Helium-3 crisis today could finance lunar elevator

[cfrjlr]

Helium-3 is abundant on the Moon but very rare on Earth

There is a critical shortage of He3 today, due to two factors:

1) increasing demand for neutrons detectors since 2001 for cargo
screening at airport and seaports. There is also increasing demand at
research facilities.

2) reduced supply due to decommissioning of nuclear warheads in USA and
Russia

Reference:

The Helium-3 Shortage: Supply, Demand, and Options for Congress
Dana A. Shea - Specialist in Science and Technology Policy
Daniel Morgan - Specialist in Science and Technology Policy
December 22, 2010
Congressional Research Service 7-5700
www.crs.gov R41419

He-3 is currently selling at DOE auctions for $2000 per litre. Sales
of He3 in 2008 were 80,000 liters. There is reason to think that the
market could absorb 100,000 liters per year of He3, which would put
potential revenues at $200 million per year. As of 2012 DOE is
currently releasing 14,000 liters per year, and producing only 8,000
liters per year.

Alternative terrestrial sources are scarce and non-viable. For
example, extracxting He3 from natural gas would cost $12,000 per liter.

If this were the only revenue source for a lunar elevator it would be
ample to service the debt on $800 million to build it. Payback in just
a few years

The commercial amount of He3 needed would be 10,000 liters per year to
100,000 liters per year. He3 density is about 0.1g per liter at NTP, so
we need about 1kg to 10 kg of the gas per year. At average concentration
about 150,000 tons of regolith per year would need to be processed.
About 500 tons per day, 22 tones per hour

http://tinyurl.com/aqqa8hs

-----------

About lunar elevators:

For a one time capital cost of US$800Million 2012, a lunar elevator can
be built today using existing available materials. This first
generation lunar elevator will softly deliver an infinite number of
payloads to the lunar surface, each weighing 100 kg, and retrieve the
same amount of material from the lunar surface. The alternative of
using chemical rockets to soft land on the Moon is prohibitively
expensive.

The first generation lunar elevator kit weighs 11,000 kg and can be
delivered today to the Lunar L1 lagrange libration location, using a
single Delta-IV (or Ariane-V) launch. From there the tether is
unreeled upwards and downwards. The lower end anchors itself into
the lunar soil using robotic penetrators.

The lunar elevator will cheaply transport oxygen from the Moon to Low
Earth Orbit where it can refuel tugs to take satellites from LEO to GEO,
a significant revenue source. This reduces the cost of launches to GEO
by a factor of Eight times.

In the 1980's I was also a big fan of mass drivers for lunar
development and met Gerard O'Neill 3 times (RIP).

In the last couple of years it has become apparent to me that a lunar
elevator is orders of magnitude cheaper than electromagnetic mass
drivers, and offers several additional capabilities which EM mass
drivers do not. For example, lunar elevator can soft land payloads on
to the lunar surface, an EM mass driver cannot. This is a game
changing cost saving capability.

We can continue the process of developing lunar elevators very
inexpensively, by building on existing technology demonstration for
space tethers.

A recent data point:is the ESA YES2 mission which flew in 2007 ... they
deployed a 31.7 km Dyneema tether, the mission cost under 3 million
Euros, including student labor ... estimate Eu15 million at commercial
prices..... a lunar elevator deployer is the same technology, would need
to be scaled up somewhat ... the system design and complexity would be
much the same as YES2.

The YES2 leader is confident that a 100 km tether can be deployed using
existing spare hardware, at similar (perhaps lower) cost, in about a
year.

Liftport estimate $800 million for the first lunar elevator prototype.
The cost of the Zylon tether material is $20 million, the rest is
deployment and control systems.

Liftport welcome more detailed analysis on the cost ... without funding
our analysis has been limited. Liftport suggested to NIAC a study but
they declined.

Prior to establishing ISRU technology, a lunar elevator can provide
rapid pay back in terms of scientific exploration of the lunar surface
more cheaply than chemical rockets.

We are happy to address any comments or questions you might have, within
our limited resources.




--
cfrjlr

[Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]]

cfrjlr <cfrjlr....@spacebanter.com> wrote:
[[proposal for lunar He-3 mining]]

> The commercial amount of He3 needed would be 10,000 liters per year to
> 100,000 liters per year. He3 density is about 0.1g per liter at NTP, so
> we need about 1kg to 10 kg of the gas per year. At average concentration
> about 150,000 tons of regolith per year would need to be processed.
> About 500 tons per day, 22 tones per hour

[[...]]

>
> http://tinyurl.com/aqqa8hs
>
> -----------
>
> About lunar elevators:
>
> For a one time capital cost of US$800Million 2012, a lunar elevator can
> be built today using existing available materials.

[[...]]

Some issues to tackle:
* How do you go about mining that regolith? How do you power that
mining equipment? I rather doubt there's any space-qualified
mining equipment available off-the-shelf, so what's the R&D budget
to develop & debug it?
* The Apollo experience says that lunar dust gets *everywhere* and that
it's highly abrasive. How do you fix that mining equipment when
(not "if", but "when") it breaks? Do you have people on-site on the
moon? If so, what's the budget for maintaining them?
* Precisely how do you go about extracting the He-3 from the regolith?
What's the R&D budget to develop and debug this extraction process?

I fear the elevator is only a small part of the overall budget. :(

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
on sabbatical in Canada starting August 2012
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam

[Robert Heller]

I would guess Robert Heinlein was correct: the Moon IS a harsh mistress...

>

--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

[Cra...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, November 25, 2012 10:02:11 AM UTC-5, cfrjlr wrote:
> Helium-3 is abundant on the Moon but very rare on Earth

What if, instead, you put that elevator money into a nuclear reactor to breed large quantities of tritium and then let the tritium decay into helium-3?

You could avoid all the expense of going to the moon and, if the He3 market crashes, you still have a power-generating nuclear reactor. A space elevator without a market is in a vulnerable position.

Mike Miller

[Richard]

On 11/25/2012 9:02 AM, cfrjlr wrote:
> Helium-3 is abundant on the Moon but very rare on Earth
>
>

> Liftport estimate $800 million for the first lunar elevator prototype.
> The cost of the Zylon tether material is $20 million, the rest is
> deployment and control systems.
>

$800 million?
Seems outrageously low.
I thought the Lunar Lander first cost estimate was about that.
In 1960 dollars!