Self-Replicating Lunar Factories

[SaturnianBlue]

I stumbled upon a paper by NASA researchers that argues that starting from 12 tons of equipment landed on the Moon, a self-replicating (though more accurately expanding) factory can over a few decades bootstrap itself to self-sufficiency. Earlier studies (notably a major study from 1980) also explored the idea of such a factory, but this one takes in advances in robotics and 3D printing to decrease the size of the initial factory. An important method to reducing the cost of the initial seed is to start with a factory with only some manufacturing capabilities, using the local material to create a crude second generation of the factory, and slowly becoming more and more capable. If the growth of the factory is unstopped, it could easily grow to have an industrial capability exceeding whole countries. 

The authors generally argue for teleoperation, with operations of the base being done through robots (think ones like the Robonaut), and gradually using Artificial Intelligence on-site for operation. 

A lot of the paper is dedicated towards the industries of the factory, and the results of modeling the growth rate of the factory through various metrics and scenarios. 

It should be pointed out that this isn't a full study with detailed cost estimates of the sort, but the paper does imply that the initial and overall costs would be pretty low, certainly lower than sending the ISRU equipment all from Earth. 

For the more futuristic possibilities of such a factory, Space Based Solar Power could become more cost effective, since the assembly of parts on the Moon decrease transportation costs and manufacturing costs. The rapid growth of a factory would drop expenses and provide space settlements the material to get them built.

The report itself is not that long a read—around 20 pages or so.

Edited February 20, 2018 by SaturnianBlue

[Kerbal7]

Why would you put a factory on the moon? No one lives there. And building anything on the Earth is cheaper and easier. So it wouldn't make economic sense to build something on the moon to be shipped to earth.

[Antstar]

7 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Why would you put a factory on the moon? No one lives there. And building anything on the Earth is cheaper and easier. So it wouldn't make economic sense to build something on the moon to be shipped to earth.

Quite apart from the fact that if you want something on the moon, building it on the moon would be convenient due to launch costs- the moon is the high ground. It has low gravity and no atmosphere. For example, getting to Mars from the Lunar surface is dramatically easier than from Earth surface

Getting to LEO means aerobraking or expending fuel, but for ANYWHERE else, you are far better on the moon than anywhere near Earth

Edited February 21, 2018 by Antstar

[Kerbal7]

6 minutes ago, Antstar said:

Quite apart from the fact that if you want something on the moon, building it on the moon would be convenient due to launch costs- the moon is the high ground. It has low gravity and no atmosphere. For example, getting to Mars from the Lunar surface is dramatically easier than from Earth surface

Depends. 

Do the raw materials exist on the moon to be extracted, mined and processed into usable building material for my Martian spaceship or ships? Or does some, most, or all need to be sent up from earth? If all my building materials can be found and refined on the moon, how many spaceships am I building for Mars? Is the ship count enough to produce a profit for me after my investment in the infrastructure and operating cost necessary to build the ship or ships? 

[Antstar]

42 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Depends. 

Do the raw materials exist on the moon to be extracted, mined and processed into usable building material for my Martian spaceship or ships? Or does some, most, or all need to be sent up from earth? If all my building materials can be found and refined on the moon, how many spaceships am I building for Mars? Is the ship count enough to produce a profit for me after my investment in the infrastructure and operating cost necessary to build the ship or ships? 

The short answer is yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_composition

As for economics, like most space based industry it is only likely to be worth it for large projects. Ie. a huge ship for Mars, or a lot of them. The aluminum alone can be used for hulls, and while not as good as copper, can be used for wires. Depending on how much chemical processing you are willing to do, silicone is mostly Si and O by weight. Most glasses are doped SiO2, and most of the dopants can probably be found in the "other" shown in that chart. Of course, it would not be practical to produce for example a CPU on the moon, at least until there was heavy supporting industry there, but saving 90+% of the mass from needing to be launched from Earth would have huge benefits.

 

EDIT- I should add that while I'm not an economist, I am a chemist. And on Earth, economics dictates construction. For example, copper is not the best material for wires. Silver and gold are both intrinsically better. Probably the best (room temperature, practical) conductor would be gold containing either a small amount of silver or copper. However this is not used for wiring your house for the obvious reason that it is too expensive. Any products manufactured on the moon would have different economics and hence use probably quite different materials than on Earth,  but achieve the same electrical and material properties overall

Edited February 21, 2018 by Antstar

[Scotius]

Hmmm.... What could you do with an extra supply of thousands of tons of gold, silver, platinum and other metals mined from asteroids?

[TDplay]

Note to self: Recreate this in KSP by using unmannned rovers and mods such as Pathfinder (for the Buffalo rover) and EL (for the cool way of constructing on the Mun or in orbit around said Mun)

[TDplay]

On 2/21/2018 at 4:12 AM, Scotius said:

Hmmm.... What could you do with an extra supply of thousands of tons of gold, silver, platinum and other metals mined from asteroids?

1. Bung it in a cargo re-entry pod.
2. Land it near your space program's buildings.
3. Sell and profit.

Or because

On 2/21/2018 at 12:48 AM, Antstar said:

Silver and gold are both intrinsically better [than copper as electric wiring]

you can use them for wiring

Edited March 14, 2018 by TDplay

[HeronRocketry]

How about we just have a bunch of factories all over the mun and make it into a mechanized solution to all of earth’s problems? Who knows? Maybe the AI we use to run them will become corrupt and... wait there is no and. 

 

Yes i realize I typed mun, playing kerbal too much.