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 Post subject: Getting started on Moon
PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 1:59 pm 
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So if you wanted to set up a commercially viable venture to produce oxygen, water and rocket fuel on the Lunar surface, how would you get started?

I suppose the two questions are
(1) How to raise the finance and
(2) What to do with it.

Addressing the second question: I think we'd need to send an unmanned prospecting mission to the floor of one of those deep craters near the Lunar south pole to examine conditions there. It's hard to examine them adequately from Earth.

I'd suggest sending a two-part spaceship. One part would be a rover that would land on the crater floor. The other part would be to provide communications. It would land on the crater rim and extend a radio antenna and solar panels. It would provide a communications link with the crater floor not only for the first prospecting mission but for any followup missions to the same area.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 2:12 am 
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RickLewis wrote:
I'd suggest sending a two-part spaceship. One part would be a rover that would land on the crater floor. The other part would be to provide communications. It would land on the crater rim and extend a radio antenna and solar panels. It would provide a communications link with the crater floor not only for the first prospecting mission but for any followup missions to the same area.


An obvious problem would be that if the rover was on the crater floor, it would be in darkness. Therefore it would not be able to charge its batteries using solar panels.

Possible solutions would include:
(a) using radioactive material to general electrical power. Can you imagine how popular it would be to launch such a device? Hm.
(b) better - for the lander on the crater rim to collect solar power and then send it to the rover via a laser beam. This might work but the choice of landing site for the lander would be crucial.


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