money is in short supply

On 24.02.2011 21:51, brooksn wrote:
>
> Yeah even if that's the case it seems a little light. With those 5
> tons you'll have to have the ability to land on an asteroid, analyze
> the asteroids make up.
>

The mothership does not land on the asteroid, the daughter units do.
The mothership provides only long distance transportation and recharging
possibility to the daughters, evtl. also melting services
since it could carry a laser to melt or cut out ice from the asteroid.

The first missions would only extract materials and bring them back to
the ISS or another deflatable laboratory in LEO. There the processing
and separating processes and equipment have to be developed and tested.
If they are developed the next mission goes back to the locations where
the best suited ores have been found.

At this near asteroid construction site the daughters mine the asteroid
and unload the materials to the construction sites/molds.
One single operation of one miner might need only two or three hours to
scoop up the material and deliver it to the construction/separation
site, which is freely floating in space. Than the next operation could
start. This is the advantage of low gravity asteroid operations for
habitat construction against gravity well construction. You can use
relatively small equipment with efficient but weak propulsion and carry
(Earth mass) tons of materials,
which you couldn't even move on Earth.

And you have more than one miner per mothership and can use more than
one mothership to speed up the
operation if needed.

> Then process raw material, seperate it, process the ore into exactly
> what you want, fabricate the actual panels, put the pieces together
> strong enough to withstand vacuum. (All in near zero g.)
>
I have no panels and no pieces which have to be cut together. I have
only hardened molds with beton rings in it, which get attached to each other
and held together by CNT-tows and in the end get sealed from the outside
with concrete again as described in my previous message.

Those deployable molds have to be launched from Earth or installed in
Earth orbit. They feature already a propulsion system for each ring.

Remote controlled, spider-like robots with additional arms and hands
could do the outside jobs of attaching the rings.

> Then you'll need air, water, soil, energy systems, waste heat systems,
> toilets, kitchens and everything that goes in them.
>
I would like to do this with robotics first, so I don't need anything to
provide human life support (besides the life support for
humans in LEO) in the beginning.
The energy system would be a Roller Reefing system on such a ring, the
same system as the motherships are using too.
It provides early fuelless station keeping and attitude control for the
raw-hull also.
If the hull is constructed, humans can arrive to finish the interior or
if it is a small spacecraft hull, the hull can return by remote control
to LEO.
>
> I could maybe see a simple system, such as a drilling robot to get to
> the center of a 'rubble' pile asteroid and then inflating a 'balloon'
> to hollow out your space.
>

I would prefer a concrete hull instead of a rubble pile. It should be
more stabile, uses the ressources better, should be easier to construct when
free floating, is better accessible from all sides and carries less mass
which uses up less fuel when the hull has to be moved, rotated or
attitude controlled.

Best wishes

Frank