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Earth offers the capacity for aerobraking, and that's damn convenient.
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Given the metals concentration in the regolith, as well as the highly available oxygen and silicon, creating the raw materials for and building housing, spacecraft, fuel, etc becomes easier.
There'll be one helluva startup cost. You're essentially replicating a complete supply chain in a place that's hard to reach and hard to get out of.
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Which means if we are ever going to build the infrastructure for asteroid mining and processing (which is already in the business case phase at several companies) it is a lot easier on the moon than the earth. It's all about the outbound shipping costs from earth.
One heavy platinum-family-bearing asteroid could be worth trillions of dollars back on earth. That makes a business model easier to put together.
We're off-subject, but why go by the moon instead of shooting straight for the asteroid belt? Mining & processing will need to happen there anyway and it's comparable in terms of delta-v. I'm game for the asteroid projetc - in fact, I'd much rather see NASA head that way than redoing the lunar missions.
Like my Son pointed out to me that,
One of the things that they left behind on the Moon was The Apollo 11 lunar laser ranging retro-reflector array. Scientists and Schools have been shooting lasers up at the mirrors that they left behind, doing experiments off and on ever since.
Hey, your not judging me are you? I'm one who believes it can't be round or we would all fall off... just saying it's likely we will never know for sure
Gravity isn't dependent upon the shape of an object. If a flat plane exerts a gravitational pull, why would not a sphere? Or, more correctly in the case of Earth, an oblate spheroid?
Your lack of understanding of even the most rudimentary aspects of physics speaks only to your own limitations. Your failure to comprehend something has no bearing upon reality.
Hey, your not judging me are you? I'm one who believes it can't be round or we would all fall off... just saying it's likely we will never know for sure
If you don't like being judged, I have some bad news as to what I'm doing right now.
Hey, your not judging me are you? I'm one who believes it can't be round or we would all fall off... just saying it's likely we will never know for sure
You're kidding, right? Please be kidding.
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