JohnHunt
07-23-2010, 01:15 AM
It's not real easy to find it on the web but it appears to me that the ROxygen and PILOT ISRU experiments that have been done is able to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 660 to 1,000 kg of oxygen per year. This wouldn't be enough oxidizer to get a lunar ascender back into lunar orbit much less providing enough oxidizer for an Earth Departure Stage (EDS) and the accelerations and decelerations around the Earth & Moon.
However, from this document (http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0005/files/SandersDuke2005.pdf), it appears as though it ultimately comes down to a matter of power. I am getting the feeling that an ISRU-Oxygen system is going to need a nuclear reactor if it is going to produce enough oxygen to fuel cis-lunar transport. That complicates things. Because if there were an accident which caused a nuclear explosion...we all know what would happen next (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMEZuaguuCU)!
However, from this document (http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0005/files/SandersDuke2005.pdf), it appears as though it ultimately comes down to a matter of power. I am getting the feeling that an ISRU-Oxygen system is going to need a nuclear reactor if it is going to produce enough oxygen to fuel cis-lunar transport. That complicates things. Because if there were an accident which caused a nuclear explosion...we all know what would happen next (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMEZuaguuCU)!