Don’t let the beer and pizza throw you off…this will happen before we return to the moon:
Without using or investing in the overhead of lunar hardware three entrepreneurs in twin Dragon Puffs connected by a Bigalow hab/radiation-shelter will spend a month drinking beer, eating cold pizza, and watching YouTube while floating to a Near Earth Asteroid. Upon arrival, since they are not unimaginative NASA bureaucrats, risk-adverse academics, or scientifically illiterate politicians they will toss the protocol for collecting regolith samples to the solar wind. Instead they will spend a week stuffing every nook and crevice of their craft with regolith, sorted or not, while inflating massive canisters filled with a slurry of volatiles and PGMs set to drift slowly on their own way to L1.
Then these three will do something truly remarkable, something which will be the:
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SINGLE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN SPACE DURING OUR LIFETIMES
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They will transfer their beer and buddies from the Dragon with a cushion base which had landed on the asteroid to the Dragon and Hab which had been hanging out in orbit a slight distance away. Following that, once the beer is safely ensconced, they will use duct-tape, velcro, and a few spare shoelaces to patch up whatever wear-and-tear the Dragon lander may have experienced. Then, just before heading for home, they will initiate the What-the-Heck-Let’s-Give-It-A-Shot-Before-We-Sober-Up procedure: remotely tilt the unmanned Dragon lander with a cushion base on its side, and, as if it were an undersea craft slowly floating across a reef, drift it horizontally to one of the many massive multistory mountain sized boulders strewn across the asteroid surface. After carefully resting its landing cushion perpendicular to the boulder they will gradually apply more pressure until velocities increase from centimeters per hour to kilometers per hour and so on, gently pushing a mountain of PGMs and volatiles to L1. –Without fancy recycling systems, without special equipment, and certainly without anything associated with the moon.
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Our 3 half-witted heroes will have accomplished 2 things, with or without NASA. They will always be able to buy beer and — apart from fantasy future He3 — no one will ever mention lunar resources again. With vast resources at L1 we will finally concentrate on Mars settlement. Dedicated Earth-based simulation of exact Martian thermal, atmospheric, and solar conditions will provide more realistic evaluation of Martian architectures than extremely expensive, unnecessarily dangerous “Martian/ISRU practice” on the moon; future construction and refueling of GEO satellites/interplanetary craft will be much more easily accomplished at L1 than on the moon.
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Key points:
(1) Transit to an asteroid will take between only two weeks to at most two months.
(2) An asteroid studded with enormous surface boulders can be sufficiently assayed robotically prior to the two week period astronauts would work at the asteroid.
(3) Costs are extremely low without lunar overhead, landers, etc; Delta V fuel requirements are minimal since there is no landing or relaunch (the entire operation takes place in Zero G).
(4) Extensive separation of asteroid material can take place on the boulder at L1 and LEO, leisurely, long after the retrieval mission.
(5) Once even a single PGM asteroid fragment with volatiles is at L1 discussion of Lunar resources becomes absurd.
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With massive NEA resources at L1 Moon First advocates will return to arguing for a moon base “for the sake of a moon base.” It will have no value other than to hinder our progress further into the solar system. If you don’t like Mars, drop it — that does not need to be part of the equation. Just work with a massive amount of profitable PGM/volatiles at L1 — between the Earth and the moon — and pet projects involving lunar rovers, lunar greenhouses, lunar overhead of all kinds will be seen as irrelevant.
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Mars seems to be a convenient distraction, a strawman, an excuse lunar scientists use to not discuss Near Earth Asteroids.
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The cool thing about this debate though is that it doesn’t matter what we decide, since, for-profit mechanisms will create a L1 NEA resource depot before anyone returns to the moon — by the sheer force of informed capital.
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Once massive amounts of precious metals and volatiles are already at L1 it becomes ridiculous to speak of transporting “asteroid debris” in the lunar regolith to L1, or, constructing equipment or fuel depots on the moon. It is much, much easier in terms of equipment overhead and fuel to coast out to NEAs than to land and launch from the lunar surface — especially for any serious amount of resources.
In the August ’09 issue of Ad Astra, Denis Wingo — who has earned admiration as a tireless advocate of entrepreneurial space exploration — writes of a future landing expedition finding on the surface of the moon a large PGM boulder remaining from an asteroid impact. The purpose of the above Dragon Puff story is to point out that if a similar — albeit even much larger boulder — were found on the surface of an asteroid (they are studded with such structures) it would be much easier to transport the boulder to and use it at L1 than to engage resources for similar purposes on the moon. –Especially given that this could be done by entrepreneurs without either lunar overhead or heavy lift or even NASA approval.
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If a massive PGM rock is sitting at L1 then lunar resources become irrelevant to ANYTHING we do in space, anywhere — even, ironically, ON THE MOON. We would actually mine the piece of the asteroid at L1 for resources to be used on the moon. LOL : ) Now THAT is funny! Eventually we will construct many of the heavier components of robotic telescope constellations at L1…future far side L2 radio telescopes in zero G will be constructed and repaired at L1. The moon will not have an extensive permanent human presence until Mars has been definitively settled, if then.
The moon is a Siren’s Call.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/05/nasas-manned-mi.html
http://www.space.com/news/061116_asteroid_nasa.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/06/nasa-considers-manned-asteroid-mission/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network
[graphics thanks to Nick Kaloterakis]
