Russia prepares lunar program to recover energy resources

Russia prepares lunar program to recover energy resources
20:19 | 11/ 04/ 2006



MOSCOW, April 11 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is preparing to launch an ambitious lunar project which could provide access to alternative energy resources, a company involved in the project said Tuesday.

"The lunar project is aimed at recovering resources such as helium-3," said Nikolai Sevastyanov, the president and chief designer of leading Russian spacecraft-maker Energia. This isotope could be used to produce fuel when the earth's own energy resources become depleted.

The program could also be used to transfer environmentally hazardous, energy-consuming production facilities to the moon, the official said.

It will take an estimated $2 billion to implement the first leg of the project and another $40 billion to implement the second, Sevastyanov said.

The initial phase, to be implemented in 2010-2015, will involve Soyuz spaceships, Soyuz-FG and Proton launch vehicles, and DM-type boosters.

"The Russian segment of the International Space Station could be used as an assembly site for an inter-orbital space complex bound for the moon," he said.

The next stage, set for 2015-2020, will focus on the construction of a transportation system for ferrying people and supplies to and from the moon.


snip


http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060411/45586747.html

The moon as a production platform? The product needs to very valuable for that to occur.

It seems they are talking about production that requires huge amounts of energy, and also the production of fuel. So yes, if the oil runs out these products would be very valuable.

Funny how the Russians seem to be thnking about what to do when the oil runs out, while Bush and his gang just keep on making it run out without thinking!

What a novel concept....

At least it's better than invading other countries as a viable energy plan...

Ambitious would be a Moon base. And a station at L1.

mining asteroids I'll go.......loony.

"Hey there are really great jobs available mining
on the far side of the moon. The money's great but
the night shifts are a killer."

Robots would do such things, at least initially. Not to mention that He3 is a resource that is NOT found on Earth, in any great quantity, so how else do you get it. You can't manufacture it, that's stupid, for, due to laws of conservation, you cannot get more out of it than you put in, hence the reason Hydrogen Fuel Cells are not economical.

Also there are other things that are worth mentioning, Iron and Nickle, useful materials both, are present in great quantities on Asteroids, and unlike on Earth, they are NOT mostly locked up in the core of a planet many thousand of miles down. Zero-gee semiconductors and nanotransistors could be manufactured to as little as one atom per switch, making computers hundreds if not thousands of times faster than today's fastest supercomputer. Not to mention other possible energy sources, such as orbiting solar panels, not reliant on weather or a 12 hour day/night cycle. A space elevator would reduce the cost of sending objects into even low Earth orbit by a thousand fold, from well over 10,000 dollars per kilogram, as in the Space Shuttle, to a couple of hundred bucks instead.

Other possibilities include food production, yes you heard me right, food production. With peak oil upon us, we have to seriously consider the possiblity that mass starvation will occur, the reason is two fold, first, we have not practiced crop rotation on modern factory farms in years, seriously depriving soil of needed nitrates for crops. As a result, our food production is dependent on oil derived fertilizers to even keep up production as it is now, at a surplus, we could easily lose 60% of that production if those products can no longer be produced in the quantities that they are now. The second reason is that we have actually ENGINEERED many of these crops to more readily accept these chemicals over and above natural nitrates in the soil. As a result we would have to reseed most fields soon with pre-green revolution crops in addition to recreating "mixed" farms en mass. The problem is time, it takes time for soil to reassert its previousl nitrate levels, it could take a decade or more for some areas, a year at minimum for many as well.

Oddly enough, we have found, from experiments in space, that plants, even crops, have less trouble growing in space than you would think. Unfortunately, they would still need some gravity, but they do tolerate radiation a LOT better than animals, and they also can tolerate longer day/night cycles, depending on the crop, in addition to higher CO2 levels than what is safe for humans. They also grow rather easily in asterodal or lunar soil, this has already been proven. So, one possibility is to build relatively(to humans) space habitats for crops, they would have whatever is the optimal level of CO2 for the species present, in addition to total control of humidity, sunlight exposure, ect. to maximize output, in a torus like structure that rotates at about Lunar gravity level, just enough for the plant's circulatory system and root system to work properly.

