The planetary chauvinism debate

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You make some great points.

> I've heard the canard that the Shuttle cost $12,000 per pound to LEO and we want to lift

> a hundred billion ton hab to L-5 (Zubrin, in a public engagement, and elsewhere I've

> heard that one)

Zubrin is a first-rate mind in the space field, and has done much to help. But when in a feisty mode (which is much of the time), he is not above making a disingenuous argument if he thinks it will push his audience in what he sees as the right direction.

I was at a space development conference once where he was putting down the idea of lunar-derived fuel being of any use if youre trying to get to Mars. He critiqued the obviously-dumb idea of landing the dead mass of your entire vehicle on the lunar surface,
refueling, and then taking off again.

But of course thats a straw-man scenario, and is not how you would sensibly do it. The smart plan would be to propel your ship from LEO to L-1. Lunar fuel tankers then shuttle from the surface to L-1, and all refueling takes place there, not on the lunar
surface. Theres even a neat trick you can do on departure where you whip around the Earth and gain an improvement on the fuel performance (Oberth effect).

I raised my hand and started describing the above scenario. Before I could get half-way through, he stopped me and just said if anybody could ever provide lunar fuel economically, then he was all for it, but he was just very skeptical about the entire concept.
Next question.

Regards,
Mike Combs

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