By-Pass the Moon?

From: John Frazer

> I thought it was OK to not
> mention this, since I've thought it's hare-brained to focus on the
Moon
> as a "stepping stone" or refueling point to Mars.
> Get the media away from that useless idea, and onto other reasons for
> going to space.

There is one aspect of this notion which makes sense, though (with
certain assumptions). One of the interesting things which dropped out
of Gerard O'Neill's space industrialization studies was that the
availability of lunar-derived liquid oxygen in high orbits completely
changes the economics of space travel throughout cislunar space. The
moon may or may not represent a suitable "dress rehearsal" for going to
Mars, but even if the moon never contributes more than liquid oxygen to
a Mars expedition, that's a surprisingly-large fraction of the total
tonnage needed in space.

Bob Zubrin, who quickly grows impatient with any space proposal which
might come before getting humans to Mars right away, tries to pooh-pooh
this idea by arguing that if there were oxidizer refueling stations on
the surface of the moon right now, it would not be beneficial to land a
Mars vehicle on the moon to refuel. But of course he makes the argument
this way because it involves landing the entire dead weight of the Mars
vehicle on the moon, which is unnecessary (but gets him the answer he
prefers: leave that out of your thinking). At one of the ISDC
conferences I asked him about the idea of lunar oxygen tankers shuttling
between the lunar surface and the Earth-Moon L-1 point. A Mars-bound
vehicle could rendezvous with the tanker at L-1, refill its depleted
liquid oxygen tanks, and then depart for Mars via a slingshot maneuver
around the Earth. At that point Zubrin just waved his hands and said if
anybody can figure out a way to make that work economically, more power
to them, but he remained skeptical and dismissive.

Regards,

Mike Combs