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Private companies will launch a new fleet of moon landers

46 points by swayvil 5y ago

swayvil 5y ago
They mention a few kinds of research that will be conducted. But where's the money in it? Is there something worth mining? You've got infinite dust, from which can be made a kind of concrete. Infinite solar power. Possibly water. What else? What are the advantages of building a base on the moon vs building it in orbit?
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  What are the advantages of building a base in Antarctica? Benefits are fairly nebulous but still real. Building a base in lunar or a halo orbit is pretty stupid. Very few advantages over earth orbit; substantially higher costs mean we'll use it a lot less. An earth orbit station has been very useful. However once it ages out the best replacement is probably just fitting out a Starship to orbit for many months and return.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    The bases in Antarctica are important because once there is a clear economic incentive, the Antarctic Treaty will end and each country will try to grab a piece. You can let the morons build bases there and nuke them at the last second, but it's more friendly to keep a few bases and use that as a antecedent to pick your part when the negotiations starts.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > the Antarctic Treaty will end and each country will try to grab a piece Why not make a new treaty? It couldn't be more clear that it's doable and effective.
      - gus_massa 5y ago
        In the paper, the treaty if forever. But once there is a clear economical or military reason to have a non scientific base there, the treaty will melt in no time. Imagine that all the nuclear powers (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel?, Japan??, South Africa???) decide to split the Antarctica in equally sized pieces. (Perhaps replace North Korea with Germany.) What are the other countries going to do? [Hi from Argentina!] Invade the Antarctica? Launch a conventional war? Blockade Antarctica? An economical blockade of the nuclear powers? Make a very long speech in the UN so the nuclear powers get so bored that decide to return to the previous status?
        wolverine876 5y ago
        Most international issues are resolved without war these days - and throughout history. That's why it's called the 'Rules-based international order'.
        gus_massa 5y ago
        I agree. That's why each government force the local mapmakers to include every piece of land they are claiming in the maps, in spite it's controlled by other country, or the legal status is not clear like a piece of the Antarctic. Also, peaceful activities in the are like a research base of a small local population are considered in the discussions. Anyway, in these discussions it's nice to use a photo of your nuclear silos as the background of your video in Zoom. A lot of small border disputes are resolved peacefully, but it's usually about an area that nobody cares too much, or that is small enough that does not justify the cost of a war. > 'Rules-based international order' Yep, but for some unclear reason the first 5 countries in the list have veto power in the UN. IIRC one had nuclear weapons before, and the other 4 decided that making their own nuclear weapons were a good idea. I don't expect this to escalate to a global thermonuclear war. Some countries will just decide to abandon the treaty, occupy whatever part they like, with some negotiation about the border. And perhaps have some conventional naval and terrestrial forces nearby in case it's needed.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    Would there be a commercial benefit for an earth orbit station? I believe not at current prices, otherwise companies would have launched one. As soon as you consider private investment (as opposed to essentially charity funding of pure research/exploration), then looking at analogies vs an Antarctic site or deep ocean site may be quite relevant - those are also sites that are somewhat difficult to reach and build on but easier than Moon on Mars; so for any commercial argument in the form of "mining resources" there has to be an answer why suffer the difficulties on the moon instead of (lesser) difficulties in Antarctica.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Out of top of my head. 1. If humans are a future part of the picture, buried structures on the Moon will protect them against cosmic rays - much harder to do that in an orbital station. 2. Same goes for gravity. While a huge rotating station is technically possible, Moon has its 0.16G naturally everywhere. Might be better for health, is certainly better for plumbing and other sorts of equipment. 3. Water is actually pretty important. The spots on the Moon where it can be produced may turn "hot", as different countries try and claim them.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Zooming into building on the moon vs. building in orbit, one big difference is that with some bootstrapping, on the moon a number of materials can be sourced locally. Some things will still need to be shipped in, but eliminating many of the most cumbersome materials (water, aluminum, iron, and titanium among others) will cut the number of supply missions down considerably. In contrast, everything in orbit needs to be launched from Earth, and shipping up raw resources doesn't make sense because you don't really have the space for processing and manufacturing facilities. That said, this assumes a more robust and steadily growing presence. If all you want is a tiny antarctic style outpost a lot of that doesn't matter.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - PeterisP 5y ago
