Colonization Discussion Thread (split from SpaceX)

[sh1pman]

5 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Space travel is hard, but by no means impossible, and engineers have proven really, really good at doing hard things.

Agreed. I just think we have to make sure everything works fine on the Moon first, so that if something bad happens and the crew can’t fix it, there will be a possibility for a rescue mission. Then go to Mars, then to Ceres, gas giant moons, ice giants, Pluto, Kuiper belt, planet 9, other stars, wherever. 

[IncongruousGoat]

Just now, sh1pman said:

Agreed. I just think we have to make sure everything works fine on the Moon first, so that if something bad happens and the crew can’t fix it, there will be a possibility for a rescue mission. Then go to Mars, then to Ceres, gas giant moons, ice giants, Pluto, Kuiper belt, planet 9, other stars, wherever. 

No, Mars is definitely the place to go. The problem with the Moon is that the only thing (and I do really mean the only thing) it has going for it is proximity. It's a completely terrible place in all other regards. Abysmal rotation period, hazardous and highly abrasive regolith, a serious deficiency of the resources we need to survive, unhealthily low gravity, little to no possibility of terraforming... I'm of the view that we're likely never going to see a serious population on the Moon, just because of how darn inhospitable it is. Mostly automated mining settlements that depend on constant supply shipments? Yes. There's a historical precedent for that kind of thing (gold mining in the Sahara). But full-on settlement? Not a chance. Again, think the Sahara.

Mars, on the other hand, is as nice a colony site as we could hope for short of a straight up habitable planet. Sure, it's not a terribly nice place, but it's a much more forgiving destination than anywhere else in the solar system, and it's also the second-closest of the reasonable colony targets. Furthermore, tech developed for the Moon is not going to be terribly applicable to Mars given the possibilities for ISRU on the latter, so there's no real advantage to settling the one before the other.

[sh1pman]

5 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

No, Mars is definitely the place to go. The problem with the Moon is that the only thing (and I do really mean the only thing) it has going for it is proximity. It's a completely terrible place in all other regards. Abysmal rotation period, hazardous and highly abrasive regolith, a serious deficiency of the resources we need to survive, unhealthily low gravity, little to no possibility of terraforming... I'm of the view that we're likely never going to see a serious population on the Moon, just because of how darn inhospitable it is. Mostly automated mining settlements that depend on constant supply shipments? Yes. There's a historical precedent for that kind of thing (gold mining in the Sahara). But full-on settlement? Not a chance. Again, think the Sahara.

Mars, on the other hand, is as nice a colony site as we could hope for short of a straight up habitable planet. Sure, it's not a terribly nice place, but it's a much more forgiving destination than anywhere else in the solar system, and it's also the second-closest of the reasonable colony targets. Furthermore, tech developed for the Moon is not going to be terribly applicable to Mars given the possibilities for ISRU on the latter, so there's no real advantage to settling the one before the other.

I’m not saying the Moon should be colonized or anything, just that it will be used as a proving ground, a test site for new technologies, such as cargo delivery and loading, base construction, long term habitation, hydroponics, power management, low-g basketball, whatever is needed for human survival on distant worlds. Make sure everything works fine, then pack up and move someplace more interesting.

[sevenperforce]

31 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

I’m not saying the Moon should be colonized or anything, just that it will be used as a proving ground, a test site for new technologies, such as cargo delivery and loading, base construction, long term habitation, hydroponics, power management, low-g basketball, whatever is needed for human survival on distant worlds. Make sure everything works fine, then pack up and move someplace more interesting.

Ditto.

That's not a reason not to send ships to Mars. I think SpaceX should send an unmanned BFS to Mars as soon as they possibly can.

But I sure was hell would like to see ECLSS tested on the moon first.

2 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Your family may think otherwise. They’ll want you to return back home safely. Can you tell your wife and children that you're going on a suicide mission, and there’s a good chance you’ll die (for science and progress)? I don’t think I can.

Funny. When I just had a wife and two boys, I thought I'd be okay with a one-way ticket to Mars, assuming that my boys were grown and my wife was going with me.

Now that I have a daughter? Screw that.

[Wjolcz]

I'm not an expert but I also don't think lessons learned on the Moon would be applicable on Mars. Maybe some. Certainly not all of them though. Now if we're talking about LOP-G: I'm not a fan of that station. Stations are cool and all but is spending money on that thing really that good of an idea? You might as well build it in LEO and THEN transform it into a spaceship with propulsion AND go to Mars. And you'll probably save money by doing that.