Having these habitats built, remotely, I might add, by robots controlled from Earth, and then regulated remotely, probably located at Geo-synchronous orbit or so, they would actually be relatively cheap to run. After the initial cost of building them, most likely from resources already present in space, "importing" the yield from the crops could actually be REALLY cheap. First, each individual plant would have an increased yeild, in addition to this, these habitats can be built to be VERY large, kilometers in diameter, and would be, for all intents and purposes, almost completely self sufficient. With space built cargo transports, again robotic, to ship the food back to Earth, it would be cheaper to run than the current Space Shuttle program, and, at the very least, help alleviate the worst effects of Peak Oil. Just an idea.

I didn't even get into the problems with Global Climate Change and the disappearing of arable land here on Earth, again a problem that may require a space born solution.

your optimism leaves me speechless.

Truck drivers can hardly haul produce from California
to Canada and make a decent living let alone from the
moon to the earth.

You couldn't even transport gold or diamonds profitably
from the moon to earth. Besides the earth is awash in
unsold diamonds with hundreds of thousands of carats of
new diamonds mined every year.

As far as mining goes I'm in the business (on earth)
and it's hard enough to explore and mine metals and
minerals on earth and make a profit.

Metal prices have just risen to a profitable level
after a fifteen year slump.

As for He3 the only application I can find for this
isotope is as a super coolant otherwise scientists
are still trying to figure out its basic properties.

eg. Huang Y.H.

"He3 is one of the two stable isotopes of helium in nature. Because of its unique physical properties, He3 has many important applications in various fields. Until today there is no database or calculating program for He3 in a wide range. We made an overall survey of thermophysical properties of He3 and tried to establish an Helmholtz Energy explicit equation of state for He3 in a wide range of temperatures and pressures. In the first step, the work was carried out in different regions including compressed liquid, saturated liquid and vapor, and gas region...

My bachelor dissertation "Study on Thermodynamic Properties of He3 at Low Temperatures and Development of a Data Calculating Program" was awarded the ZJU Excellent Undergraduate Dissertation in 2003."

Publications in English:

Li X.Y., Huang Y.H., Chen G.B., and Arp V., Density Equation for Saturated Helium-3, 20th Intl. Cryo. Engr. Conf. (ICEC20), May 2004, Beijing.

Huang Y.H., Chen G.B., Li X.Y., Discussion on Gibbons' Equation of State for Helium-3, 20th Intl. Cryo. Engr. Conf. (ICEC20), May 2004, Beijing.

Huang Y.H., Chen G.B., Jiang N., and Li X.Y., The Computer Program for Thermodynamic Properties of Helium-3 , Proc. ICCR2003, 51 (International Academic Publishers, Beijing , 2003).

OK, first things first, exploration, I don't know if you know this, but for asteroids, its rather easy to find out their composition, some are almost 100% Iron/Nickle, others are much less, others rocky, others mostly carbon, etc. Unlike on Earth, where geologic processes and oxidization has hidden or made difficult the recovery of many elements, aluminum comes to mind, in space, precisely nothing has happened, these are not, to put it kindly, elements that are locked in complex chemical bonds, hell, some Asteroids are SHINY because of their metal content, to extract the actual elements from them to be useful to manufacture would be relatively easy compared to Earth based ways of mining. A few things to keep in mind, most of these objects in space are in free fall, micro gravity, You can literally drape a net on an asteroid, spin the asteroid slightly, to simulate SOME gravity, very gentle, let's say .1 gee, which would be, for a decent size asteroid, about 1 revolution every 2 hours. Anyways, drape a net over it, secure it to 4 primary points, then literally chip away the iron, nickle, whatever other element you want from the asteroid, and it would get gathered in the net. Then, when you are done, tie up the ends of the net, and transport the materials to wherever they are needed. This is a simplistic way of putting it, but you get the idea.