    All the resource questions essentially may make building the base cheaper by sourcing some materials locally and bootstrapping, but it does not answer the main question about the economic purpose of the base. What benefit exactly does having that base give back to whoever built it; who wants to pay for the existence of that base and why? Insofar that the base provides materials and experience for building future bases, that just postpones answering the real question - what exactly is the expected benefit from those future bases? Because the exact answer matters a lot for any discussions on where and how to do things. If the eventual answer is "research and exploration", then suddenly it's very important to consider exact needs of the sponsors of that research which can't be done on earth - e.g. if it's zero-g research, then a moon base doesn't help that and you need orbit, no matter what the cost difference is. If the eventual answer is "eternal glory to the sponsor", which arguably was the goal which funded a big part of the space race, certainly more than any pure scientific goals, then the appropriate metric is some sort of "PR per dollar" ratio, and there a Moon base probably wins over orbital bases simply because orbital bases have been built but a Moon base has not. If the eventual answer is "make humanity interplanetary", then suddenly it's very important to consider what exactly the sponsors of that social project want (because in that scenario that's a subsidized colony that exists to fulfil the desires of some Earth people/organization spending resources to allow it to exist), but in any case it would look like that an orbital base likely does not fill that need and neither does Moon except as support for a potential Mars base, so again the cost difference doesn't matter because the other options simply don't fill the need. If the eventual answer is "because it will be commercially self-sustaining" then that would need an explanation of what resources exactly would be cheaper to mine from there (at great cost and difficulty) for the purposes of Earth (because any non-Earth uses go right back to question of why would Earth fund those uses instead, they're just a discount on that purpose) as opposed from existing resources, or ocean floor, or Antarctica, etc because with current technology (hopefully changing due to Starship et al), if there were pallets of processed gold bars sitting on a prepared landing pad on the Moon, it would not be worth the cost to fly there to pick them up, much less ship mining equipment to do anything realistic.
- deleted 5y ago
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Zenst 5y ago
Slight tangent, but I'm wondering and kinda dreading the day that some company pops some large advert upon the Moon so it can be seen on Earth.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I wouldn't be too worried. Copernicus crater is 93km in diameter... Which is the circle on left hand side of moon. Anything truly visible from Earth would be absolutely massive and we haven't done anything like that scale on Earth even yet...
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - nohuck13 5y ago
    Thanks. Picture for anybody else curious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_(lunar_crater)#/media/File%3ALocation_of_lunar_crater_copernicus.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_(lunar_crater)#/m...
  - rasz 5y ago
    Nothing a series of nukes couldnt solve.
  - kragen 5y ago
    It's easier to do that kind of thing on the moon, though, which is the color of asphalt and has almost no atmosphere. If you can manage ISRU, you could sputter a layer of quicklime onto the regolith from a lunar rover; if you fountain the molecules out the top of the rover, you could spread them over an almost arbitrarily large part of the moon. (Maybe a different abundant white mineral with a lower boiling point would be more practical.) If your pixels were 20 km square and 10 microns thick they would only require 13000 tonnes of quicklime each.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Still insane scale of project. Let's say you can spread 10m wide line, you can fit 2000 of these in 20km square each 20km long. At reasonable 40km/h speed it would mean about 1000 hours. ~41,7 days per pixel... Not counting logistics of getting the material ready and so on. And how many pixels you need? Also 10m wide spread might be optimistic, considering moon isn't easiest thing thing to navigate at this scale.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Astrobotic in Pittsburgh has very good people. So proud!
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I know this sounds ridiculous, but "Moonball" is really promising as a televised professional sport. Think about it: who wouldn't watch professional athletes in 1/6 gravity? That means, 4 second long, 10ft high jumps. Assuming everyone would watch it, it's a real business opportunity. It's not terribly hard, either. There are enormous moon lava tubes[1], so it would be possible to just inflate a sporting arena in the radiation sheilded underground. Importantly, atheletes could play without a special life support suit. However, you'd need awesome shoes with good ankle support for landing those jumps. I assume Moonball will first be played by mission astronauts, to keep fit. But within 20 years, I predict televised sports will be the biggest source of moon revenue, aside from govt income. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube
- dylan604 5y ago
  > expect it to be the biggest source of revenue maybe 2nd after advertisers building giant billboards visible from earth
  - trothamel 5y ago
    The moon is really small, visually - half a degree in diameter. That's the size of a dime at six feet, likely means such billboards would not be noticeable enough to be worth the effort.
    - muthdra 5y ago
      Just advertise for telescope enthusiasts.
      - cbanek 5y ago
        Now I'm thinking telescope + QR code on the moon, who knows, maybe it'd be a set of lights that could generate QR codes
        5y ago
akamoonknight 5y ago
Might be a long ways out, as this article still seems mainly about research purposes, but if there's things like the Outer Space Treaty (which to my understanding theoretically limits country-based ownership of things like the moon), then to some extent it feels like there's no "law" on the moon, so will we see company's landers sabotaging other company's landers as they compete for resources? I guess I'm picturing something like the gold rush of the mid 1800's. Maybe orbits around earth are an example of where something similar is sort of "working out" ?
- simonh 5y ago
  The treaty means you can’t claim territory, but you can establish bases, and extract and use resources. What it means in practice is you can’t make a claim, you just go and take what you need, and once you vacate a site others can come along and occupy it. They just cant interfere with any equipment you leave in place.
dylan604 5y ago
If private companies don't, nobody will. Most gov'ts are just not interested. Gov'ts move slower than a herd of turtles. The best thing the gov't involvement could be would to establish ground rules, er moon rules. Rules/treaties for Antartica could be a starting point.
- skissane 5y ago
  The article is about private companies being paid to do it by NASA. Would these particular companies be doing it if NASA wasn't paying for it? Probably not. I think the first purely commercial missions to the Moon are likely to be tourism. These particular companies are a long way away from being able to transport people – as opposed to scientific experiments. SpaceX is much closer. Blue Origin and Dynetics also have a chance, but I doubt they will be able to compete against SpaceX in the lunar tourism market unless they can drop their costs significantly.
- simonh 5y ago
  > If private companies don't, nobody will. All these efforts are literally being paid for by NASA.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Sure, start with the easy government money, but once you get a track record, you get non-gov't customers.
    - skissane 5y ago
      Are there any non-government customers for delivering 100–300 kg of cargo to the moon? That's what these landers are capable of doing. I don't think there is any commercial demand for this service right now. The first commercial use cases for lunar transport are going to be tourism and media/entertainment–both will require actually transporting people there, along with tonnes of equipment/supplies/habitats/rovers/etc, so several orders of magnitude beyond the current capabilities of these companies. Of course, maybe they can close that gap, but there are other companies – most notably SpaceX – which are much much closer to closing that gap than these companies are.
pomian 5y ago
The concept reminds me of the great book by Andy Weir, Artemis. (He of; The Martian, fame.) Audiobook is very good too.
- dumptruk 5y ago
  If you (or anyone reading this) likes Andy Weir and hasn’t read Project Hail Mary, I urge you to do so. Scratches the same hard sci-fi itch The Martian and Artemis does. Also narrated by the same guy who narrates The Bobiverse series (another wonderful hard sci-fi series)
hkon 5y ago
Can't wait to see and ad for Coca Cola or Red Bull on the moon.