Now, would I like to see 150mT being landed on the surface of the Moon? Hell yeah! A base is a great way to learn things. Lava tubes: Learning how to live in them and properly securing them and all that stuff would certainly be useful on Mars as there seem to be lava tubes on both the Moon and Mars. Making shelters with regolith? Lunar dust is not the same as the Martian one AFAIK so the tech would have to be modified. Is ice mining so hard it has to be done on the Moon first? Don't think so.

I'm sure a lunar base wouldn't only be used for Mars tech R&D. There could be other things like observatories, low-G biology experiments, new methods of 3D printing and probably something else.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Wjolcz

[CatastrophicFailure]

43 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

low-g basketball, 

I, for one, would pay an obscenely large quantity of hypothetical money to dive into a swimming pool on the moon. 

 

But y’all are being way too narrow minded, here. We should skip the half-ways and just start a colony on Venus. At MSL. With solar power. And a ski resort. 

[sh1pman]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

But y’all are being way too narrow minded, here. We should skip the half-ways and just start a colony on Venus. At MSL. With solar power. And a ski resort. 

When hell freezes over, we just might.

[Confused Scientist]

4 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

When hell freezes over, we just might.

Or Venus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton_Rover_for_Extreme_Environments

[magnemoe]

26 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

I'm not an expert but I also don't think lessons learned on the Moon would be applicable on Mars. Maybe some. Certainly not all of them though. Now if we're talking about LOP-G: I'm not a fan of that station. Stations are cool and all but is spending money on that thing really that good of an idea? You might as well build it in LEO and THEN transform it into a spaceship with propulsion AND go to Mars. And you'll probably save money by doing that.

Now, would I like to see 150mT being landed on the surface of the Moon? Hell yeah! A base is a great way to learn things. Lava tubes: Learning how to live in them and properly securing them and all that stuff would certainly be useful on Mars as there seem to be lava tubes on both the Moon and Mars. Making shelters with regolith? Lunar dust is not the same as the Martian one AFAIK so the tech would have to be modified. Is ice mining so hard it has to be done on the Moon first? Don't think so.

I'm sure a lunar base wouldn't only be used for Mars tech R&D. There could be other things like observatories, low-G biology experiments, new methods of 3D printing and probably something else.

Disagree, yes Mars is the second nicest place i the solar system, however before you terraform Mars its pretty useless. 
Moon is less scientific interesting but it has resources close by and is an tourist attraction. 

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

But reporting by general media won't really matter, especially in the beginning. There are more than enough people in the world do understand the technology and the risks, and who will be willing to make the journey regardless. Remember, we don't need to get everyone to think it's safe, or even most people. Just enough people to start the colony going. It's not like buying a one-way ticket to Mars is illegal, especially if SpaceX are operating their own launch site and range. In any case, SpaceX will be highly motivated to make the trip as safe as possible, so I don't see this becoming a problem in the first place. Additionally, humans have shown the ability to fix things if stuff starts breaking - case in point, Apollo 13. As long as SpaceX builds a modicum of redundancy into the BFS (which they seem to be doing), things should be just fine. Space travel is hard, but by no means impossible, and engineers have proven really, really good at doing hard things.

What matters is the opinion of the government. 

Sadly, there aren't enough people who do understand technology and risks. The human mind focuses on failure, not success, and humans are horrendous at risk assessment.

I won't say that they "fixed" Apollo 13. The SM remained nonfunctional. Rather, they prevented three deaths. Definitely an accomplishment, but far from "fixing." 

I'm not worried about the engineers. I'm worried about management.

Musk has said that he'll provide the transportation, but what they do there is beyond what he plans on doing.

I would never start a colony on Mars, personally. I wouldn't go there to live if given the choice, either. Maybe a quick visit, but that's not really possible given our technology.

26 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

But y’all are being way too narrow minded, here. We should skip the half-ways and just start a colony on Venus. At MSL. With solar power. And a ski resort. 

If we're talking about Venus, we may as well just ignore planets altogether... L5 all the way! With a low-g pool. And the ability to come back to Earth...

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Disagree, yes Mars is the second nicest place i the solar system, however before you terraform Mars its pretty useless. 
Moon is less scientific interesting but it has resources close by and is an tourist attraction. 

