Creating the Cis-Lunar economy

Terraformer · 2012-01-09 11:09:12

Gar, I know it's called "Martian" Politics and Economy, but...

I thought, in the spirit of louis's thread, I'd start one about the Lunar economy. I apologise for the lack of cites, but I can't find much information about the number of people who tried going to the ISS as tourists (there's been 8 trips total, but obviously not everyone who wants to gets to go?), no-ones built a capsule optimised for down cargo yet etc...

The thread is based on the infrastructure I described in my thread on the matter being that way (LEO and EML1 stations, base, and transit craft) - http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6080. I've tried to be pessimistic.

Assumptions:

To get a rough Lunar base that can expand (i.e. build habitats, basic equipment etc) using predominantly in-situ resources will cost around $5 billion - possibly higher, but probably not lower. This is an upfront capital cost which will need to be paid back, say over a period of 10 years, so we need to make $500 million/year to cover this cost.
Costs to orbit are $2000/kg (that is, Musk manages to pull it off) and due to existing rockets in orbit and Lunar fuel, costs to the Lunar surface are $2500/kg.
The cost per person to orbit will be $20 million (based on this - 1600/(12*7) gives the figure, though this may be significantly lower... or higher, since it's only cargo resupply they're doing).
Costs of down cargo will be $2000/kg (at the moment, there's not much focus on this, so I can't provide a cite - but we're talking about a capsule that is little more than a heat shield and guidance system).
There will be 20 people each year who will be willing to pay $40 million for a 3 month stay at the Lunar base ($20 million of which will be spent on getting to orbit themselves).
Volatiles for fuel and life support (food, oxygen and water) will retail in LEO for $500/kg.
There will be a total crew of 10 on the surface, and 5 in each of the stations, and they will be rotated every 3 months (requiring 12 launches of Dragon each year... ouch).
Mining will not be economically profitable for another decade or so.

The total cost for this will be about $2 billion for all the manned flights, plus perhaps a Falcon Heavy launch for extra equipment and such - call it $100 million - plus the aforementioned $500 million for paying back the capital costs. Total gross annual income required to break even = $2.7 billion, with a ROI of 10 years. Call it, then, $3 billion required each year.

Now, how to make that money. I've already raised tourism as a possibility - make it self catering, so we don't have to provide any full time staff (though perhaps they will be able to take a few trips on the rocket-hoppers). 20*20 gives $400 million as the revenue that can be generated from this.

Now, sale of moon rocks. Yes, I know that the price will come down, and people will be expecting it to, which itself will bring the price down... but if we're talking about small rocks, set into jewellery, then the fact that you own a ring that contains one of the very first piece of Luna returned by the small toehold base there has a rarity value all of it's own. I would not at all be surprise if basic, raw, Lunar rock can retail for about $100/g when set into rings, especially if we keep the price high. The advantage of this is that it doesn't require any refining to be done on orbit - the stuff can be delivered directly to Terran jewellers, who will polish it and set it. For those guys who want to propose to their girlfriend in a different, romantic, out of this world way... I reckon about 20 tonnes of this stuff can be sold each year at $100k/kg, in which case we can neglect return costs. That would be enough for maybe 20,000 pieces of jewellery, and more importantly, $2 billion in the pockets of the Lunar Development Corporation. Hmmm, that doesn't sound right, given that it's nearly a 4% slice of the US market (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/repor … hat_where)). I really don't know if we'd be able to get more, or less, money from this. I'm sticking with my unsustainable assumption though, in the hope that by the time it fails, we'll be able to be making money from mining and other industries.

That leaves a mere $600 million to be made up from volatiles sales. At $500/kg, that's 1200 tonnes that need to be sold, leaving us dependent upon vigorous activity in orbit. Bearing in mind that that's enough to provide all the fuel for several Mars missions...

So there you have it - an unbalanced economic model that may or may not work (if we can make it breakeven with restrictive assumptions, though, anything else is pure profit). Responses appreciated.

louis · 2012-01-09 13:15:28

Terraformer wrote:

