Bush Space Plan Unwise?

I was thinking of a nearer-term future, prior to the emplacement of mass
drivers on the lunar surface. But in the longer term, yes I certainly
agree that mass driver launch is far more efficient than rocketry, and
yes, I'd sooner see them lift everything in the most common lunar
materials into high orbit, rather than just the oxygen.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: Ryan Z [mailto:ryjaz@...]
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 4:14 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] RE: Bush Space Plan Unwise?

--- "Combs, Mike" wrote:
> I'd agree that we should expect the tanker to be a
> reusable vehicle, but
> I'm envisioning the tanker shuttling between the
> surface of the moon and
> the rendezvous point.

Why use a tanker and not a stationary space station?
You could then use a mass driver to shoot the fuel to
the base. This owuld also have the side benefit of
gathering a lot of raw materials (used as containers
for the O and H) for structural expansion of such a
base.

Another option if going along with the base is to just
shoot regolith to a station and then do all processing
in the station to seperate out the fuel.