More like fourth...

1 - Earth

2 - ISS (humans have actually been there long term, but even so, it's a distant second to Earth - with an environment better than some areas on Earth, but no sustainability)

3 - Upper atmosphere of Venus (even more distant than the ISS - acid is also present around the area most commonly proposed to colonize and resources are an issue)

4 - Mars

[IncongruousGoat]

13 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

3 - Upper atmosphere of Venus (even more distant than the ISS - acid is also present around the area most commonly proposed to colonize and resources are an issue)

Ah, but you're forgetting the two really big problems with a high-altitude Venus colony. A: it would be completely useless, and B: once you get there, there's no way back. Not through the kinds of winds you get in Venus's upper atmosphere. There's no way it could ever be self-sustaining.

That's the big reason I advocate Mars above all else - it's got the potential to be self-sustaining, using reasonable technology. It can grow to be something more than a small outpost that needs constant resupply. If we want progress a more difficult to reach, more difficult to supply equivalent of the ISS is not the way to go. So yes, I buy into the existential argument for colonization. To quote Larry Niven: "The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" 

And yes, if given the chance I would move to Mars.

[kerbiloid]

On 6/16/2018 at 11:02 PM, AVaughan said:

So that would mean that an Ammolox engine would have around 320 ISP?  According to wikipedia the Methane/Lox vacuum engine SpaceX is developing has a vacuum ISP of 375.  So even is Ammolox is easier to make and store,

 

On 6/17/2018 at 12:28 AM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I think methane was chosen because carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are readily available almost everywhere in the solar system, while ammonia is relatively rare.

All that means that you wouldn't choose Ammonia as main fuel intentionally.

But:
1.
You anyway have to produce Ammonia in great amounts to make any type of a storable propellant.
And you have a lot of the storable propellants to get out from your base to any other place.
So, unlike Methane, you need Ammonia daily. And as you anyway are producing it in great amounts, why not use it also as is, avoiding Methane at all.

2.
You have just three resources on Mars: CO2  N2, and H2O.
And while CO2 and N2 are everywhere, H2O is located just in very special places, in glaciers, not across all over the planet.
And H2O is the only hydrogen on Mars,

So, either you are nailed to a glacier and can't get nowhere from there, or you have to deliver hydrogen from glaciers.
Options are: liquid hydrogen (highly cryogenic, highly unstorable, requires a lot of equipment mass to hold it for weeks) or chemical compounds rich with hydrogen (in fact, just 3 options: H2O, CH4, NH3)..

CH4 contains H in ratio 1:4, but is highly cryogenic, so badly storable, needs cryogenic equipment and electric power, and you have to transport mostly carbon (which you have everywhere, so it's a ballast).
H2O is absolutely storable, and is not cryogenic. But it has just 1:9 of hydrogen, and O is a ballast, too (like C it's everywhere as CO2).
NH3 on Mars has a "room temperature", most part of time it's liquid without heating or cooling, it contains H in 1:5.7 ratio. And it contains no ballast, exactly because nitrogen is relatively rare
So, placing ammonia plants on glaciers, you have to deliver only precious things: H and N. Everything you carry to your base is highly useful and required in great amounts.

 

On 6/17/2018 at 2:12 AM, IncongruousGoat said:

For now, though, Musk only cares about Mars, and methane synthesis makes sense for Mars. 

Methane doesn't make sense even there.

Yes, you have a lot of CO2 to produce methane (if you have water right where you are or have delivered, say, ammonia from a glacier factory).
But how much methane can you store, as you need cryostats for this?

How can you use it except fueling a big return rocket?
Methalox is a very poor choice for anything but a big dumb rocket. No hoppers, no fliers, no drones. No camps with ready-to-use fuel tanks.
You even can't get somewhere for more than 1-2 days if you fuel your hopper with methalox, you can just drop down, plant flag, take a bucket of stones, and quickly get away.

You want to use CO2 which is everywhere. Easily.
CO2 + H2 → CO + H2O
CO + 2H2 → CH3OH aka methanol.
(Of course, you need given temperature, pressure, and catalyst, which are well known).

Methanol is as storable as water, as Universe. It's stable, it's not cryogenic.