Gar, I know it's called "Martian" Politics and Economy, but...
I thought, in the spirit of louis's thread, I'd start one about the Lunar economy. I apologise for the lack of cites, but I can't find much information about the number of people who tried going to the ISS as tourists (there's been 8 trips total, but obviously not everyone who wants to gets to go?), no-ones built a capsule optimised for down cargo yet etc...
The thread is based on the infrastructure I described in my thread on the matter being that way (LEO and EML1 stations, base, and transit craft) - http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6080. I've tried to be pessimistic.
Assumptions:
To get a rough Lunar base that can expand (i.e. build habitats, basic equipment etc) using predominantly in-situ resources will cost around $5 billion - possibly higher, but probably not lower. This is an upfront capital cost which will need to be paid back, say over a period of 10 years, so we need to make $500 million/year to cover this cost.
Costs to orbit are $2000/kg (that is, Musk manages to pull it off) and due to existing rockets in orbit and Lunar fuel, costs to the Lunar surface are $2500/kg.
The cost per person to orbit will be $20 million (based on this - 1600/(12*7) gives the figure, though this may be significantly lower... or higher, since it's only cargo resupply they're doing).
Costs of down cargo will be $2000/kg (at the moment, there's not much focus on this, so I can't provide a cite - but we're talking about a capsule that is little more than a heat shield and guidance system).
There will be 20 people each year who will be willing to pay $40 million for a 3 month stay at the Lunar base ($20 million of which will be spent on getting to orbit themselves).
Volatiles for fuel and life support (food, oxygen and water) will retail in LEO for $500/kg.
There will be a total crew of 10 on the surface, and 5 in each of the stations, and they will be rotated every 3 months (requiring 12 launches of Dragon each year... ouch).
Mining will not be economically profitable for another decade or so.
The total cost for this will be about $2 billion for all the manned flights, plus perhaps a Falcon Heavy launch for extra equipment and such - call it $100 million - plus the aforementioned $500 million for paying back the capital costs. Total gross annual income required to break even = $2.7 billion, with a ROI of 10 years. Call it, then, $3 billion required each year.
Now, how to make that money. I've already raised tourism as a possibility - make it self catering, so we don't have to provide any full time staff (though perhaps they will be able to take a few trips on the rocket-hoppers). 20*20 gives $400 million as the revenue that can be generated from this.
Now, sale of moon rocks. Yes, I know that the price will come down, and people will be expecting it to, which itself will bring the price down... but if we're talking about small rocks, set into jewellery, then the fact that you own a ring that contains one of the very first piece of Luna returned by the small toehold base there has a rarity value all of it's own. I would not at all be surprise if basic, raw, Lunar rock can retail for about $100/g when set into rings, especially if we keep the price high. The advantage of this is that it doesn't require any refining to be done on orbit - the stuff can be delivered directly to Terran jewellers, who will polish it and set it. For those guys who want to propose to their girlfriend in a different, romantic, out of this world way... I reckon about 20 tonnes of this stuff can be sold each year at $100k/kg, in which case we can neglect return costs. That would be enough for maybe 20,000 pieces of jewellery, and more importantly, $2 billion in the pockets of the Lunar Development Corporation. Hmmm, that doesn't sound right, given that it's nearly a 4% slice of the US market (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/repor … hat_where)). I really don't know if we'd be able to get more, or less, money from this. I'm sticking with my unsustainable assumption though, in the hope that by the time it fails, we'll be able to be making money from mining and other industries.
That leaves a mere $600 million to be made up from volatiles sales. At $500/kg, that's 1200 tonnes that need to be sold, leaving us dependent upon vigorous activity in orbit. Bearing in mind that that's enough to provide all the fuel for several Mars missions...
So there you have it - an unbalanced economic model that may or may not work (if we can make it breakeven with restrictive assumptions, though, anything else is pure profit). Responses appreciated.

I looked into this a few years ago and I have absolutely no doubt that a lunar base would generate huge surplus revenue. Just imagine the pulling power of being able to take a rover trip to see the Apollo 11 landing site. What a tourist attraction that will be (and it will need to be preserved of course!). All the Apollo landings (six?) will be the subject of great interest.

I agree about the value of lunar rocks and the scope for developing lunar jewelry.

I think there are two other major earners that should not be overlooked:

1. Use as a resting place for ashes. Imagine being able to think of your loved one as being in some sense present on the moon when you gaze on it in the night sky. Not something I would opt for myself but I am convinced hundreds of millions of people on Earth would find it an attractive option in terms of remembrance. People might not send the whole of the ashes - perhaps only a few grams but I think a charge of up to $5000 will still find a market. So $100 per gram is certainly achievable and the operational costs apart from carriage will be minimal.

2. A focus for romantic couples - perhaps lovers could have their name engraved on a light metal plate which is taken to the moon, and secured in a "Lover's Garden" . Again a charge of $100 a gram or more would be feasible. This could appeal to hundreds of millions.

Also don't forget - sponsorship and TV rights which combined would probably be well over a billion dollars.

Mark Friedenbach · 2012-01-09 13:46:33

Costs to orbit are $2000/kg (that is, Musk manages to pull it off) and due to existing rockets in orbit and Lunar fuel, costs to the Lunar surface are $2500/kg.

Way, way optimistic. Current prices (guestimates based on what it would take to rebuild Apollo/Surveyor landers) are on the order of $1MM/kg. Sorry I don't have a cite--this came from personal conversations with the Google Lunar X Prize folks. The X-Prize companies are talking about $20,000-40,000/kg for regular delivery to the lunar surface. I'll posit that $2500/kg might be achievable, but not in the near term.

