Early Lunar Self-Support

[JohnHunt]

Achieving a fully self-sufficient lunar colony would be challenging but not impossible. However, self-support (e.g. producing ones own life-support supplies) could be achieved from the very first manned landing. Doing so could largely eliminate the need to return astronauts from the Moon and so the colony would continue to grow steadily.

"Self-sufficient" means that you don't need any new supplies to be sent to you from somewhere else. "Self-support" means that you are able to provide for yourself such that external support is significantly reduced.

So, imagine if you have a scenario where landers are sent to the moon with equipment, rovers, and tele-operated robonauts. They set up solar panels, connect cables, further explore, and then begin extracting and purifying lunar water ice. This water is electrolyzed thereby producing oxygen. A lunar greenhouse is assembled and covered and the water pumped in so that the plants begin to grow.

Next, send down the first astronauts. They already have enough air, water, and food to last them for a month. During that month, they repair equipment so as to ensure that the teleoperators keep working the equipment and producing enough air and water. The astronauts probably take over the direct, indoor growing and harvesting of the food.

A critical point is that the systems set up recycle the oxygen, water, and they compost plant material and process and use their own "manure". The result is that the amount that you have to input from lunar ice isn't so great. So they keep up with those inputs indefinitely.

If solar panels on Spirit and Opportunity can last for as long as they did, then probably fixed solar panels on the Moon would probably last longer. Spare parts could be delivered from the Earth on occasion.

If the astronauts lived sufficiently below ground then the radiation would not be a significant factor. If they kept up a vigorous exercise program then their bone and muscle health could be kept up.

My point is that the astronauts would not necessarily have to return to Earth any time soon. The lunar population could continue to grow each time a new astronaut were to arrive.

Although not fully self-sufficient, a good size colony could be grown provided that the costs to land humans on the Moon were a fair bit better than during the Apollo era.

[Spaniard]

Yes. I see that this is the way.
Add modular robots, for easy repair. Indirect self-replication. Rapid prototyping...

This areas will develop faster than rockets, so the way to develop is to use so local resources as we could
Sooner than later we could reach fully selfreplication of versatile robots and group control using "hive IA". We this time was reached, space industrialization will be fast and "easy".

[JohnHunt]

Does anyone know the answers to these questions?

- What are the metal working machines necessary to make basic metal parts including other metal working machines?
- Can parts of those machines be interchangable so as to limit payload mass for the first machines (e.g. One motor for all the machines)?
- What would be the likely source for cutting edges? (e.g. might rock edges be harder than iron)
- Can you say anything about how one might go about obtaining metal from lunar sources? For example, lava contains iron but it is not pure iron. Solar concentrators can get hot enough to burn rock.
- Is there any other major issue which I haven't considered?

[joertexas]

Does anyone know the answers to these questions?

- What are the metal working machines necessary to make basic metal parts including other metal working machines?
- Can parts of those machines be interchangable so as to limit payload mass for the first machines (e.g. One motor for all the machines)?
- What would be the likely source for cutting edges? (e.g. might rock edges be harder than iron)
- Can you say anything about how one might go about obtaining metal from lunar sources? For example, lava contains iron but it is not pure iron. Solar concentrators can get hot enough to burn rock.
- Is there any other major issue which I haven't considered?

I can take a shot at these questions:

1. The basic machines would be a CNC 3 axis mill, a bending brake, and a press. That should be enough to make other machines.

2. No.

3. High speed steel, carbide, tungsten.

4. There would be furnaces similar to what we have here. The heat sources will have to be different, but the basic process is the same.

5. The moon is nothing like any environment we've explored before, and certainly nothing like we've ever tried to produce anything in before. One of the objectives for the ongoing Moon Shot project is to take experimental manufacturing facilities to the moon for onsite testing.

JR

[sgeos]

Is there enough carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc to grow plants on the moon with native resources? Plants cannot synthesize elements. It seems to me that a lot of things we take for granted here on earth would need to shipped to moon to set up a self sufficient base.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Is there enough carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc to grow plants on the moon with native resources? Plants cannot synthesize elements. It seems to me that a lot of things we take for granted here on earth would need to shipped to moon to set up a self sufficient base.

This is the question I want answered. Oxygen was never a strong tether holding humanity to Earth. Oxides exist is high numbers throughout the solar system. However Nitrogen and Carbon are less abundant. I would like to know what trace elements can be found in the Lunar Polar ice. Decent quantities of trace elements such as ammonia would go far in cutting other tethers that hold humanity to Earth.

Perhaps one reason the government(s) seem to be dragging their feet on beyond Earth orbit human habitation is the high possibility for new nations to spring up. Once the seed of self sufficiency matures... the sky is no longer the limit.

