A Rich Frontier for Science and Resources
The Moon offers humanity promising energy and mineral resources, plus new tools to understand the past and future of the universe. Its huge expanse, almost as large and North and South America, has been an untapped economic and scientific frontier. But new low-cost commercial rocket companies and private-sector robotics firms such as Astrobotic Technology put the lunar frontier within reach.
The lunar frontier has been dormant since the Apollo expeditions in part because they missed the frozen water, methane, ammonia and other volatiles hidden at the poles. (The Apollo crews explored only six tiny spots near the Moon’s equator.) The polar ice will be the economic foundation of the early lunar economy, turned into propellant to refuel spacecraft for their return to Earth. “Living off the land” by refueling on-site will cut the cost of Moon expeditions in half.
Lunar fuel later will be tankered to Earth orbit to replace propellant launched from the surface. Human expeditions to Mars – which are 90 percent fuel by mass – will become possible. Lunar fuel also will improve the economics of commercial communications satellites and solar power satellites. These satellites will be launched into low Earth orbit instead of all the way to high geosynchronous orbit where they operate. Earth-based rockets can put four times more mass into low orbit than geosynchronous altitude. Space tugs, permanently based in orbit and fueled from the Moon, will ferry these satellites from low to high orbit. Each rocket launch from Earth therefore can loft a satellite four times more powerful than now possible without economical space tugs.
Energy for Earth
The Moon is a potential source of two types of energy: solar power and clean fusion power. Sunlight falls on the lunar surface unfiltered by an atmosphere, continuously for 14 days at any one point followed by a two-week night. Solar cells might be created directly from lunar materials and the power beamed into space by microwave or laser. Beamed power could enable crewed spacecraft to use electric thrusters accelerate continuously during trips to Mars, Mercury or the outer planets, cutting trip times from years to months. It might be beamed to Earth receivers if the economics and technology work well enough.
The other great potential treasure of the Moon is helium3. Left by the solar wind over millennia, it may be harvested as a nonradioactive fuel for clean fusion power plants. Unlike other fuels that could feed fusion plants, helium3 fusion generates no neutrons that eventually make the reactor walls radioactive. Helium3 can be used in processes that generate electricity directly – skipping the steps of making heat to create steam to run generating turbines. The result is low-cost carbon-free electricity from a nonradioactive fuel. Fusion power plants can be small enough to power most sizes of military ships and merchant vessels, which now are huge polluters because they burn low-grade bunker fuels.
A single tank car of helium3 would fuel enough fusion reactors to power the United States for a year. However, very little helium3 is available on Earth – one limited source is harvesting it from the decay of nuclear warheads. Astrobotic prospecting robots will demonstrate the abundance and economical harvest of helium3, spurring greater effort toward the development of this new reactor type.
Understanding the Universe
Scientists are eager for low-cost access to the Moon. Its soil has been undisturbed by wind or water for billions of years, and so the solar wind has deposited particles that provide a record of how our Sun has varied over deep time. It’s even possible that the raw heat output of the Sun for the past several centuries can be measured directly in the warmth of the lunar soil at various depths. Knowing how the Sun has varied over time is key to predicting climate trends – the greenhouse gas levels in the Earth’s atmosphere likely are not the only factor causing the planet to suffer ice ages and tropical periods.
The Moon also can improve how we hear and see the rest of the universe. For example, radio observatories on the Moon’s far side are sheltered from the Earth’s electromagnetic noise. They can listen with unparalleled sensitivity, and in frequencies that don’t penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere.
Optical telescopes that see in the infrared bands can spot stellar objects that are invisible in visible light. However, the water in the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs infrared rays. Observatories placed on high mountains in dry regions can see some near-infrared features in space but still are blind in the far infrared. In addition, infrared telescopes on Earth and in space must be cooled down to near absolute zero – their detectors have to be colder than the things they observe. All space telescopes launched to date have carried supplies of liquid helium to cool their detectors, and when this runs out (usually in less than a year) the mission is over. The poles of the Moon have deep craters that never are warmed by the Sun, and are the coldest places in the solar system. Infrared telescopes in polar craters will have “free cold for life” – no worries about when the liquid helium runs out.
Astrobotic Technology’s Role
The company will help open the lunar frontier by surveying the Moon’s resources, delivering payloads for space agency projects, and renting out the first remote-controlled machines on the lunar surface. Astrobotic will carry out lunar robotic missions at less than one-third the cost of traditional missions organized by space agencies and executed by cost-plus contractors.
Astrobotic expeditions also will feed live video to the Web and television specials – with the public taking control periodically to drive the exploration machines in real time. This is another feature of the Moon; unlike distant Mars, it’s close enough to allow direct control of robots by people back on Earth. The time lag between giving a driving command and seeing the result in only three seconds, compared to 20-40 minutes on Mars.