The cost per person to orbit will be $20 million (based on this - 1600/(12*7) gives the figure, though this may be significantly lower... or higher, since it's only cargo resupply they're doing).

It'll be much lower. NASA is paying the full upfront development costs, and that is factored into the cost of the contract. Soyuz costs less than $20MM/person (although they charge more because they can). But for the purposes of estimation it is good to be conservative--if you can make it work at $20MM/person, it will obviously work at a lower price point as well.

More generally, you're going to have to assume that a full-time staff member is along for every part of the journey. The insurance company is not going to let you send tourists or business travelers on a 3.5 day journey without experienced spacecraft operators to look after the safety of the craft and the crew, or to let them operate a base in a remote hostile environment. (If I were a business partner, I wouldn't allow it either.)

Last edited by Mark Friedenbach (2012-01-09 15:39:18)

Terraformer · 2012-01-09 15:27:03

I don't think you can base costs to the Lunar surface on how much Apollo cost, for some reason... I'm assuming the infrastructure that I suggested has been built, so we have Lunar fuel available (given that you need a mass ratio of about 5 to get to the Lunar surface from LEO, I think we can make significant savings).

Well, I'm assuming that the tourists will be going along in the same craft that the base crew will be, so there'll already be someone who can operate the spacecraft. Think of it as being more like the current ISS style tourism than Bigelow is planning, though later we could make that work, I suppose. If the costs of getting to orbit are much lower - and I've seen suggestions that it could be less than $10 million per person - we could expand the hotel section of the base to a proper, fully fledged hotel. It depends on whether Lunar tourism is price elastic or not - if cutting the price in half results in a quadrupling of the people who can go, we're looking at a much better figure.

Given that the majority of the annual expenditure will be crew costs, if the cost of Dragon falls by a half, then keeping everything constant means we shave $1 billion off expenditure, so we only need to make $2 billion each year...

Certainly, if someone can be goaded into trying to get to Mars, that will help because we'll be able to sell them fuel.

I think the jewellery idea has it's merits - especially since the only exports are raw rock - but I'm still trying to find figures about the sort of market we're looking at - from what I gather, it would be quite easy to flood the market. This, of course, would be taking advantage of the romantic associations Luna has. Assuming we can make $50 million for every tonne of Lunar rock returned... but how many tonnes could be sold? Bearing in mind this is assuming that the cost of return can be sorted. Given that Dragon has a down cargo of 3 tonnes, and the Dragon+Falcon combination costs about $150 million, then to make $50 million per tonne we're looking at the stuff retailing at $100/g, so jewellery costs about maybe $200 for the smaller part of the range. The question to be answered is, how big is the market for pieces of this cost or higher (someone must have done a graph, surely)? The problem is, we're going to be flooding the market with even a single tonne - that's enough to make maybe a million rings (I made a 3 order of magnitude error before...). I'm not so sure this is going to be viable as an income source...

Okay, guys, time to brainstorm.

louis · 2012-01-09 16:53:35

I suppose the question is how do we get from Musk's figure of $2000 per kg to LEO, to $40,000 per kg for reaching the lunar surface. Break down the job, and I think you have to ask where does the additional $38,000 per kg come from. Of course there are development costs for the infrastructure - for the transfer vehicle, for the lunar lander and for the lunar hab. Let's assume those costs are covered...a big assumption perhaps, but I think the key is to look at the operational costs, then it is simply a case of adding in a reasonable amortised sum for the production of the infrastructure to find out if you have a viable business plan. If we assume a lifetime of 10 years for the infrastructure, perhaps we are covering real infrastructure costs (excluding development costs) of say
$100 million for a transit vehicle, $200 million for a lander (descent and ascent), $100 million for lunar hab and lunar ISRU and maybe $200 million for dedicated communications and sundry items.

Let's spread that at $60million per annum.

Operationally, I can't see we need to transfer more than 1000 kgs per person for each visit.

Assume the cost to LEO is $2000 per kg.

The $60 million per annum capital cost would amount to only $300 per kg when spread over the whole year (200,000 kgs being launched).

Lunar staff salaries would be not very significant. Let's assume 20 staff on rotation and a salary of $200,000 per annum - that's only $10million, or $50 per kg.

But perhaps we should add another 20 staff to cover ISRU maintenance on the lunar surface - adding another $50 per kg and perhaps adding 10% to the tonnage launched.

The annual cost might come in at around 220,000 kgs X $2,400 = $528 million. Perhaps add on contingencies of 30% for safety = $760million

At a $20 million ticket price, the ticket revenue 160 x $20 million would equal = $3200 m

So, I think perhaps we should look at a more sustainable ticket price of $5 million = $ 800 m.

