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We spend tens-of-billions of dollars each year putting satellites in space. About $6B just putting fuel into LEO to lift things to GEO, so delivering fuel to LE
by amirhirsch 8y ago
We spend tens-of-billions of dollars each year putting satellites in space. About $6B just putting fuel into LEO to lift things to GEO, so delivering fuel to LEO is a good starting point and I think we can eventually consider doing a suborbital rendezvous with a rocketship already fueled from lunar sources. Lunar gravity is low and there is no atmosphere so it is likely that in the long run the majority of material used in space will come off the moon or asteroids. A coil-gun would only need to reach 2km/s to get to an L1 transfer station to process materials into satellites.
Seems like we should achieve ISRU with robots before we waste a lot of money to send people.
- rotexo 8y agoIsn't that a little tautological? You rightly observe that there are uses for LEO and GEO, but you are responding to a question asking "what can we do on the moon?" with "well, we can put propellant in cislunar space so we can do stuff on the moon."