Moon enthusiasts athe funniest peoples

> Economically, the moon and Mars are at best future Nevada's in
> space - military bases, tourism, gambling, prostitution, and
> speedy marriages.

I've heard this before, and nobody has told me yet which law of
physics prevents gambling, prostitution, or speedy marriages in
orbital habitats of the O'Neill sort. And don't knock tourism, it's a
huge industry, bigger than electronics IIRC.

> No marketable natural resources. No real industry. Most
> everything has to be imported.

I really don't think that Mars is lacking in natural resources. Other
than things like wood or oil, exactly what is Mars lacking? Every
month seems to bring reports of more water, and the surface is so
iron-rich that the whole planet is rusted red. That rust means that
there's just scads of oxygen locked up in the soil, too. I really
don't see what Mars is lacking in that NEO's are likely to have.

The problem with Mars is its strong, deep gravity well. It isn't that
Mars has to IMport everything; it's that Mars can't EXport anything
without paying a high gravity tax.

> Free metal concentrations in stony meteorites are about 20%,
> compared to a few hundred ppm in the lunar regolith.

The pie chart that sits on my hard drive (it's from SSI) give the
breakdown of lunar regolith as follows:
Aluminum: 7%
Calcium: 8%
Iron: 13%
Magnesium: 6%
Oxygen: 42%
Silicon: 21%
OTHER: 3%

This tells me that the lunar regolith is 34 parts PER HUNDRED metals,
not a few parts PER MILLION. In fact, it compares well with your
figure for stony asteroids. There's no denying that metallic
asteroids are higher in metals, as you mention below. Is there
something wrong with SSI's pie chart?

> M-type asteroids are about 99% metal. C-type asteroids have 5% to
> 20% water. The lunar surface, by contrast, has no native water.

Except at the poles? and perhaps in lava tubes?

> Solar wind implantation of hydrogen on the lunar surface offers up
> to about 50 ppm hydrogen, which, if fully released and fully
> converted into water, would optimistically give the lunar surface
> about 0.045% water.

If one could only get water from solar wind implanted hydrogen, yes.
But the poles seem to have a good deal of hydrogen, probably already
in the form of water.

> Overall, the lunar surface is volatile-poor and metal-poor.

Volatile-poor I have to give you. I think metal-poor is incorrect. I
could be wrong (it's been known to happen), but this pie chart is over
in FILES now, if you want to look at it.
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/AEeRReEr6omelIUym4s7QKRJ5TM3uvvU7jMmWGH-v4_3eMdGptVjwiGYj8h-oWfrFIeuHVrDb6SzIv9wLGJNbRgdqIjpIebpY4y6/slide06.jpg