46 points by swayvil 5y ago

They mention a few kinds of research that will be conducted. But where's the money in it? Is there something worth mining? You've got infinite dust, from which can be made a kind of concrete. Infinite solar power. Possibly water. What else? What are the advantages of building a base on the moon vs building it in orbit?

bryanlarsen 5y ago
What are the advantages of building a base in Antarctica? Benefits are fairly nebulous but still real. Building a base in lunar or a halo orbit is pretty stupid. Very few advantages over earth orbit; substantially higher costs mean we'll use it a lot less. An earth orbit station has been very useful. However once it ages out the best replacement is probably just fitting out a Starship to orbit for many months and return.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  The bases in Antarctica are important because once there is a clear economic incentive, the Antarctic Treaty will end and each country will try to grab a piece. You can let the morons build bases there and nuke them at the last second, but it's more friendly to keep a few bases and use that as a antecedent to pick your part when the negotiations starts.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > the Antarctic Treaty will end and each country will try to grab a piece Why not make a new treaty? It couldn't be more clear that it's doable and effective.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      In the paper, the treaty if forever. But once there is a clear economical or military reason to have a non scientific base there, the treaty will melt in no time. Imagine that all the nuclear powers (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel?, Japan??, South Africa???) decide to split the Antarctica in equally sized pieces. (Perhaps replace North Korea with Germany.) What are the other countries going to do? [Hi from Argentina!] Invade the Antarctica? Launch a conventional war? Blockade Antarctica? An economical blockade of the nuclear powers? Make a very long speech in the UN so the nuclear powers get so bored that decide to return to the previous status?
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        Most international issues are resolved without war these days - and throughout history. That's why it's called the 'Rules-based international order'.
        gus_massa 5y ago
        I agree. That's why each government force the local mapmakers to include every piece of land they are claiming in the maps, in spite it's controlled by other country, or the legal status is not clear like a piece of the Antarctic. Also, peaceful activities in the are like a research base of a small local population are considered in the discussions. Anyway, in these discussions it's nice to use a photo of your nuclear silos as the background of your video in Zoom. A lot of small border disputes are resolved peacefully, but it's usually about an area that nobody cares too much, or that is small enough that does not justify the cost of a war. > 'Rules-based international order' Yep, but for some unclear reason the first 5 countries in the list have veto power in the UN. IIRC one had nuclear weapons before, and the other 4 decided that making their own nuclear weapons were a good idea. I don't expect this to escalate to a global thermonuclear war. Some countries will just decide to abandon the treaty, occupy whatever part they like, with some negotiation about the border. And perhaps have some conventional naval and terrestrial forces nearby in case it's needed.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Would there be a commercial benefit for an earth orbit station? I believe not at current prices, otherwise companies would have launched one. As soon as you consider private investment (as opposed to essentially charity funding of pure research/exploration), then looking at analogies vs an Antarctic site or deep ocean site may be quite relevant - those are also sites that are somewhat difficult to reach and build on but easier than Moon on Mars; so for any commercial argument in the form of "mining resources" there has to be an answer why suffer the difficulties on the moon instead of (lesser) difficulties in Antarctica.
inglor_cz 5y ago
Out of top of my head. 1. If humans are a future part of the picture, buried structures on the Moon will protect them against cosmic rays - much harder to do that in an orbital station. 2. Same goes for gravity. While a huge rotating station is technically possible, Moon has its 0.16G naturally everywhere. Might be better for health, is certainly better for plumbing and other sorts of equipment. 3. Water is actually pretty important. The spots on the Moon where it can be produced may turn "hot", as different countries try and claim them.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Zooming into building on the moon vs. building in orbit, one big difference is that with some bootstrapping, on the moon a number of materials can be sourced locally. Some things will still need to be shipped in, but eliminating many of the most cumbersome materials (water, aluminum, iron, and titanium among others) will cut the number of supply missions down considerably. In contrast, everything in orbit needs to be launched from Earth, and shipping up raw resources doesn't make sense because you don't really have the space for processing and manufacturing facilities. That said, this assumes a more robust and steadily growing presence. If all you want is a tiny antarctic style outpost a lot of that doesn't matter.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 5y ago
  All the resource questions essentially may make building the base cheaper by sourcing some materials locally and bootstrapping, but it does not answer the main question about the economic purpose of the base. What benefit exactly does having that base give back to whoever built it; who wants to pay for the existence of that base and why? Insofar that the base provides materials and experience for building future bases, that just postpones answering the real question - what exactly is the expected benefit from those future bases? Because the exact answer matters a lot for any discussions on where and how to do things. If the eventual answer is "research and exploration", then suddenly it's very important to consider exact needs of the sponsors of that research which can't be done on earth - e.g. if it's zero-g research, then a moon base doesn't help that and you need orbit, no matter what the cost difference is. If the eventual answer is "eternal glory to the sponsor", which arguably was the goal which funded a big part of the space race, certainly more than any pure scientific goals, then the appropriate metric is some sort of "PR per dollar" ratio, and there a Moon base probably wins over orbital bases simply because orbital bases have been built but a Moon base has not. If the eventual answer is "make humanity interplanetary", then suddenly it's very important to consider what exactly the sponsors of that social project want (because in that scenario that's a subsidized colony that exists to fulfil the desires of some Earth people/organization spending resources to allow it to exist), but in any case it would look like that an orbital base likely does not fill that need and neither does Moon except as support for a potential Mars base, so again the cost difference doesn't matter because the other options simply don't fill the need. If the eventual answer is "because it will be commercially self-sustaining" then that would need an explanation of what resources exactly would be cheaper to mine from there (at great cost and difficulty) for the purposes of Earth (because any non-Earth uses go right back to question of why would Earth fund those uses instead, they're just a discount on that purpose) as opposed from existing resources, or ocean floor, or Antarctica, etc because with current technology (hopefully changing due to Starship et al), if there were pallets of processed gold bars sitting on a prepared landing pad on the Moon, it would not be worth the cost to fly there to pick them up, much less ship mining equipment to do anything realistic.
deleted 5y ago
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Zenst 5y ago

Slight tangent, but I'm wondering and kinda dreading the day that some company pops some large advert upon the Moon so it can be seen on Earth.