To make UDMH or that bad and poor MMH, you use ammonia and methanol (the latter even in two places of process: to produce methylamines and hydrogen peroxide for a modified process).
To make polymers, you don't need methane, you can produce olefins ethylene and propylene right from methanol.
To produce aceton for HTP and hydrazines, and ethanolamines for purifiers, you anyway need methanol.
To mine the frozen ground you need solutions containing either methanol itself, or anti-freeze agents made of it.

OK, you need methalox to fuel the return rocket...
Wait, are you going to send people onto another planet even with no abort option?
And how should the rocket land? It should carry cryogeinc tanks for 8 months of flight or hope that they target enough accurately to get into aerobrake corridor right from fly-by?
So, the return rocket should carry storable propellants onboard. Hypergolics are the only choice.
So, even for this methane makes no sense.

And, as you need a lot of methanol and ammonia in any case except your base is just for flag planting,
why add another expensive technology (Sabatier is just the first stage of the process)? On ISS they don't care if it''s enough pure, they just vent it out.

You need some primitive and raw fuel in great amounts?
You are anyway producing ammonia, it has ISPg 3200, it doesn't need heavy tanks, coolers, and energy.
Just take it more or (even better) use a tripropellant engine (like RD-701, but for ammonia instead of kerosene; like RD-301, but with hydrogen and oxygen instead of fluorine; both were made in metal).
Tripropellant engine is hard to make? Well, at least once it was (and is, but wasn't required).
And hard compared to what? Interplanetary landing ship with ISRU fueling? Seriously?

In fact, the only place you need ammonia as fuel is ammonia delivery from glacier plants.
In this case this is absolutely obvious choice of fuel.
For a return rocket you anyway need hypergolics (made of ammonia which you have brought from a glacier in an ammonia-fueled rocket).
 

On 6/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

Methane doesn't have to be refrigerated to be a liquid; it can also be stored as a liquid under high pressure (see LNG tankers).

Methane is  up to -160°C. Mars is -100..+30°C.
Of course LNG tankers can store it. But what is their mass-to-gas ratio? Is it 9 t of gas per 1 t of ship?

***

About C-Stoff.
You can produce and store methanol as much as much hydrogen you have. (Exactly like methane).
Its liquid temperature range is -97..+64 °C. So, it's always liquid on Mars, just have enough barrels.
You can store it in in your research camp as much as you want, it won't boil off.

So, you can use it as the cheapest possible propellant between the storable fluids.
But as you anyway need hydrazines, you can just enforce it with hydrazine hydrate admixture (historically - C-Stoff).
So, C-Stoff (methanol+hydrazine hydrate) + hydrogen peroxide is the most cheap and handy solution for ground equipment when you need a lot of power at once, from time to time.
Without nukes on heavy rovers.
(Maybe C-Stoff can be used with HNO3 or N2O4, I don't know. In this case it would be even cheaper.)

Also you anyway need explosives for mining, geology, and landscape shaping.
The obvious choice is astrolite (made of the same hydrazine hydrate and oxidized ammonia).

You need some kind of primitive plastic envelopes for charges and sand bags for henges and rad-protection.
You can make it of methanol (methanol → ethylene + propylene → polyethylene and polypropylene). Of course, of poor quality, but "quality" for sandbags?

***

So, methanol and ammonia are the blood of Martian base.
Use them as widely as possible, as you anyway have to produce a lot of them.
While methane is useless.

***

(Methane gets useful much later, when you build an industrial base and deliver methanol and ammonis to a huge orbital industrial base.
Then of course you just launch uncrewed superheavy reusable Nexus-like shuttle rockets from glaciers and fuel them with methane.)

Edited June 19, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Wjolcz]

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Disagree, yes Mars is the second nicest place i the solar system, however before you terraform Mars its pretty useless. 
Moon is less scientific interesting but it has resources close by and is an tourist attraction. 

What resources? Helium-3, water and aluminium? What else? Moon is basically ash from collision. Maybe there are resources but they are either deep down or right on the surface. At least Mars has an atmosphere that can be used for ISRU.

Don't get me wrong. I think a Moon base would be great but for other reasons. There are simply things that are needed on Mars and can't be tested on the Moon so there really isn't much point in stopping there first. Unless the point is delaying the Martian settlement for the sake of stopping on the Moon first.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Wjolcz

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

What resources? Helium-3, water and aluminium? What else? Moon is basically ash from collision. Maybe there are resources but they are either deep down or right on the surface. At least Mars has an atmosphere that can be used for ISRU.

