From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: solar power on the moon
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3399
Posted: Tue Sep 21 17:00:39 1982
Received: Wed Sep 22 04:46:52 1982

From: Robert Elton Maas 
I think it's quite clear that in the long run we want to have habitat
and industry etc. in space, probably a la Dyson sphere around each
star we homestead. It's not so clear what method we want for powering
planet-based habitat and industry, whether simply tap off the Dyson
power grid, or have local solar energy with local storage, or have a
ring of energy girdling the planet to avoid need for local storage, or
have local nuclear fission power, or if we solve the problem local
nuclear fusion power. I think it's too early to decide on one or the
other, although we ought to keep all those possibilities in mind
towards the end of the next 50 years as we approach the time they will
be implemented. (My guess, none of the above, by 50 years from now
we'll have a new and better idea.)

My suggestions how to supply energy to lunar mining stations deals
with the bootstrapping period, from when we first establish an
experimental mining station on the Moon until we have enough industry
on the Moon to begin to consider linking all of it together into large
power grids or mass-tossing networks of manufacturing stations
(imagine using a mass-driver to toss pellets of pure titanium from the
titanium-extracting station to a place where it's needed to make
titanium-iron alloy, this toss perhaps being between points hundreds
of miles apart!). Our urgent problem now is that (1) the money-holders
don't think space is worth money because they think it's too expensive
or impossible or doesn't reap enough rewards, (2) the scientists
haven't really worked out all the possibilities and created a proposal
for action (some starts have been made here with Pournelle's space
policy proposal), (3) because of 1 and 2 hardly anything is moving
along and thus we simply aren't bootstrapping ourselves into space.

Currently I stick mostly to things that will be useful for getting
started.  In addition to the currently-planned shuttle activities of
chemical-manufacture experiments and large-space-telescope, these
include: development of SEPS (Solar Electric Propulsion System =
solar-powered ion rocket) and a general space-tug capability,
development of a full-scale mass-driver, launching of a
permanently-staffed LEO (Low Earth Orbit) station, surveying L-4 and
L-5 for debris, surveying the polar regions of the Moon for water ice,
surveying near-Earth asteroids and comets for minerals, experimenting
with remote-control mechanisms and robotics to determine whether they
are feasible, and actual starting of experimental robot mining on moon
(in polar regions if water is found there, else in equatorial
regions). It is in this context that I debate whether robotics is
sufficiently developed for mining, whether solar or nuclear energy
should be used, ... and dismiss power grids on the moon as being too
far in the future but still worth discussing briefly to aid our
long-range perspective.