Ekaros 5y ago
I wouldn't be too worried. Copernicus crater is 93km in diameter... Which is the circle on left hand side of moon. Anything truly visible from Earth would be absolutely massive and we haven't done anything like that scale on Earth even yet...
- deleted 5y ago
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- nohuck13 5y ago
  Thanks. Picture for anybody else curious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_(lunar_crater)#/media/File%3ALocation_of_lunar_crater_copernicus.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_(lunar_crater)#/m...
- rasz 5y ago
  Nothing a series of nukes couldnt solve.
- kragen 5y ago
  It's easier to do that kind of thing on the moon, though, which is the color of asphalt and has almost no atmosphere. If you can manage ISRU, you could sputter a layer of quicklime onto the regolith from a lunar rover; if you fountain the molecules out the top of the rover, you could spread them over an almost arbitrarily large part of the moon. (Maybe a different abundant white mineral with a lower boiling point would be more practical.) If your pixels were 20 km square and 10 microns thick they would only require 13000 tonnes of quicklime each.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Still insane scale of project. Let's say you can spread 10m wide line, you can fit 2000 of these in 20km square each 20km long. At reasonable 40km/h speed it would mean about 1000 hours. ~41,7 days per pixel... Not counting logistics of getting the material ready and so on. And how many pixels you need? Also 10m wide spread might be optimistic, considering moon isn't easiest thing thing to navigate at this scale.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Astrobotic in Pittsburgh has very good people. So proud!

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I know this sounds ridiculous, but "Moonball" is really promising as a televised professional sport. Think about it: who wouldn't watch professional athletes in 1/6 gravity? That means, 4 second long, 10ft high jumps. Assuming everyone would watch it, it's a real business opportunity. It's not terribly hard, either. There are enormous moon lava tubes[1], so it would be possible to just inflate a sporting arena in the radiation sheilded underground. Importantly, atheletes could play without a special life support suit. However, you'd need awesome shoes with good ankle support for landing those jumps. I assume Moonball will first be played by mission astronauts, to keep fit. But within 20 years, I predict televised sports will be the biggest source of moon revenue, aside from govt income. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube

dylan604 5y ago
> expect it to be the biggest source of revenue maybe 2nd after advertisers building giant billboards visible from earth
- trothamel 5y ago
  The moon is really small, visually - half a degree in diameter. That's the size of a dime at six feet, likely means such billboards would not be noticeable enough to be worth the effort.
  - muthdra 5y ago
    Just advertise for telescope enthusiasts.
    - cbanek 5y ago
      Now I'm thinking telescope + QR code on the moon, who knows, maybe it'd be a set of lights that could generate QR codes
      - 5y ago

akamoonknight 5y ago

Might be a long ways out, as this article still seems mainly about research purposes, but if there's things like the Outer Space Treaty (which to my understanding theoretically limits country-based ownership of things like the moon), then to some extent it feels like there's no "law" on the moon, so will we see company's landers sabotaging other company's landers as they compete for resources? I guess I'm picturing something like the gold rush of the mid 1800's. Maybe orbits around earth are an example of where something similar is sort of "working out" ?

simonh 5y ago
The treaty means you can’t claim territory, but you can establish bases, and extract and use resources. What it means in practice is you can’t make a claim, you just go and take what you need, and once you vacate a site others can come along and occupy it. They just cant interfere with any equipment you leave in place.

dylan604 5y ago

If private companies don't, nobody will. Most gov'ts are just not interested. Gov'ts move slower than a herd of turtles. The best thing the gov't involvement could be would to establish ground rules, er moon rules. Rules/treaties for Antartica could be a starting point.

skissane 5y ago
The article is about private companies being paid to do it by NASA. Would these particular companies be doing it if NASA wasn't paying for it? Probably not. I think the first purely commercial missions to the Moon are likely to be tourism. These particular companies are a long way away from being able to transport people – as opposed to scientific experiments. SpaceX is much closer. Blue Origin and Dynetics also have a chance, but I doubt they will be able to compete against SpaceX in the lunar tourism market unless they can drop their costs significantly.
simonh 5y ago
> If private companies don't, nobody will. All these efforts are literally being paid for by NASA.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Sure, start with the easy government money, but once you get a track record, you get non-gov't customers.
  - skissane 5y ago
    Are there any non-government customers for delivering 100–300 kg of cargo to the moon? That's what these landers are capable of doing. I don't think there is any commercial demand for this service right now. The first commercial use cases for lunar transport are going to be tourism and media/entertainment–both will require actually transporting people there, along with tonnes of equipment/supplies/habitats/rovers/etc, so several orders of magnitude beyond the current capabilities of these companies. Of course, maybe they can close that gap, but there are other companies – most notably SpaceX – which are much much closer to closing that gap than these companies are.

pomian 5y ago

The concept reminds me of the great book by Andy Weir, Artemis. (He of; The Martian, fame.) Audiobook is very good too.

dumptruk 5y ago
If you (or anyone reading this) likes Andy Weir and hasn’t read Project Hail Mary, I urge you to do so. Scratches the same hard sci-fi itch The Martian and Artemis does. Also narrated by the same guy who narrates The Bobiverse series (another wonderful hard sci-fi series)

hkon 5y ago

Can't wait to see and ad for Coca Cola or Red Bull on the moon.