Moon Gamma-Ray Spectroscopy

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote:
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Ed Minchau"
> wrote:
> > --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Surely, you're not advocating sending out
> > > thousands of NEARs to analyze every asteroid.
> > >
> > That's not a bad idea at all. The trick is to make money at
doing
> > it. Here's how:
>
> You're quite clever! You have indeed found a way to make money by
> launching thousands of NEARs :) but that's only a first order
> solution. How do the purchasers of all your NEARs make money? Ahh,
> the fly in the ointment. :)
>
> > Like QWERTY or VHS, things like the Archimedes Institute
become
> > the de facto standard, if enough people start using it early
on.
>
> I respectfully disagree. Claiming of property is completely
> different than the standards you cite because it involves
> sovereignty recognition. Until the politics is worked out, all the
> faux claims registered with Archimedes are just novelties that you
> can show your friends. Just like the Lunar Embassy.
>
> TangoMan

Right now, all the claims are either class C (discovered by the
ancients, such as the sun or the moon or mars) or class D (just a
statement of claim, which is superseded by any class C or higher
claim). So the smart-aleck lawyer who filed a class D claim on the
Sun is out of luck, his claim is superseded by the prior class C
claim, belonging to the ancients.

A class B claim occurs in my proposal above. Class B claims
supersede class C claims (so if the above smartaleck managed to land
a rover on the sun and keep it working, we'd have to pay him for the
energy). On such a claim, the owner of the rover is free to begin
whatever operations he chooses on that property. If someone lands a
rover on 11 Parthenope, then my class D claim ;) is superseded and
I'm out of luck... unless I am the one sending the rover there.

Such a claim is superseded by a class A claim, which occurs when a
human being (or a human being acting as the legal representative of
another) is sent to the body in question. Had Neil armstrong been
in the employ of Victor A. Tangoman rather than NASA, he could have
claimed the moon for you; as he was a representative of a body of
government which was signatory to the UN space treaties, he had to
claim it "for all mankind".

And, there are a few catches: if one person makes a class B (landing
a rover) claim such as the asteroid 1 Ceres, than any other person
can make a class B claim on a subsection of the asteroid. If the
first party approaches the second, making Class B claims along the
surface, it may also claim a subsection of the second party's
claim.

That class B claim and that service contract is only good as long as
the rover is operational, so it is to everyone's advantage that such
devices be extremely robust - and that the customer continue to pay
a service fee and buy launches to periodically refresh his claim.
So, give them a warranty. Furthermore, if a customer stopped paying
for the service contract, he would have to find an alternate way to
control his rover or forfeit his claim on the rock.

Claims go down to a minimum size of surface describing a square 50
meters on a side; only asteriods with a circumference of 50 m or
less could be claimed in the registry by a single class B claim.
And that claim too could be superseded if someone sent a person
there; at that point, a class A claim would exists and the owner of
the class B claim would lose the rights to that property.

It is straightforward and simple, and follows logically from Natural
Law. Now, suppose that I am a customer of the companies I listed
previously; I have my class D claim and I want to turn it into a
class B claim and *own* that rock.

Imagine if all the design issues, launch, mission control, rover
control on 11 Parthenope and so on were all taken care of as I
described. Imagine if launch costs were kept down to say five
million dollars, and say a million a year for services like
communications and mission control and data analysis. What could I
accomplish in two years? How about if I had gone with the "DeLuxe"
package of a second lander containing more equipment?

This is why I say that legitimization of something like Archimedes
is crucial: you want to spread the meme that real people can own
their own asteroid, and actually do something with it - and that for
a relatively small investment. And you want to spread enough
interest that you can have a high launch volume to drive up
competition among your launch suppliers and thus drive down launch
costs.

> How do the purchasers of all your NEARs make money? Ahh,
> the fly in the ointment. :)

This depends on the capabilities of the landers and rovers and on
the amount of equipment and tools sent along. This is why I
said "modular" - some customers may want gamma ray spectrometers,
some may want high resolution infrared CCD telescopes, some may want
Mossbauer spectrometers... give them lots of options, let them mix
and match features, tailoring their mission to their needs, but have
common interfaces and dimensions and so forth so that the same
chassis can be used in many different ways.

If your company is the "space synthesis" company, you would be
ordering from many manufacturers, only specifying dimensions and
interfaces, letting them worry about the rest. One company may
supply you with Xenon ion engines, another with Argon ion engines,
another with hydrogen peroxide engines; maybe one will even offer a
solar sail.

Let the customers decide (and justify to their investors) how they
will make money on their asteroid. Give them the option of filing
that class B claim for low money down and a continuing service
contract. That gets you some interest and a few customers - but as
soon as someone hits something valuable, news will spread quickly.
There are few things that gets men's hearts racing (and investing:
just look at Bre-X) like cries of "Gold!"

Ed