Preparing lunar surface . . .

I beg to differ. The cost of planning the tower locations may be
next to nothing but actually doing it will be substantial.

Keep in mind, we're not referring to any existing lunar
infrastructure. We're building these towers to serve as landing
platforms for a lunar elevator which will be instrumental in
building the infrastructure to support industrialization on the
lunar surface.

You'll need heavy construction equipment, life support, or with tele-
operation you'll need radio repeater towers, a source of energy,
methods to erect such towers, a means to transport the tower
material to the site from the earth. Basically, a heavy construction
project at each location, when your supply base is the earth.

What I suggested is to use kinetic energy methods from space to
replace all of the equipment on the surface. Then when the orbit of
the lunavator ground region is unobstructed, the small scale landing
platforms can be constructed by hand or by robot. When completed,
base building equipment can be transported to the lunar surface to
build the infrastructure needed for more development.

I'm still left with the feeling that KE means are more cost
effective than rocket landing all of the heavy equipment needed, but
I'd welcome a response to arguments that you think I may have
overlooked.

--- In spacesettlers@y..., Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:
> From: "victoriatangoman"
> To:
> Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 6:35 PM
> Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Preparing lunar surface . . .
>
> [snikt]
> > The one supposition in my proposal that I didn't clearly state
was
> > that I thought that a kinetic energy projectile would be cheaper
> > than the engineering needed to optimize tower locations and
connect
> > them to the base with road and utilities. To avoid a lengthy
journey
> > every time you wanted to launch a payload. Such journeys on the
moon
> > wouldn't be as easy as they are on earth.
> [snikt]
>
> The cost of optimizing tower locations is nearly null. You just
need a
> topography map of the moon (and I think that fairly accurate maps
do exist)