Another point, outside of the gravity wells of any Planetary or Lunar objects, transportation is CHEAP in space. OK, on Earth, to give an example, a trucker has to apply constant energy to get from point A to point B. The reason for this is really complex, but let's just say that gravity and friction are the biggest reasons for this. This isn't true in space, the freighter in my above example, the net carrier, would give off a SUDDEN burst of energy, a rocket blast, to, let's say for this example, enter a stable orbit around the Earth, all it has to do is provide enough acceleration to coast the rest of the way at the right velocity, there is NOTHING in space to slow it down, if the calculations are right, then it wouldn't need to apply any added energy to enter orbit, if the calculations are wrong, then a corrective burn is needed to get on the right course.

Even then, the cost for transportation ALONE is rather cheap, from one point in space to another. Now, there are exceptions, one, as you mentioned, are Earth to Moon and Moon to Earth transportation, and the reason is simple, you have to escape their gravity wells, and that takes a LOT of energy, hence the cost per kilogram in my previous post. Another cost factor is the human factor, transporting humans in space is expensive, no getting around that, you have life support systems, radiation shields, etc. to deal with. The point being that sending robotic craft to do these chores, initially, is MUCH cheaper, they require less energy, less maintenance, etc.

Also, to go back to my first example, the asteroid mining, I was NOT talking about sending Iron ore down to Earth to be used on here on the surface. That is actually rather stupid, we are NOT running out of Iron or any other metals on the surface of the planet as far as I'm aware of. No, I was talking about using resources that are ALREADY in micro gravity to build spacecraft and a space born industrial capacity. That is much cheaper than sending ALL the equipment needed for such endeavors from Earth to orbit, that is too expensive. Also, just another note, I don't know if you know this, but we wouldn't even have to send such robotic spacecraft that far away from Earth to begin with, just recently, we have found out that many asteroids are in a "resonance" orbit with the Earth, orbits around the Sun that "shadow" the Earth but aren't themselves locked to the Earth like the Moon is. In Astronomical terms, they get quite close, some even WITHIN the orbit of the Moon, getting between it and the Earth. Some are quite massive, and could be potentially dangerous in the future. However, they can also be quite useful as well, given their relatively stable orbits, and the predictability of space travel, we could, very slowly, but surely, nudge one or two of the several billion ton asteroids, some with high contents of Iron, as high as 90%, into stable orbits around the Earth, and then do with them what we want at our leisure, basically giving the Earth a couple more Moons.

In economical terms, think of it this way, for actual space development, to put it kindly, to keep things economical, you would HAVE to mine Asteroids if not the Moon. The reasons are as stated above, this is not a business with high profit margins, though Gold Asteroids(yes they exist) may be different. Also, I didn't even bother mentioning the FREE energy you get in space, at least from the Sun, unlike on Earth, solar power in space is the most economical form, build the panels and they will last for YEARS and provide megawatts, gigawatts of energy, depending on size. Hell, you can even use OTHER forms of solar energy for various processes. I do not want to get the wrong impression, these Asteroids most likely are NOT purely elemental, so some smelting would be required, but you already have an unlimited heat source for this process, energy is already there, the Sun, angling a few mirrors and a lens and you can have a smelter that will melt Iron, throw in some Chromium and/or other materials(Carbon), into the mix and you can produce several MILLION tons of high grade steel for use in anything you want, and it cost the total amount of getting the material there and building the smelter itself, no cost for the energy required.

Another thing I have to stress, most Asteroids formed in the Solar System because they FAILED to form a planet, so they do NOT have the layering that Earth does, with lighter materials on the surface and denser materials at the core. On an Asteroid, all those heavy elements that you usually have to dig down deep into the Earth to get, like Iron, Nickle, Copper, etc. are available for the picking on the SURFACE of the asteroid. It wouldn't even be called pit mining, except that is probably easier to control in a micro-gee environment, the walls would be useful to channel the material.