posted:
I am sure that TIL can handle his end of this....
You aren't worth more of my time. I leave the thread to you.
My, my, my, one can practically hear the snarl. Nice of you to allow another poster the right to handle his side of the conversation, or perhaps you commonly work in choreographed wolf pack teams with others? None of this thread has been worth my time for dealing with a few naysayers, as the deteriorating tone answers little at the cost of lots of words. The only reason for the persistence is that when shouted down the shrill posters gain ground with what is usually warped thinking, in my observation. Again, this site really should be about free flow exchange of ideas, not "When I want your opinion I will verbally beat it out of you."
About the volatiles, I was hoping that you would not say that collecting really common stuff like water on the moon and transporting it elsewhere, so guessed at the He scheme. Frankly, it is even worse, though Gerrard O'Neill and others have suggested it for L5 colonies. They with their vision have earned the right to this extremely distant idea extremely unsuited for _starting_ such an early colony. Repeat, all this thread has been for starting a colony, not long range goals which volatile sourcing would greatly seem to be. O'Neill et al never to my knowledge have dared suggested a colony just to mine the volatiles until post 1980's (outside this thread view), mostly it was a mass driver for the rock to build the huge living cylinders, etc solar protection and structure. Pray tell what is all that volatile mater going to do in space? Most of the mass is not for volatiles, and if not that structure, then what. But you will not answer, certainly not in a civil manner, so you write. Oh, once again, this thread is starting a colony and by extension maybe how to fund it, if that was not abundantly clear.
First you have to collect the water. Water on the moon is either in the soil in the form of hydrogen, so it has to be collected and baked, then mixed with 02. Doing anything on the moon short of lunar caverns is very expensive, by the way. Or one can go to the poles and bake out the soil there, where, our recent data shows, there is raw ice. Remote sensing is consistent with extremely dispersed tiny chips of frost deep inside the soil, not lying on the surface in sheets. This sounds extremely expensive to dig out by most methods, but some time in the future you might wish to post the details of this. Then you have to refreeze it, load it to a mass driver (hugely expensive to at first build), then send it to the end destination where ever that may be for what ever reason you might deside would need huge amount of water for. Expense seems to be no object.
More likely for any mysterious heavy need for water in space the asteroid chunks that regularly graze or hit or near miss our planet are a better answer. Many are 20% or more water, most unlike the less than 1% of the choicest part of the lunar surface we are presently aware of, and with an Earth atmospheric insertion at low angle skip for safe the very loose carbon ones less than 30 meters across that harmlessly naturally explode very high in the atmosphere there is far lower dV to successfully insert in Earth orbit. Far cheaper to transport, much easier to gather, etc.
"Your comment regarding DC contractors is especially amusing to me."
Re: Contractors. Sigh. Richard Nixon chose the Shuttle circa 1971 ( I forget exactly when) or so amongst many plans as it seemed the right one to go with the information put out like a smorgasboard by the corporations. He publically has stated that the mistake was his very worst executive decision as it was totally misrepresented in the assumptions presented to him and totally abused (his general words many years afterwards in memoirs) in implementation. It was not a quick decision and he did his famous iron sit and study routine of going over every detail. It worked for Nixon negotiating with the very astute Soviets, with US Labor George Meany et al, but not the Contractors? Maybe it is that these people have a system that is more prone to self direction influence than you suggest. Or that he trusted them too much, too long.
My guess remains that Corporations and contractors do misdirect at a top level and unsupervised it happens all over the place historically to varying degrees.
There are many others, for example the M16, where apparently the detractions are covered up (e.g. the Europeans in Nato rejected clear flaws and rigged tests as an obvious contractors scheme). Or so I have read, all by cognizant individuals in the field, or men who were getting in serious trouble using the products like Colonel Hackworth. These people usually are not the type belt way people enjoy to be around, except to shout down and label as Nuts, Sluts, or the Disgruntled to quickly cut off a lot like the way you are now trying to do to me. Fitting you live there.
Get any money from the system? By the way, I read maybe at most 2% or 3% fiction and usually skip over it quickly. The rest is nonfiction, as fiction bores me. The last type of potboiler you tried to slur me getting my ideas from was Michael Creighton's Rising Sun read many years ago, and I quickly found he played fast and loose with the facts, not at all in keeping with Japan watchers experience at all. Factual history or technology explanation are both far more fun to a geek, although grudgingly in theory a well done historical fiction can put together a lot of threads in a more compact way.
What is your percentage? You sound like a man of experience knowing what all those action thrillers have.
I already posted it was not a classical law of physics. Perhaps you skipped over my post as it was listed more than one time, anticipating your attack. Exactly, Moore's law makes Lunar Development less likely, as long as it keeps being correct. Finally you figured out that was key to my premise after multiple posts to that effect. Then again, no, you did not.
There was no guarantee Moore's would remain in effect, as I have posted numerous times before being a critical part of the scenario. I am obviously answering some one who is trying to flood the field of information with noxious chemicals with the seeming intent to make a hazardous waste bog.
Good bye. Come back when you want to read other people's arguments carefully before you get out the chainsaw.