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We have a long road ahead of us. Teleoperated robots will be sent to the Moon first to do as much mining and construction as is possible. Humans will travel by rocket for a number of years or most probably, decades. The objectives will be helium 3 mining, supplying materials for solar power satellite construction, and rocket fuel and oxidizer supply for ships bound for Mars, an asteroid, or just for station keeping in LEO or GEO. Cycling stations will be a great way to transport large numbers of people to the Moon, and that means tourism. There will have to be quite a bit of industry on the Moon to do all this-strip mines, chemical processing plants to extract metals, glass and ceramic from regolith, mass drivers to launch materials into space, massive solar panel farms and nuclear powerplants, and large manufacturing and construction stations in lunar orbit, high Earth orbit and at Lagrange points.
Mass drivers will hurl payloads to lunar orbit, the payloads will use small thrusters to maneuver to a station in lunar orbit, the payloads will be processed to get aluminum and lunar oxygen-LUNOX, and nuclear-electric freighters will haul the Al and LUNOX to a station at L1. From L1, a tiny rocket burn will send the payloads down to LEO where they aerobrake into orbit. This will allow the fueling of taxis in LEO. Nuclear electric freighters will also haul Al and LUNOX over to a station at L2 to refuel taxis.
The cycling stations will be propelled onto their elliptical trajectories with solar electric propulsion. Someday, their could be dozens, even hundreds of cycling stations transporting millions of tourists to the Moon every year. A dream come true.
Of course, today we can only send about two tons to the lunar surface with a Delta 4 rocket. We have a long way to go. |
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