That would give a shortfall of $40 million.

We've already seen a variety of revenue earning ideas:

I think we could see significant revenue:

Spreading of ashes - $50 million

Romantic tokens - $20 million

Sale of lunar jewelry - $50 million

Sale of lunar regolith and meteorites - $50 million

Scientific experiment services for
universities etc - $100millon

Sponsorship - - $50million

Sale of TV rights - $30 million

That gives a total of $320 million or a surplus of $280 million per annum.

Rune · 2012-01-10 08:19:22

It's kind of cute how you all forget the ground and communications infrastructure. In order to pull any of this off, you need constant two-way communication between all the pieces of your puzzle, for starters. So make it a few (3+spares) geosynchronous satellites, a couple of ground rely and tracking stations (and only a couple because of the sats), and a lunar orbit satellite constellation (quite extensive if you want to cover the poles, tens of birds at the very least). All of which need monitoring from real people on the ground, and eventual replacement (10 years is a good average for the life of a comsat, and the cost of a single engineer job for that amount of time is greater than the sat's, but the same order of magnitude).

Not to mention the couple of space stations you are suggesting here and the abundant traffic of fuel tugs (which do wear out). BTW, Terraformer, how many tons of propellant produced for each one delivered to LEO? And to LLO? And by what (I hope) single stage method? Just curious to see how the fuel economics would work, maybe you end up needing a huge powersource on the ground to support all of this activity (and more mining gear, and more crew to handle it, and so on), maybe you can make do with less. Also, am I correct in assuming you envision two fuel depots/transfer stations, one in LEO and the other in LLO, with all the fuel supplied from the moon? If so, consider the trade with a single station in L1, in terms of launch windows. Something like once every two weeks from a particular orbital plane in LEO to a particular orbital plane on the moon, IIRC? No idea off the top of my head, really, but I do know L1 is accessible once every orbit, which is 90-something minutes in LEO, or pretty much anytime in other words (once a day from the ground).

In any case, expect a ground support staff of the approximate size of ISS's, if a government is involved, way more if several are. Even a SpaceX-style with "eight guys on a trailer" will become huge quickly, regulatory hurdles aside. I won't get into revenue, 'cause that's frankly not my thing. Somebody else hunt for the contracts, I like the challenge of design.

Rune. The little inconvenient middle steps are a bitch.

louis · 2012-01-10 10:16:49

Rune wrote:

It's kind of cute how you all forget the ground and communications infrastructure. In order to pull any of this off, you need constant two-way communication between all the pieces of your puzzle, for starters. So make it a few (3+spares) geosynchronous satellites, a couple of ground rely and tracking stations (and only a couple because of the sats), and a lunar orbit satellite constellation (quite extensive if you want to cover the poles, tens of birds at the very least). All of which need monitoring from real people on the ground, and eventual replacement (10 years is a good average for the life of a comsat, and the cost of a single engineer job for that amount of time is greater than the sat's, but the same order of magnitude).
Not to mention the couple of space stations you are suggesting here and the abundant traffic of fuel tugs (which do wear out). BTW, Terraformer, how many tons of propellant produced for each one delivered to LEO? And to LLO? And by what (I hope) single stage method? Just curious to see how the fuel economics would work, maybe you end up needing a huge powersource on the ground to support all of this activity (and more mining gear, and more crew to handle it, and so on), maybe you can make do with less. Also, am I correct in assuming you envision two fuel depots/transfer stations, one in LEO and the other in LLO, with all the fuel supplied from the moon? If so, consider the trade with a single station in L1, in terms of launch windows. Something like once every two weeks from a particular orbital plane in LEO to a particular orbital plane on the moon, IIRC? No idea off the top of my head, really, but I do know L1 is accessible once every orbit, which is 90-something minutes in LEO, or pretty much anytime in other words (once a day from the ground).
In any case, expect a ground support staff of the approximate size of ISS's, if a government is involved, way more if several are. Even a SpaceX-style with "eight guys on a trailer" will become huge quickly, regulatory hurdles aside. I won't get into revenue, 'cause that's frankly not my thing. Somebody else hunt for the contracts, I like the challenge of design.

Rune. The little inconvenient middle steps are a bitch.

It's kind of cute how you didn't read my post: "maybe $200 million for dedicated communications and sundry items. "

The point about coms is that much of that is wrapped up in the launch costs (i.e. they don't charge you extra for that) and part is wrapped up in the lunar hab infrastructure cost. To the extent that
there may be additional costs they may be marginal - NASA already has much of the coms in place in terms of ground stations and so on. Moreover the more launches you have, the less your unit costs will be for ground control - so we might actually see launch costs fall further.

My infrastructures were based on a 10 year time frame, so that is covered.

I think we will need a fuel operation but I think a lot of that could be robotised and automated, so essentially the base is just taking delivery of fuel supplies. That part of the project will of course be more demanding.

