Lunar Solar Power Stations vs. The O'Neill Proposal

From: Ian Woollard ian.woollard@...

>"O'Neill tried to finess around that by using lunar resources; and
>Criswell is doing much the same trick.
..........
>I think in the long run that O'Neill's idea is good, and Criswell's
>option is even cheaper,

Both Criswell and O'Neill want to pay for space activities by selling electricty to earth. Both require use of lunar regolith. The difference is O'Neall wants large numbers of people living and building things in space. It seems they are at two points on the same line of progress.

One possible sequence:

1. Low earth orbit SPS; built on earth and launched. This is absolutely required for validating technolgy and developing expertise. I expect upfront cost will be multiples of what some may now believe. (In other words, typical of many things.) After refinements, the economics become more favorable.

2. Development of robust equipment for processing lunar regolith. Llunar power transmission infrastructure can now be built without tremendous infusions of terrain mass.

Hopefully the lunar environment presents no show-stopping hurdles. Probably lunar dust will coat the solar collectors, reducing efficiency, and drive up costs. (What if charged dust gets kicked up every lunar day/ night cycle?)

Some technologies, like tele-operation will probably advance greatly between now and the advent of lunar mining. The time delay is quite short.

3. Lunar resources extracted in sufficient quantity and purity to manufacture good quality components. Until that time, maintanence may be a real problem. At this time mass drivers will become more common.

4. With mass drivers and maturing regolith processing capabilities, many big space construction projects become possible.