Kalpana One design (was Rotating space colonies)

Not sure I can see where lunar outweighs asteroid material.

Infrastructure, there is none on the moon, there is ISS in orbit. Yes you will need to add the mining side of operations but on the moon you will have to add all the other infrastructure that ISS already has.

Fuel costs, the moon includes launching all raw material from the lunar gravity well to LEO or GEO or where ever the base is. An asteroid has nearly no gravity well, especially borderline meteoroids which is what we'd likely use. The moon does not have to have to be captured though, so small asteroids would have to be found, (which there are some known NEO candidates), and adjusted to Earth orbit. Plus moving a 50 ton asteroid from a 'fly by' orbit to an aerobrake and capture orbit would seem to prove far less costly then moving 50 tons from the surface of the moon to lunar orbit much less Earth orbit. Also the moon has limited rocket fuel on site, whereas asteroids can provide a much larger range of fuel options.

Diversity of resources, the moon has very limited resources, Fe, Al, metal oxides, likely some amount of water on the poles, He3, etc. And in order to get more you'd have to 'travel' to the site on the moon, since it would seem unlikely that one site has everything you need. With asteroids essentially everything is available, from water/ammonia based dirty ice balls to carbonaceous to iron and everything inbetween.

Gravity, there's likely an advantage for the moon in regards to gravity, all mining and extraction techniques include Earth gravity in their process. It would be assumed that moon gravity would not be much different but zero g probably would. Also astronauts will likely be better off in the lower lunar gravity then the zero go of ISS. (Though with a rotating section or station that could change to whatever g we wanted.)

Energy, unless you stay at the poles and use a tower near the 'peak of eternal light' the moon will have limited solar energy (~50%). ISS would have a constant energy supply. The lunar base, if not at the pole, would have large swings in temperatures through the month and high heating/cooling bills to keep the station at a good temperature through out.

I could be missing something though, so I'm open to new information.

Brooks

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