I may have neglected the transit fuel issue a bit...I guess that is a bit debatable, as to whether there are real costs there. I am not sure there are - there are no taxes, rents, licences, road tax, raw material costs etc on the Moon. The real question is: can you make fuel on the Moon and how much does the infrastructure to do so cost? Getting the infrastructure there will certainly be expensive.
If anyone would like to give an estimate tonnage and estimate cost of manufacture for fuel-making equipment on the moon, I would be interested to hear it. I guess I am thinking of something like rovers controlled from Earth that go to ice areas and harvest the ice...

How much fuel would we need to collect? How many rovers would that take?

Rune · 2012-01-10 10:59:10

louis wrote:

"maybe $200 million for dedicated communications and sundry items. "

With that much money perhaps you can buy a single, medium-to-small off-the-shelf comsat. If you get a really nice deal, that is.

louis wrote:

I may have neglected the transit fuel issue a bit...I guess that is a bit debatable, as to whether there are real costs there. I am not sure there are - there are no taxes, rents, licences, road tax, raw material costs etc on the Moon. The real question is: can you make fuel on the Moon and how much does the infrastructure to do so cost? Getting the infrastructure there will certainly be expensive.

I agree with you here, the fuel is basically "free" once you pay for everything else. Which is not to say it isn't going to be incredibly expensive in the real world anyway, we are talking about a lot of infrastructure to build at the end of an, at best, expensive supply chain (that right now is inexistent, of course). And robot controlling a rover from earth doesn't mean it is for free. Check out how much manpower it takes to keep the little mars rovers moving around and sniffing rocks.

louis wrote:

If anyone would like to give an estimate tonnage and estimate cost of manufacture for fuel-making equipment on the moon, I would be interested to hear it. I guess I am thinking of something like rovers controlled from Earth that go to ice areas and harvest the ice...

That's a tall order... I would be just happy if I could see the energy budget. Who knows? I might even work it out one of these days.

louis wrote:

How much fuel would we need to collect? How many rovers would that take?

Depends on the architecture. Which is why I'm waiting for Terraformer to have his say on all this.

Rune. But hey, let it be known I'm on your side. ^_^

Hop · 2012-01-10 11:04:24

Terraformer wrote:

To get a rough Lunar base that can expand (i.e. build habitats, basic equipment etc) using predominantly in-situ resources will cost around $5 billion - possibly higher, but probably not lower. This is an upfront capital cost which will need to be paid back, say over a period of 10 years, so we need to make $500 million/year to cover this cost.

Lunar propellant mines is my favorite daydream. So it pains me to rain on my own parade.

5 billion to establish a base is very optimistic. The two architectures I find most credible are the ULA and Spudis architectures. Both those call for around 80 billion over ten to fifteen years if memory serves.

If SpaceX lowers launch costs it will mitigate expense some. However, in the early stages, a large part of the expense will be the payloads. The research and design expense will be amortized over time if you build numerous units for lunar mining, power, etc., but initially the units will be quite expensive.

Also, I don't Musk even odds for achieving TSTO RLV.

I don't thinking recouping the costs of a lunar base in a short time frame is doable.

A goal that is perhaps doable: Establishing a lunar base whose revenues meet or exceed operating expense. Once you have a base whose revenues exceed operating expenses, growth is inevitable.

Last edited by Hop (2012-01-10 11:18:21)

Hop · 2012-01-10 11:16:17

Rune wrote:

If so, consider the trade with a single station in L1, in terms of launch windows. Something like once every two weeks from a particular orbital plane in LEO to a particular orbital plane on the moon, IIRC? No idea off the top of my head, really, but I do know L1 is accessible once every orbit, which is 90-something minutes in LEO, or pretty much anytime in other words (once a day from the ground).

If a LEO is coplanar with the moon's orbit, A Hohmann window opens about every 90 minutes.

However a LEO coplanar with the moon's orbit will not remain so. The earth's influence will see to that.

Given a LEO orbit that is inclined wrt moon's orbit, you want to launch when the space craft crosses the line of nodes (the intersection of the low earth orbit plane with the lunar orbit plane). Else you pay a delta V penalty.

A Hohmann launch window opens at a line of nodes about every two weeks. So a launch window from a given LEO opens about every two weeks. This is true of the moon, EML1, EML1 and LLO.

Last edited by Hop (2012-01-10 11:17:08)

Rune · 2012-01-10 11:57:10

Ok, I was in the process of replying, then I realized the foolishness I was about to defend. Well corrected, Hop, no window trade. You can smile smugly with my official blessing.

louis · 2012-01-10 12:39:08

Rune wrote:

With that much money perhaps you can buy a single, medium-to-small off-the-shelf comsat. If you get a really nice deal, that is.