Don't get me wrong. I think a Moon base would be great but for other reasons. There are simply things that are needed on Mars and can't be tested on the Moon so there really isn't much point in stopping there first. Unless the point is delaying the Martian settlement for the sake of stopping on the Moon first.

If we have the BFR operational, I think it makes sense to test the basic "land on another world, get out, walk around, get back in, and come home" sooner rather than later.

[hms_warrior]

There is actualy a lot more on the moon. The basic rock there is made of aluminium titan silicium and oxygen. Lox and structural components for everyone! 

LOX and powdered aluminium makes a 230 isp rocketfuel btw. Enough for lunar orbit sso.

Edited June 19, 2018 by hms_warrior

[Wjolcz]

45 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

If we have the BFR operational, I think it makes sense to test the basic "land on another world, get out, walk around, get back in, and come home" sooner rather than later.

Well, yeah. But if there will be a plan to build a base eventually they will do that anyway. Might as well test out the crane/elevator and lower down some components/equipment of the future base.

[NSEP]

28 minutes ago, hms_warrior said:

There is actualy a lot more on the moon. The basic rock there is made of aluminium titan silicium and oxygen. Lox and structural components for everyone! 

LOX and powdered aluminium makes a 230 isp rocketfuel btw. Enough for lunar orbit sso.

I think Scott Manley used that in the interstellar series. Usefull for science hoppers.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

What resources? Helium-3, water and aluminium? What else? Moon is basically ash from collision. Maybe there are resources but they are either deep down or right on the surface. At least Mars has an atmosphere that can be used for ISRU.

Don't get me wrong. I think a Moon base would be great but for other reasons. There are simply things that are needed on Mars and can't be tested on the Moon so there really isn't much point in stopping there first. Unless the point is delaying the Martian settlement for the sake of stopping on the Moon first.

Primarily is water at the poles and hopefully some other places like lave tubes. aluminium is very useful to. 

Problem is that you can not make an self sufficient colony on Mars. Yes you can grow your own food, probably make other stuff like basic spare parts perhaps solar panels. 
Not more advanced parts, you can not make an new space suit as an example so you would still need plenty of import or colony will fail in a few years. 
And you have nothing to export. Now the Mars moons might be valuable and the dV from them is lower than from the moon. 
 

6 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Another potential revenue generating "use" for BFR is space tourism.  Assuming SpaceX can get BFR human rated for tourist trips to LEO, they could offer 24 hr and 1 week tourist trips to LEO.  Doing that they could also test the life support facilities for multi-month trips.  (For long duration testing send up a BFR that will act as a hotel for a 6 month duration, then every week send up a new load of tourists, dock to the hotel BFR, and swap passengers.  This could provide a revenue source for long duration life support testing, and improvements to living arrangements, with the possibility of a quick return to Earth if something fails and can't be fixed in space).  

If you were going to pay for a space tourist experience, would you rather pay for 10 mins of zero g with Blue Origin, or pay more for 24 hrs or so on BFR?  (If they can get launch/training/crew costs down to $20M per launch, then 40 paying customers at $1M each is profitable).

Has tough about it, my favorite is using an manned BFR as an satellite launcher for polar or other non standard orbits, works as long as the satellite fits in the cargo hold of it. 
Start by doing this for man rating, then tourism for extra income, bonus is that you see more of the Earth from an polar orbit, now you might need to stay up a bit longer than just the deployment but this don't cost so much. 

Using one as an space station was an nice idea for long term testing, It would double as an fuel depot. 
 

[Scotius]

Most "rare" elements like iridium, platinum etc are rare, because they sank to Earth's core while our planet was a blob of molten rock. What we mine and use today is in 90% a second batch - delivered by the asteroids crashing into the surface after it solidified. And Moon got its fair share of these too And speaking of asteroids and their wealth of materials - Mars is a perfect stepping stone to get our hands on the bonanza of the Belt. Venus - not so much

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

If we have the BFR operational, I think it makes sense to test the basic "land on another world, get out, walk around, get back in, and come home" sooner rather than later.

You have skipped the easy part: 2.5 years long journey beyond magnetosphere to/onto another planet - just to plant a flag, as humans currently know about Mars much more than were knowing about Moon when landing. 

1 hour ago, hms_warrior said:

LOX and powdered aluminium makes a 230 isp rocketfuel btw.

