Construction Shack
Ares rockets with about 70 to 80 tons payload capacity will orbit finished hard modules and their ETs.  Might need advanced SRBs to get the ETs in orbit, about 250 miles up, and a stretched ET with more propellant and a main engine module with four RS-68s or SSMEs. 
Ares ETs and hard modules will be assembled in orbit at a manned space station by space walking humans and robots.  An nuclear electric ion drive module will propell the finished station to L5.  It will take months to spiral out to L5.  Humans will travel to the shack in CEV based rocket systems like those envisoned for our return to the Moon.  Inflatable modules will expand the living and work volume of the construction shack. 

Mass drivers on the Moon will launch ten ton modules with silane/LUNOX thrusters for  precise navigation and deceleration into mass catchers stationed at L5 that were propelled there by NEP.  The modules will contain metals refined on the Moon, finished parts for robots and machine tools to be assembled at the construction shack, raw regolith ( for radiation shielding and more) and glass-glass composites all produced on the Moon.  The modules will be cannibalized. 

The construction shack will be expanded with these lunar materials and products until large scale building of habitat, robots, SPS, asteroid mining ships and fleets of ships to Mars is possible.  At the construction shack, solar energy is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  There will be no need to shut down during the long lunar night, although lunar industry could eventually build rings of solar power plants around the Moon for constant power.  

Large rotating trussworks of steel, titanium, aluminum and glass-glass composites will be built, similar to giant reflector telescopes with foil or sheet metal parabolic reflectors aimed at the Sun to heat solar furnaces that materials are smelted in.  Rotation for "artificial G" will be necessary to keep molten materials from floating away; however, there will also be weightless platforms where containerless manufacturing is applied. 

Robots will be teleoperated by crews in the shack and by Earthside control centers around the world linked by internet for 24 hour a day production. 



        David A. Dietzler, 2007