Criticising the budget is somewhatdifference from saying there is no budget. I think in terms of coms, NASA has so much in place that we would not be reinventing the wheel. Perhaps you would need some small lunar satellite or two (I don't know)...But generally I think we are talking about marginal costs on top of NASA's coms budget.

Rune wrote:

I agree with you here, the fuel is basically "free" once you pay for everything else. Which is not to say it isn't going to be incredibly expensive in the real world anyway, we are talking about a lot of infrastructure to build at the end of an, at best, expensive supply chain (that right now is inexistent, of course). And robot controlling a rover from earth doesn't mean it is for free. Check out how much manpower it takes to keep the little mars rovers moving around and sniffing rocks.

I don't think anyone is hoping to get this on the cheap. The issues is whether the high costs can be covered.

I think the lunar mining rovers would be much easier to control from Earth. Their job is a relatively simple one and should be virtually fully automated. I think the job on Earth would be a monitoring one and possibly sending other rovers to help any rovers that get stuck. Obviously this is highly speculative, but the fact that the Mars Rovers are still going strong after so many years suggests perhaps it won't be quite as difficult as people think - it's just on Earth there is no real financial incentive to use such automated rovers.

Hop · 2012-01-10 12:40:42

Rune wrote:

You can smile smugly

I grow weary of your personal attacks.

Rune · 2012-01-12 07:31:15

No PM's? What kind of a forum is this? And I know there are mails, but I choose not to use them consciously. Anyhow, on to really important things:

louis wrote:

Criticising the budget is somewhatdifference from saying there is no budget. I think in terms of coms, NASA has so much in place that we would not be reinventing the wheel. Perhaps you would need some small lunar satellite or two (I don't know)...But generally I think we are talking about marginal costs on top of NASA's coms budget.

If you want to cover a lunar pole, you need at the very least a Molniya constellation. That's a very clever way of covering a planet's pole continuously with just three satellites. For global coverage, it's more on the order of 12-24. Plus spares. Yes, you could piggyback on NASA's Deep Space Network, but that network is limited in both bandwidth and funds devoted to it (and close to maxing out as it is!). Time using it is everything but free, even though it's maintained with funds from a lot of different agencies, IIRC. And buying a satellite bus, even if it is a small, half a ton, short-range LEO platform, is a tens-of-millions deal, instruments not included. The big 5-ton birds in geosync are all above 100 million, most considerably more, and you would need something closer to this to reach the earth from the moon. And then add on top of this the launcher (to lunar orbit, no less, so a Falcon heavy or some other big rocket), and you are getting close to the range of billions to cover the moon in a communications network capable of handling teleoperated ground operations.

It can be done. I even believe it will, and it should. Just not that cheaply.

Rune. Which would be cheaper than planting reapeaters on the surface, but not by that much I bet...

Terraformer · 2012-01-12 12:15:42

See my reply in the appropriate thread - http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … 93#p111193

louis · 2012-01-12 13:39:01

Rune wrote:

No PM's? What kind of a forum is this? And I know there are mails, but I choose not to use them consciously. Anyhow, on to really important things:
louis wrote:
Criticising the budget is somewhatdifference from saying there is no budget. I think in terms of coms, NASA has so much in place that we would not be reinventing the wheel. Perhaps you would need some small lunar satellite or two (I don't know)...But generally I think we are talking about marginal costs on top of NASA's coms budget.
If you want to cover a lunar pole, you need at the very least a Molniya constellation. That's a very clever way of covering a planet's pole continuously with just three satellites. For global coverage, it's more on the order of 12-24. Plus spares. Yes, you could piggyback on NASA's Deep Space Network, but that network is limited in both bandwidth and funds devoted to it (and close to maxing out as it is!). Time using it is everything but free, even though it's maintained with funds from a lot of different agencies, IIRC. And buying a satellite bus, even if it is a small, half a ton, short-range LEO platform, is a tens-of-millions deal, instruments not included. The big 5-ton birds in geosync are all above 100 million, most considerably more, and you would need something closer to this to reach the earth from the moon. And then add on top of this the launcher (to lunar orbit, no less, so a Falcon heavy or some other big rocket), and you are getting close to the range of billions to cover the moon in a communications network capable of handling teleoperated ground operations.
It can be done. I even believe it will, and it should. Just not that cheaply.

Rune. Which would be cheaper than planting reapeaters on the surface, but not by that much I bet...

Sounds far too expensive to me. There must be a cheaper way. If we have the base at the pole (not my recommendation) then why not have the coms base away from the pole and run a cable from that to the pole or a series of small transmitters every 10 miles-20miles or so. With no weather on the moon, they don't need to be too robust. That might be cheaper than all the satelittes. Oh, I see you refer to repeaters...why would they be more expensive than satellites?