Splitting original alumina requires (highly optimistically) ~54 MJ/kg,  i.e. 10000 m/s of kinetic energy. 
So, it returns (2300/10000)²  ~5% of spent energy (highly optimistically).
Delivering a ready-to-use fuel from the Earth to the Moon orbit needs ~120 MJ/kg, and requires no lunar infrastructure.
Moon is just too close to the Earth to let any industry be energetically cheaper. It's easier to deliver everything from the Earth.

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

I think Scott Manley used that in the interstellar series. Usefull for science hoppers.

Hopping on a rocky moon of something other than Earth. 
Earth eliminates any sense of some lunar industry just energetically. When you have a lot of industry and resources on Earth, why bother with building it on Moon.

Moon is a place to test a Martian ship and base like they are flying somewhere (but still can escape in 3 days).
And for a biological studies for several decades trying to accustom koalas and sloths to low G and grow 100 m high bananas until saying enough.
It's a piece of slag.

[Bill Phil]

15 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Ah, but you're forgetting the two really big problems with a high-altitude Venus colony. A: it would be completely useless, and B: once you get there, there's no way back. Not through the kinds of winds you get in Venus's upper atmosphere. There's no way it could ever be self-sustaining.

That's the big reason I advocate Mars above all else - it's got the potential to be self-sustaining, using reasonable technology. It can grow to be something more than a small outpost that needs constant resupply. If we want progress a more difficult to reach, more difficult to supply equivalent of the ISS is not the way to go. So yes, I buy into the existential argument for colonization. To quote Larry Niven: "The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" 

And yes, if given the chance I would move to Mars.

Any space colony is arguaby completely useless. Even for existential problems, Earth will be better for millions of years at least. Venus's upper atmosphere is the only natural place that appears anything like Earth's environment in terms of temperature, pressure, and gravity. I am in no way arguing for a Venus(or Mars...) colony, but in those terms, it's better than Mars.

What we need for progress is development in life support systems to limit resupply needs as well as development in space manufacturing and resource acquisition and of course improvements in our space transportation infrastructure. Gunning for colonies at this point is jumping way over the gun. At this point we've only landed small payloads on Mars. We need to develop that technology before even a flags and footprints mission, let alone setting up a colony.

6 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

What resources? Helium-3, water and aluminium? What else? Moon is basically ash from collision. Maybe there are resources but they are either deep down or right on the surface. At least Mars has an atmosphere that can be used for ISRU.

Don't get me wrong. I think a Moon base would be great but for other reasons. There are simply things that are needed on Mars and can't be tested on the Moon so there really isn't much point in stopping there first. Unless the point is delaying the Martian settlement for the sake of stopping on the Moon first.

Oxygen. Makes up almost half of the lunar regolith.

He-3 is a terrible justification for the Moon. You'd have to sort billions of tonnes of regolith to get what we'd need...

I think we need to get 50 years of history back.

[kerbiloid]

Letting alone the energy required to extract the oxygen from heatproof oxides, as well as aluminium for lunar rockets...

Why should they breathe and fly on the Moon to need this even if it were available?
So, unless a lunar orbiter finds an alien lunar city buried under a hundred meters of regolith, Moon can give not much "what", to care about "how".

(This is a lot of aluminium on Earth. They call it clay)

Edited June 19, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Xd the great]

On 6/20/2018 at 12:00 AM, Bill Phil said:

He-3 is a terrible justification for the Moon. You'd have to sort billions of tonnes of regolith to get what we'd need...

If we develop fusion tech, it might be worth it.

[Bill Phil]

44 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

If we develop fusion tech, it might be worth it.

No. 

He-3 is in the parts per billions in the lunar regolith. You don't need much He-3, sure, but you would be processing millions of tonnes per week. On the Moon. This is the kind of thing that takes huge amounts of money and time to set up, and the He-3 on the Moon may not even last all that long, provided we do eventually access it and want to use it. Our energy needs aren't stagnant, meaning we would need to increase the amount we extract over time, and eventually we would exhaust the source. Some have calculated that it would last a decade, others about a century, if we're lucky. 

Compare this to the constant energy from the Sun, and the Helium-3 on the Moon doesn't really help us all that much. Especially when considering that we can take advantage of the neutrons released by D-T to help breed tritium.

[Xd the great]

Well, moon is better as a mining colony. Underground.