Re: US Intuitive Machines set for second moon landing in February

On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 08:29:57 +0000, Jeff Layman <Jeff@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/01/2025 04:17, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 11/01/2025 3:58 am, john larkin wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:47:04 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
>

Intuitive Machines set for second landing, looking to build a lunar economy
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/intuitive-machines-set-for-second-landing-looking-to-build-a-lunar-economy/

>
A "lunar economy" sounds silly. There's nothing up there but dirt and
radiation.

 
 
And a whole lot of helium-3.
 
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.2020-4001

>
Everything I've read about fusion power states that to start it an
immense amount of power is required. How are you going to get that power
source to the moon? And if you can do that, why not use that to provide
lunar power needs? Or is it that you're going to do something like
charge a large bank of capacitors from solar cells on the moon? How are
you going to get those capacitors and solar cells to the moon? And so on.
>
By the way, whoever wrote that abstract didn't bother checking it: "...
from 3He, fusion power can be provided to terrestrial electrical needs
and to interplanetary travel." Did they /really/ mean "terrestrial"
electrical needs? Or did they intend to say "lunar" electrical needs?
>
You might also like to consider a couple of comments from
<https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Preparing_for_the_Future/Space_for_Earth/Energy/Helium-3_mining_on_the_lunar_surface>:
>
>
"...Gerald Kulcinski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is another
leading proponent. He has created a small reactor at the Fusion
Technology Institute, but so far it has not been possible to create the
helium fusion reaction with a net power output."
>
"Not everyone is in agreement that Helium 3 will produce a safe fusion
solution. In an article entitled "Fears over Factoids" in 2007, the
theoretical physicist Frank Close famously described the concept as
"moonshine"."

The He3 concentration in moon dirt is estimated at up to 15 PPB, and
conjectured that it could hit 50 PPB in some places.

One would have to sift through a lot of dirt to get a gram of He3, and
you'd need robots, not human miners with picks and wheelbarrows.

Even if He3 fusion worked, mining it on the moon and shipping it back
to earth would probably be a huge net loser.

But NASA is in the business of losing money. They are always loooking
for ways to do that better.