HOw much does NASA have in place already? I presume for Earth it is all there.

Terraformer · 2012-01-13 03:23:15

Louis, the poles are the best place to put a base you're trying to develop into a colony - especially if you insist on using solar power. Some places get light 80 percent of the time, so at most we need to have less than a weeks worth of stored energy (probably fuel cells - we can store cryogens quite easily in the Craters of Eternal Shadow). There's volatiles, which are a must if you're trying to turn a profit - it's quite hard if you need to launch at least 10x the final payload that you're planning to return to the Terran surface into orbit (tourists, crew etc and their belongings). There *may* be Gold and other precious metals (though I'm not going to try building a business case on this). Your habs aren't going to have to be dealing with extreme thermal stress. Go a few degrees north or south and you can get to either the nearside or farside...

louis · 2012-01-13 07:45:26

Terraformer wrote:

Louis, the poles are the best place to put a base you're trying to develop into a colony - especially if you insist on using solar power. Some places get light 80 percent of the time, so at most we need to have less than a weeks worth of stored energy (probably fuel cells - we can store cryogens quite easily in the Craters of Eternal Shadow). There's volatiles, which are a must if you're trying to turn a profit - it's quite hard if you need to launch at least 10x the final payload that you're planning to return to the Terran surface into orbit (tourists, crew etc and their belongings). There *may* be Gold and other precious metals (though I'm not going to try building a business case on this). Your habs aren't going to have to be dealing with extreme thermal stress. Go a few degrees north or south and you can get to either the nearside or farside...

Well since NASA's announcement that LENR is for real and can be harnessed, I suspect we will be using LENR technology for energy production.

I would prefer to see a robot trail bringing the water or other fuel chemicals from the poles to the base area, which should be sited within reach of the Apollo landing sites - which will be huge tourist attractions.

That's about 1500 miles away?? But once you have your trail going, I am not sure the distance is a problem. At 30 miles per hour, the vehicle woudl cover that in 50 hours, just over two earth days.

Of course, you could do it the other way round and have a big rover take people to view the sites - that could be doable and might be exciting for the tourists.

Terraformer · 2012-01-13 09:59:55

Louis, if LENR is for real, then all bets are off - you wouldn't even need to build a Lunar infrastructure to get anywhere, because energy would be so cheap you could launch all you'll ever need. Or not, it does depend on the power/mass ratio of E-cat. But, for the same reason I'm not basing my economics of Gold which may or may not be there, I prefer to use a known energy source.

louis · 2012-01-13 17:53:41

Terraformer wrote:

Louis, if LENR is for real, then all bets are off - you wouldn't even need to build a Lunar infrastructure to get anywhere, because energy would be so cheap you could launch all you'll ever need. Or not, it does depend on the power/mass ratio of E-cat. But, for the same reason I'm not basing my economics of Gold which may or may not be there, I prefer to use a known energy source.

I'm not sure it's that easy. LENR does generates heat as I understand it - which then needs to be turned into electricity through either a steam turbine or a stirling engine. Either way we are talking about heavy mass I think. The energy density of the fuel is huge, but as with a nuclear power station, there's a lot of kit. It might make microwave/laser beam elevation from Earth a more feasible technology.

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-13 22:26:55

Hop wrote:

Rune wrote:
You can smile smugly
I grow weary of your personal attacks.

Sorry for my delayed response, I'm on vacation and I haven't been reading the forums too much. In any case, Hop is right on this one.

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-13 23:24:58

Now, to respond to the thread itself, as I have been intending to do so because it does seem to be quite well-informed. Firstly, a quick statement on the communications issue:

I am not well versed in these matters, but I don't think that being able to communicate with Earth from the lunar poles will require quite so extensive a satellite constellation as people are talking about. My primary reasoning for this is the existence of the peaks of eternal light. You could put a single communications satellite at L1, and a communications boon a kilometer or two tall at the lunar pole, and broadcast straight to the L1 satellite with it. You could then broadcast to Earth, requiring no more than three satellites there if our current satellites aren't capable of taking in information from that direction. Unless there's some reason why this wouldn't work?

I don't want to get too caught up in the cold fusion nonsense, so I'll just say this: NASA does research on a lot of different topics, many of which are known to be impossible based on the laws of physics. Until NASA endorses this as an organization, instead of one scientist working with its funding, I do not give credence to this supposed phenomenon.

With respect to selling moon rocks for use in an engagement ring (or similar jewelry), I believe that that is a viable avenue to consider. Based on a google search, there appears to be some market for engagement rings made with stones other than diamond. With a proper advertising campaign, it seems reasonable to presume that lunar gemstones will be chosen by some men for their boyfriends or girlfriends, or women for their girlfriends or boyfriends. I can't say what share of the market they will take, but I would note that many of the UK's royals have had stones other than diamond in their rings. As with anything else, it is important to provide a quality product, else it will not sell. But I'm sure there are gemstones of some kind to be found on the moon, perhaps within its impact craters, created by the heat of impact. even if it's technically just glass, properly polished it might be considered ring-worthy.