[JohnHunt]

http://www.universetoday.com/76329/water-on-the-moon-and-much-much-more-latest-lcross-results/

According to the above post, carbon monoxide was at a higher concentration than even water in the LCROSS ejects. I find this hard to believe but there it is. So carbon is not a problem given that the ejecta contained 5.6% water.

Nitrogen-bearing compounds are lower on the list but present. I am having difficulty finding the ppm for the composition of lunar ice but will keep searching.

Still, for a manned base that provides much of it's own volatiles, a single delivery of nitrogen would provide a base that recycles with months if not years of nitrogen.

[JohnHunt]

Joe, Thank you especially for your 5-point response.

Regarding electronics, I think that there are three options:
- develop the capability to produce 1950s type of electronics (e.g. resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes, etc),
- develop the capacity to refine silicone, etching, etc to be able to produce our own integrated circuits,
- ship a whole bunch of basic processor chips which could last for decades or even centuries before the last one breaks down. By then, civilization should be able to produce their own integrated circuits.

Do you guys think one approach over another is best?

[sgeos]

I think you send a starter kit and work toward some form of self sufficiency. This could eventually mean building your own (electronics or whatnot) if you have the materials. It could also mean working with what you have to make something else at a competitive price and trading for whatever you cannot readily make.

[JohnHunt]

Interesting. Certainly true.

However, I wasn't thinking about self-sufficiency in the economic sense but from the technic sense. When one purchases an insurance policy, that investment doesn't produce new revenue. Rather, you need revenue from some other source in order to pay for the insurance policy. So you bring up a useful point -- any colonizing attempt should produce revenue in order to grow.

If, God forbid, an existental catastrophe occured on Earth and that "market" were to disappear, the colony would need to be completely independent (not critically interdependent) and the colony would shift from an economic growth mode to just a survival-on-it's-own mode. To do so, it would need to be able to satisfy all it's needs independent of Earth. It could supply it's major life-support needs and so have extended stay capabilities. But for long-term survival, it would need to be able to supply all of it's critical needs such as micronutrients and similar technologies.

[sgeos]

In the long run technical self sufficiency and economic self sufficiency converge. If you try to force the technical stuff with subsidies, you undermine your capital base and stunt long term growth. North Korea is an excellent example. Believe it or not, there was a time when North Korea had an awesome productive capability. Such is the communist command economy.

Any sort of colony must produce some sort of subjective wealth to be sustained in the long run, even if it is only entertainment value. If it is generating wealth, you go back the question of what to do with the profits. Give them to the owners (shareholders), give them to the employees, or reinvest. Obviously reinvesting is conducive to rapid expansion, but people do like to get paid.

At this point, I think selling power and communications to the people on Earth is where the money is going to be. Same old stuff... just bigger and fancier.

An existental catastrophe on Earth will occur eventually. It is simply a matter of what and when. A large enough volcanic event could change atmospheric and ocean chemistry while simultaneously blocking out the sun. Maybe the future denizens of Earth will have unfathomable mad skills, but I think that would be a big game over at this stage of the game.

[joertexas]

Joe, Thank you especially for your 5-point response.

Regarding electronics, I think that there are three options:
- develop the capability to produce 1950s type of electronics (e.g. resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes, etc),
- develop the capacity to refine silicone, etching, etc to be able to produce our own integrated circuits,
- ship a whole bunch of basic processor chips which could last for decades or even centuries before the last one breaks down. By then, civilization should be able to produce their own integrated circuits.

Do you guys think one approach over another is best?

We would have to import everything until the industrial capacity becomes available to produce said items locally. So, the third option is the most likely to happen, IMO.

JR

[JohnHunt]

If you try to force the technical stuff with subsidies, you undermine your capital base and stunt long term growth.

I am breaking the issue into two parts. There is the self-sufficiency in order to ensure survival when you can get nothing from Earth -- no subsidies, no life support, no raw or manufactured material, no nothing because everyone there is dead!

Then there is economic survival and vigor. You can be vigorous and yet die if you are not technically self-sufficient in the event of the extinction of life on Earth.

What I am saying is that we should do whatever it takes to achieve a technologically independent colony as a back-up to Earth. This should be done after we first return to the Moon and as soon as possible. In order to speed things, I would say that this should be done largely with subsidies because (strangely) there isn't much of a market in the survival of humanity. It must be someone else's problem.

Now, right after we achieve technologic self-sufficiency, then the subsidies stop and the base economically sustains itself by producing something of value. I would guess that it would be water from lunar ice to sell as fuel to NASA and those who would like a boost from LEO to GEO.

Now, my argument at the beginning of this thread is that there is not a great distance between extended stays on the lunar surface based up producing more life support than is consumed and full self-sufficiency. I may be ignorant about what all it takes to be completely self-sufficient though.

