Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Mars or Moon...

Raoul It's Really Long Past Time You Read The Actual Plans
Mark Eby — (archived)

Your comments confirm that you have not. Your requirements are not requirements, they are uniformed speculation. Long Term ISRU would benefit from recovering water and I mentioned that recently. However, NASA and Zubrin's near term plans for ISRU involve shipping hydrogen to Mars to react with CO2 to make CH4 and O2 generating 10 times as much mass in potential rocket fuel as shipped. This requires a gas phase reaction requiring very simple automated systems by chemical industry standards not advanced robotics. There is no infrastructure required. You ship a vessel to Mars which is a complete automated factory which you can pretest on Earth.

You can not do this on the Moon because it's potential resource is water in low concentration in the lunar regolith in what is potentially a very hard solid mixture not a gas like Mars' primary resource. Your comments on needing advanced robotics with high dexterity most likely do apply there. Fortunately teleoperation is a realistic option on the Moon, but it is still far more difficult than sucking in a gas.

The worst thing about comments by you and Ken relative to this stuff is that the relevant information has been posted even if you couldn't find the time to go to the sources.

Regards,
Mark

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