IMO, the production of fuel for spaceflight to other places (you caught me, Mars) is a primary reason to establish a colony on the Moon, seeing how useful that would be to the colonization of the Solar System in general. This is definitely a major source of income, and will probably in a way establish a triangle trade between the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Something to keep in mind, though, is that every two years the fuel market will probably be flooded with inputs from the Martian moons, seeing as the delta-V penalty is similar, and the Martians won't want to pass up good money either.

Terraformer · 2012-01-14 06:28:08

Luna woyld still have a good headstart, though.

I'm not sure how much gemstones could retail for. Or rather, how much money we could make from them - you need maybe a gram for a piece of jewellry such as a ring, and even at 100 dollars per gram, you've got to be careful not to saturate the market. Maybe 100,000 per year could be sold - bear in mind that that's a mere 100kg, making perhaps 10 million dollars. Unless we the market is much bigger than this, in which case we could make billions... Hmmm, this Pandora fad seems to be in full swing. I wonder how much they make?

Terraformer · 2012-01-14 06:57:35

Okay, so Pandora is worth over $6 billion, with their prices being in the $50-1500 range. I take back my previous post - we could make far more than $10 million off jewellry. Conceivably, we could make over a billion, selling maybe 5 million pieces per year. That would go some way to paying off the costs...

Luna is associated with romance, no? Then we trade off that. Honeymoon suites for very wealthy couples are going to make money, even at a cost of 50 million for a 3 month holiday, of which perhaps half will go to the LDC. If we could get 20 couples each year, that's 500 million. Maybe people could even get married there... all up, tourism might be worth 500 million.

Leaving perhaps $1billion to be made up from volatile sales. At a price of $500/kg, that's 2000 tonnes that need to be sold each year - if in LEO exclusively, then that's 10000 tonnes that need to be produced yearly just for the fuel, so maybe 20,000 tonnes being produced yearly. Anyway, is the market for orbit refuelling for, say, satellites bound for GEO sufficient? Probes? How could the market be expected to change with the addition of on-orbit fuel - considering, for example, that the cost of a Mars mission might be expected to drop to under a billion?

louis · 2012-01-14 08:08:22

Terraformer wrote:

Okay, so Pandora is worth over $6 billion, with their prices being in the $50-1500 range. I take back my previous post - we could make far more than $10 million off jewellry. Conceivably, we could make over a billion, selling maybe 5 million pieces per year. That would go some way to paying off the costs...
Luna is associated with romance, no? Then we trade off that. Honeymoon suites for very wealthy couples are going to make money, even at a cost of 50 million for a 3 month holiday, of which perhaps half will go to the LDC. If we could get 20 couples each year, that's 500 million. Maybe people could even get married there... all up, tourism might be worth 500 million.
Leaving perhaps $1billion to be made up from volatile sales. At a price of $500/kg, that's 2000 tonnes that need to be sold each year - if in LEO exclusively, then that's 10000 tonnes that need to be produced yearly just for the fuel, so maybe 20,000 tonnes being produced yearly. Anyway, is the market for orbit refuelling for, say, satellites bound for GEO sufficient? Probes? How could the market be expected to change with the addition of on-orbit fuel - considering, for example, that the cost of a Mars mission might be expected to drop to under a billion?

The global jewelry market is put at $90billion (I suspect it's an underestimate).

www.cordis.lu/growth/calls/top-4.31.htm

Global Jewellery Market Value: 90 billion
of which:

US $
45 % USA
22 % Japan
10 % Italy
8 % UK
6 % Germany
3 % France
5 % Other Countries

I see no reason why lunar gems, with their rarity and romance value, shouldn't capture at least 1% of the market - let's make it a round $1billion, of which perhaps a third would be profit , to be ploughed back into lunar development.

Yes, I've mentioned honeymoon hotels before. Also, there might later on be health resorts for people suffering from arthritis.

I think tourism will really take off...One can certainly imagine in the early stages the super-rich going there for their honeymoon - and then taking an overland rover to visit the Apollo 11 Conservation Site and Museum. Then back to the hotel where the couple pick rare gems to be set back on earth. I say imagine - but really I mean predict. I can't believe these thoughts haven't already floated through the minds of those at Virgin Galactic. Whoever gets there first is going to enjoy a bonanza.

Once lunar fuel production gets going the cost of lunar holidays should reduce dramatically. I think one could soon get to around $500,000 per person, the top end of the World Cruise market.

There will be many more tourist attractions as the years unfold. I would think some like a Rover Rally would be of great interest...lunar golf...

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