gas giant, or on one of their satellites, could manufacture organic materials for the entire star system - and it would be far more practical than to send people onto a lifeless rock to literally pound sand.

          Can you not see the inconsistency and self contradiction in that single paragraph?

          Why in hell would you move manufacturing to a planet you could never occupy or utilize? One with an even stronger gravity and less sunlight?

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday November 30 2014, @06:08AM

            by tftp (806) on Sunday November 30 2014, @06:08AM (#121214) Homepage

            Why in hell would you move manufacturing to a planet you could never occupy or utilize? One with an even stronger gravity and less sunlight?

            Nobody suggests landing on Jupiter or Saturn; they don't even have land. I mentioned stations on orbit, or on satellites of gas giants. You need a considerable speed to get to there and from there - but at the same time these locations have abundant fuel that could be utilized even today, before inventing a replicator. Supplies of liquid methane are present even on satellites, so there is no need to scoop them from Jupiter. There are no other locations in the Solar System that offer so much raw materials for organic synthesis. (Some are present in the asteroid belt, but not as much.) If you are not going to use an unprotected glass fiber for all your wiring needs, you will require plastics - and methane to make them from.

            But if you are not comfortable with considering this option, the main asteroid belt is much easier for early settlements. I don't claim that it is trivial to build bases near Jupiter or Saturn. Perhaps this is not possible at all without a new engine. However the very idea is not as dumb and pointless as building a base on the Moon; a Moon base will combine the high cost of a base on another celestial body and the ridiculously low utility of such a base. You'd be better off if you build such a base in Antarctica; its crew would do the same work (nothing) but the supply missions will be much cheaper :-)

            • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:07AM

              by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:07AM (#121225) Journal

              Nobody suggests landing on Jupiter or Saturn; they don't even have land.

              So again, I ask, why move your manufacturing to orbit around a gas giant, so you can burn the abundant fuel with the non-existent oxygen?

              The main asteroid belt is easier you say. Never mind that convenient moon right next door, lets go to some ridiculous asteroid even farther from the sun, and devoid of the methane you lauded a half paragraph above.

              You read far too many comic books.

              --
              No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:31AM

              by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:31AM (#121230) Journal

              You want Methane?

              Why not get that Methane on the moon [inquisitr.com].

              --
              No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday December 01 2014, @01:54AM

              by dry (223) on Monday December 01 2014, @01:54AM (#121374) Journal

              Jupiter is a pretty hostile environment due to the high radiation, at least as far as the Galilean satellites are concerned and they're the most useful in the neighbourhood of Jupiter. Saturn is better but having a base on Titan would be a challenge due to the extreme cold. I'd also think that having a base on an ice moon might be a challenge as well as any base would have a tendency to sink into the ice. Whether the rocky satellites are much more useful then the Moon would take more investigation.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:48AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:48AM (#121234) Journal

          Stuff to mine that I can mention right now: He-3 for nuclear fuel and Titanium because you can use the sun to melt it cheaply unlike on earth.

          • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday December 01 2014, @01:58AM

            by dry (223) on Monday December 01 2014, @01:58AM (#121375) Journal

            The HE-3 is spread very thinly and would be a challenge to harvest, needing to process tons of regolith for a few grams of HE-3. As well HE-3 is much harder to fuse then tritium+deuterium and considering we can't even fuse anything in a worthwhile way it'll be a long time before we need enough HE-3 to be worth mining on the Moon. Easier to make it here or harvest it from Saturn.

            • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday December 01 2014, @03:44AM

              by kaszz (4211) on Monday December 01 2014, @03:44AM (#121390) Journal

              How is the feasibility of harvesting He-3 from Saturn and also make use of it in a reactor?

              Perhaps this will make balloon bases in the Saturn atmosphere a path to look into.

              • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday December 01 2014, @06:33AM

                by dry (223) on Monday December 01 2014, @06:33AM (#121426) Journal

                Right now it is not feasible to harvest HE-3 from Saturn or the Moon, just that it is more concentrated in Saturns atmosphere and in some ways simpler to dive into the atmosphere and scoop it. Of course when talking about futuristic technology, who knows. Same with reactors, we haven't been able to make a profitable fusion reactor yet even after billions of dollars and decades of trying, but who knows what the future will bring.

        • (Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:41PM

          by Horse With Stripes (577) on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:41PM (#121269)

          As there is nothing to make on the Moon and nothing to sell, the colonies cannot become financially balanced - and that is important because no colony (at this point in human history) can become self-sufficient.

          In a word? Advertising. You've seen NASCAR cars? Or the backdrops behind athletes after games? Every pic, every report, every piece of merchandise will be plastered with advertising. Every tweet will have a product placement in the avatar and a #productmention in the body. Every spacesuit will look like a NASCAR jumpsuit. The supply ships will have sponsors, every splashdown of raw materials will have sponsors, as will the news teams, the news desks, and the <insert something else here because marketers would brand a piece of shit if they thought it would sell one extra widget>.

          Sure, the novelty will wear off after a while, but the first disaster will revive those ad placements and plaster the advertisers all over the web, TV and in print. We live in an advertising based society that farms user data as the fertilizer for sales. It's not hard to imagine that everyone with a computer, phone or TV will be watching some of this.

          • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday December 01 2014, @02:01AM

            by dry (223) on Monday December 01 2014, @02:01AM (#121377) Journal

            Don't forget putting a corporate symbol on the Moon. How much would Coca-Cola pay? How much much would Pepsi pay to stop Coca-Cola?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Sunday November 30 2014, @04:33AM

    by Covalent (43) on Sunday November 30 2014, @04:33AM (#121206) Journal

    ... There's nothing there worth mining. As previous posters have stated, there are two major problems:

    1. It's super expensive to get there and back
    2. The rocks there are just earth rocks

    Remember...the moon is made of mostly big chunks of the Earth's crust. That's the stuff we walk on. For free. Any advantages the moon may provide, like an oxygen free environment, can be recreated here at a fraction of the cost.

    The value in the moon isn't in the rocks. It's in the quiet and the dark. The far side of the moon is the closest place in the solar system that is silent from us. It's also completely dark for 14 days straight. The telescopes you can build there are superior to anything we could build on earth and massively larger than what you could build in space. You could build a telescope with a 500 meter mirror on the moon...and see the dawn of creation with it.

    THAT'S why you go to the moon.

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
    • (Score: 1) by takyon on Sunday November 30 2014, @06:25AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday November 30 2014, @06:25AM (#121219) Journal

      Love it. Hope moon observatories eventually make Lagrange space observatories obsolete.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:59AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:59AM (#121236) Journal

      Stuff to grab: He-3 and cheap smelting.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @01:23PM (#121266)

      carrying steel from earth to build in space is expensive, but if we reach a point where we can smelt ore in space (or on the lunar surface) then lower gravity of the moon may make mining iron very lucrative

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheLink on Sunday November 30 2014, @03:41PM

      by TheLink (332) on Sunday November 30 2014, @03:41PM (#121283) Journal

      The value in the asteroids (and maybe the Moon) is in similar rocks but in a much lower gravity well - and that's a very important thing.

      If you're thinking long term, humans should eventually have space colonies, building stuff from raw materials that aren't stuck in earth's gravity well would be cheaper (assuming we get our space tech level up- which is one thing we haven't been making much progress on - nowadays NASA and gang seem to prefer doing reruns and other stupid stuff[1], rather than developing stuff like this: http://www.spacearchitect.org/pubs/JANNAF-2005-Sorensen.pdf [spacearchitect.org] ).

      If we don't do it very soon, it's likely we would burn off most of our capital - fossil fuels (apparently millions of years of accumulated solar energy). We can make rocket fuel and other stuff from solar energy, but that's harder.

      It's like being in an oasis in a desert with many years of accumulated dried fruit and other supplies. Once we've finished consuming the accumulated resources, it'll be harder to do desert expeditions to find a new oasis or develop an alternative living area. We might be spending even more time and energy killing each other over what's left ;).

      [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/need-some-time-off-your-feet-nasa-paying-volunteers-18k-to-lie-in-bed-for-70-days/ [cbsnews.com]
      http://www.wired.com/2011/10/ff_marsmission/all/ [wired.com]
      (if they have problems with keeping people in cans, they should just pick nuclear submariners or use their crew selection and training methods).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @09:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @09:01AM (#121238)

    For the eventual ditching of the Outer Space Treaty and it's "common heritage of mankind" language. Good old American vampire squid capitalism can't have that pesky utopian commie language crap getting in the way of making billionaires and their lickspittle millionaires even richer.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @10:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30 2014, @10:23AM (#121246)

      pesky utopian commie language

      America has had ever decreasing capitalism for over a century (since 1913 in fact). If you honestly think capitalism makes billionaires and that any kind of socialism wouldn't lead to a repeat of the USSR, there is little wonder why the US economy is being flushed down the toilet. Monopolies in almost all cases throughout history have originated from some form of government coercion of markets, whether it be through direct financial interference, or indirectly through patents, licensing, tariffs, or imposing of other competitive restrictions. The financial oligarchy running the US is a direct result of the congressionally authorized money laundering going on in the private Federal Reserve. The banks are in bed with politicians, which in no way resembles free market capitalism. The corruption in US politics is rampant and disgusting, and as much as banks are foolish, they are merely acting like any well fed pig at a trough; if politicians had the collective integrity to remove the trough, there would be no problems in the financial industry. Unfortunately that will never happen until markets force the situation. It also won't be a question of it, but when.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 02 2014, @01:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 02 2014, @01:23AM (#121695)

        ever decreasing capitalism for over a century

        Your lens grinder has provided you with spectacles which give you a very distorted view.

        Now, there -was- an improving egalitarianism during The New Deal (bringing about the bogus term "middle class"), but (sadly) there was no effort to bust up Wall Street or to kneecap Capitalism, just logical regulations that tried to limit irresponsible business methods that are dangerous for the national economy.

        As soon as FDR was dead, however, the Capitalists/Free Marketeers flooded back into the breach with lobbyists and anti-worker/anti-regulatory demands.
        Taft–Hartley [wikipedia.org]

        One of the most important of the Progressive reforms of the New Deal era was murdered in 1999 under Neoliberal Bill Clinton when Glass-Steagal was repealed, leading to ANOTHER implosion of the world economy. [wikipedia.org]
        (The proper approach in 1929 would have been to allow the failed banks to fail and to then charter public banks as was done in North Dakota back in 1913. We blew our chance again in 2007.)

        You are trying to convince us that power and wealth in recent years hasn't become ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands?
        Pffff. Get real. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [sunlightfoundation.com]

        -- gewg_