By-Pass the Moon?

From: Joe Strout

> I'm sure that does occur exactly as you've described it -- but in the
> near term, the Moon really is ideal not because of its size or
> composition (neither is ideal) but because of its position relative
> to the Earth. Even NEOs with a lower delta-V than the Moon are much
> harder targets to actually exploit, because most of the time they're
> nowhere near the Earth (and half the time they're clear over on the
> other side of the solar system).

Yeah, although I'm not too dogmatic about it, I tend to assume lunar
utilization will come first, and NEO utilization after.

The only thing I think could make things turn out the other way around
is if we knew sufficiently far in advance that an asteroid was going to
come by on just the perfect trajectory, such that the round-trip delta-V
requirements were extremely modest.

On the other hand, I think advances in teleoperation would strongly tilt
things toward moon first, asteroids later.

But whichever comes first, I think the other will subsequently become
much easier. Availability of lunar resources in HEO (even if nothing
beyond oxygen and shielding) would vastly bring down the costs of a NEO
expedition. And I think availability of asteroidal resources in HEO
would even make getting back to the moon much easier.

Regards,

Mike Combs