Asteroid use

MW: First of all, in order to industrialize the moon
for the potential production and launching of
satellites into Earth orbit and the exportation of
lunar materials to orbital manufacturing facilities
for the manufacture photovoltaics, computer chips,
super whiskers, hyper-kinetic flywheels, ultralight
and ultra-strong fiber-foamed ground vehicle and
aircraft components, ect. for eventual export to
Earth, you need industrial chemicals like hydrogen,
nitrogen, carbon, and chlorine. And these chemicals
are extremely rare and difficult to process--
economically-- on the moon.

These chemicals, however, are abundant on the surface
of Mars and can be extracted from the atmosphere, the
soil, and from the polar ice caps of Mars. And the
gravity well of Mars is low enough for these chemicals
to be transported to Mars orbit and then by lightsail
to the Terra-Lunas system at least 5 to 10 times
cheaper than you could do it from Earth.

You could probably mine these chemicals even more
cheaply on a large asteriod like Ceres but the gravity
is so low (significantly lower than even the Earth's
moon's gravity) that it could have a significant
deleterious effect on people who work on its surface
for a long period of time. So in order for a worker to
maintain his, or her, health they may have to
frequently take shuttles to an orbiting rotating space
station with Earth level similated gravity. This of
course we add to the expense of have people work on
this asteroid. It would also take at least twice as
long to get there and to get back to Earth than it
would to Mars. And I'm not so sure that Ceres would be
the most exciting place to work so labor is going to
be expensive.

Alternatively, you could mine a small nearby asteroid.
But for each asteroid that you processed, you would
have to transport all of your mining and processing
material and your people to the site. And if something
should happen to some of your workers, it could be
weeks or months before you could get that person to a
hospital. So you'd probably have to transport a sick
bay facility and a few doctors with you to the site
which, of course, adds more to the cost. And you're
going to have to do this everytime you process a new
asteroids-- if you care about the safety of your
workers.

Alternatively, you could transport small asteroids
(1000 to 100,000 tonnes in mass) by automated
lightsails into orbit around a planet where they
could be processed by machines remotely operated by
humans from the planet's surface. The potentially
cheapest place to do this would be in the Terra-Luna
system but you'd have to put your trust in private
companies, or government run industries, from all
over the world to do it safely. And you'd also have to
deal with green party advocates from around the world
who don't trust the corporations and who believe that
corporations would do anything, even endanger the
populace, to make a profit.

Or you could avoid the potential dangers, law suits
and the politics by transporting and processing these
small asteroids in orbit around Mercury or Mars. Mars
is easily the best place where large numbers of
people could be accomodated most comfortably (next to
the Earth). It has a gravity about a third of that of
the Earth and has all of the chemicals in its soil and
in its atmosphere for humans to survive. And it would
be much easier to find people willing to work there
for a long period of time than on some remote
asteroid.

The key to all of this, of course, is the space
manufacturing of large ultra-light interplanetary
light sails which could theoretically be as much as
200 times lighter than any such device manufactured
and launched from the surface of the Earth and could
potentially reduce interplanetary transportion cost
down to pennies per kilogram. Mr. Nano-technology,
Eric Drexler, has a method for building such a
lightsail. And I have my own method. But whoever can
build these incredible devices-- most cheaply and
efficiently-- will dominate transportation and
commerce in the solar system, IMO.

Marcel F. Williams
1/6/01

--- bill t wrote: