Re:UK firm to turn moon rock into oxygen and building materials
by bryanlarsen on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:15AM
(#25034981)
That is the vision of both ULA and Blue Origin. They tend to get overshadowed by SpaceX in the hearts and minds of geeks, but they do have a vision.
ULA's vision is "Cislunar 1000"[0], to have an industrial economy on Mars and in orbit, enabled by fuel production on the moon. They hope to reuse their upper stages by converting them into space tugs powered by lunar fuel.
The problem with ULA is that they don't have the resources of Musk or Bezos behind them. Rather than creating the future themselves, they need to convince someone (aka NASA) to pay them to create the future.
The vision driving Bezos to invest into Blue Origin is the idea of moving industry off of Earth and into Space where it can do no harm. The moon is a focus of Blue Origin.
Both Blue Origin & ULA use Hydrogen & Oxygen for their upper stages, so the article isn't particular useful for them. The best way to get Hydrogen on the moon is to electrolyze water, and that also creates oxygen.
However, this would be very useful to SpaceX or any other Methane-Oxygen based rockets. There's no known substantial source of carbon on the moon so Methane can't be synthesized there, but Starship uses 3.55X as much oxygen as methane, so if oxygen can be locally produced, many fewer refueling launches from Earth become necessary.
ULA's vision is "Cislunar 1000"[0], to have an industrial economy on Mars and in orbit, enabled by fuel production on the moon. They hope to reuse their upper stages by converting them into space tugs powered by lunar fuel.
The problem with ULA is that they don't have the resources of Musk or Bezos behind them. Rather than creating the future themselves, they need to convince someone (aka NASA) to pay them to create the future.
The vision driving Bezos to invest into Blue Origin is the idea of moving industry off of Earth and into Space where it can do no harm. The moon is a focus of Blue Origin.
Both Blue Origin & ULA use Hydrogen & Oxygen for their upper stages, so the article isn't particular useful for them. The best way to get Hydrogen on the moon is to electrolyze water, and that also creates oxygen.
However, this would be very useful to SpaceX or any other Methane-Oxygen based rockets. There's no known substantial source of carbon on the moon so Methane can't be synthesized there, but Starship uses 3.55X as much oxygen as methane, so if oxygen can be locally produced, many fewer refueling launches from Earth become necessary.
0: https://www.space.com/33297-satellite-refueling-business-pro...