Lunar Rock Collectibles

[JohnHunt]

The market value of the stolen sample of ALH84001 was estimated at about $933,000 / kg or about a million bucks per kg or $1,000 per gram or just $125 per jewel-sized rock. Apollo missions brought back an average of 64 kg of lunar rock per mission. A commercial program focused just upon returning lunar rock for sell as collectibles could probably yield between $200 and $300 million per mission (until the market was saturated). Elon Musk offered to deliver 1,000 to 3,000 kg of cargo to the lunar surface for $80 million

If 1 out of 50 people in the developed world were willing to pay $125 for a moon rock “jewel”, then moon rocks by themselves would pay for about 12 missions before the market became saturated. With the profit from these missions, many more lunar missions could be financed.

It seems to me that moon rock collectibles could play an important role in developing lunar commerce.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Quite so. There are all sorts of side businesses that can spring from Luna.

[joertexas]

Elon Musk offered to deliver 1,000 to 3,000 kg of cargo to the lunar surface for $80 million

Do you have a source for this, John? According to my calculations, the F9 can put @ 1,900 kg into LLO. The lastest price I have for a F9 launch is $59 million. If I need to change this in my plan, I'd like to do it now :)

JR

[Sam Fraser]

A now defunct company called Applied Space Resources proposed a private lunar sample return mission in the late 90s:

http://www.permanent.com/m-asr.htm
http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/moonret.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/01/weekinreview/01FOUN.html
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/moon_doggies_000918.html

A great shame it didn't work out for them.

[JohnHunt]

Do you have a source for this, John? According to my calculations, the F9 can put @ 1,900 kg into LLO. The lastest price I have for a F9 launch is $59 million. If I need to change this in my plan, I'd like to do it now :)

Here's a news report indicating 1,000 kg for $80 million.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/10/02/316680/spacex-offers-nasa-80-million-lunar-cargo-lander-service.html

However, somewhere else, I believe that I read that Elon suggested that NASA offer a COTS-like deal whereby companies would deliver supportive (to Altair) missions with cargo ranging 1,000 to (I can't remember the exact number). It was something like 2,000 but I think that it was 3,000 kg.

However, from the reports I can't tell if Elon was talking about using an F9 or an F9 Heavy. It could make a real difference. But then I really don't think that mating two F9Hs in LEO is all that difficult. We have a great deal of experience rendezvousing craft in LEO. So, how much could be delivered to the lunar surface if one of the F9Hs were an Earth Departure Stage and the other were a lander and cargo?

Joe, if you could calculate that for me, it would really help the discussion a tremendous amount. Because, with my amateur calculations, I have the idea that we can do just about everything with two F9Hs. That includes sample return, water ice truck, cis-lunar transport with aerocapture, cargo to lunar surface, and, I believe, even astronauts to the lunar surface using designs similar to what was proposed in the early Apollo days:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4009/v1p2e.htm

The Langly Lunar Lander would have been 1,463 kg. If water fuel was available from lunar resources then you wouldn't need to land the ascending fuel and so even the 1,463 kg mass could go down. In its place you could probably increase the number of astronauts, increase the safety systems, and/or perhaps put a shell on top.

Even at 1,000 kg cargo delivery to the lunar surface one could place robonauts, ISRU, solar panels, resource extraction equipment, lunar greenhouse...pretty much anything. Its just that you would have to make more trips than what a single Altair could do. But if the approx. $15 billion to develop and $2 billion to launch of the Ares V could be put towards F9H missions...Man! you could have about 12 F9H launches for every Ares V. Imagine what you could deliver with just one year's worth of F9Hs to the lunar surface. Off the top of my head, I think that you could have two robonauts with spare parts so that they could repair each other, lunar resource extraction equipment, oxygen separation equipment, solar panels, and ascending craft. At that point one could begin to demonstrate oxygen and/or fuel extraction and pick the low-lying fruit of returning lunar rock collectibles.