When humans presumably first crossed the Bering Straits, they didn't survive based upon commerce with Eastern Russia. Rather, they lived off the land. They didn't stop to think of it, but they had easy access to several critical life-sustaining factors such as:
- protection from vacuum,
- atmospheric protection from cosmic rays,
- protection from extreme temperatures,
- air
- water
- food (animals, vegetables, and fruits) and the substances which supported food growth
- members of the opposite sex
I don't think that even fire was absolutely essential. Clothing and shelter were necessary in northern climes. They didn't need metals, glass, electronics or any such things.

Our lunar colonists will need the same things plus a few more due to the much more extreme environment. But I see a straight forward way to securing these things using technology within reach such as a solar concentrator which could be made from local resources.

Establish these things first and eliminate the absolute need for bulky resupply mission. Then future landers can increase the base's capacity to produce the most economically valuable product which I think will first be lunar water ice for a propellant depot at L1 for NASA.

After gaining an economic foothold, then operations can be expanded to other products and services such as circum- and surface lunar tourism, boosting satellites from LEO to GEO, servicing LEO sats, and yes, lunar-based precious metals, beamed power, and communications.

A large enough volcanic event could change atmospheric and ocean chemistry while simultaneously blocking out the sun.

I personally think that our own self-replicating technology is our most probable existential risk. Asteroid strikes and super-volcanoes are rare enough that I think we'll already have an off-Earth colony by then (1000+ years?). Besides, indoor marijuana growers don't need sun to grow their own food so long as they can trade with those who can produce fuel from petroleum.

[JohnHunt]

We would have to import everything until the industrial capacity becomes available to produce said items locally. So, the third option is the most likely to happen, IMO.

Electronics are so small that I could imagine doing a one-time supply of ten tons of electronics and I would imagine that you could have enough to last 100 years. By then, your colony would have about 2,000 people with enough industrial capacity to produce electronics in unlimited amounts. The same principle could apply to sealants, micronutrients, spare parts, space suits, etc. For example, Of 2,000 people, perhaps only 50 would need to be outdoors at any given time. So you only need 50 suits. Make them durable and maybe a thin, removable, reproducible cover to keep it clean. If each suit could last 5 years then you would need 500 suits to last 100 years. So that would take about five 10mT deliveries. That could be done within the first couple of years of operations. That would give an average of 1,000 people 100 years to figure out how to construct their own suits using provided instructions.

[sgeos]

I am breaking the issue into two parts.
We may want to fork this thread.

There is the self-sufficiency in order to ensure survival when you can get nothing from Earth -- no subsidies, no life support, no raw or manufactured material, no nothing because everyone there is dead!
Either everyone is dead or the capital damage is so severe they are in no position to help. Either way, your colony is self sufficient enough to make it, or it dies. In marginal cases, your colony may be self sufficient enough barring extenuating circumstances (luck based survival).

Then there is economic survival and vigor. You can be vigorous and yet die if you are not technically self-sufficient in the event of the extinction of life on Earth.
The two go hand in hand. You need a baseline productive capacity to achieve a certain level of vigor. In order to become more vigorous, you need a larger capital base. At some point, you have a large enough capital base to divert resources from your comparative advantage (we build structural support materials better than anyone else) to unprocurable necessities (food) in the event the market changes (existential crisis on Earth). This could mean sending harvest missions to Earth after a crisis. The speed, ease and chance of success are proportional to the breadth and depth of your capital base.

What I am saying is that we should do whatever it takes to achieve a technologically independent colony as a back-up to Earth.
To the extent resources on earth are limited, but relatively unlimited resources exist in solar system, people will eventually pack up and head to space when it makes sense to do so. The question is, will this be before or after the next existential crisis on Earth?

In order to speed things, I would say that this should be done largely with subsidies because (strangely) there isn't much of a market in the survival of humanity. It must be someone else's problem.
There is a huge market in the survival of humanity. A huge portion of the population has more immediate concerns (mundane survival in the modern world) than getting to space. Things like disposable diapers and fast food contribute to survival of humanity on Earth. The questions is, does it make sense to sacrifice the people on Earth for the people in the sky? If you care to discuss this, we should split the thread. I have a feeling it will be one of those long never ending stalemate political discussions. We may wish to agree to disagree on this point and focus our efforts elsewhere.

When humans presumably first crossed the Bering Straits ... they lived off the land. ... Our lunar colonists will need the same things plus a few more due to the much more extreme environment. But I see a straight forward way to securing these things using technology within reach ... made from local resources.
Humans have a track record of flourishing in increasingly unfriendly environments. The space colonization theory is all there, and given enough time and interest the details can be worked out and implemented.

Establish these things first and eliminate the absolute need for bulky resupply mission.
I think resupply missions will always make sense. Someone out there can always do something better than you, and trading with someone in a gravity well can make sense in many circumstances. Until there are factories on the moon, I think we are actually looking at plan D for things like electronics- import on demand.