Interesting concept — producing NTO/UDMH on the Moon. First time I have heard of this idea. But assuming we can … the next question is “Should we?”

What are the consequences for introducing such chemicals into an area that people are living in?

We are already worry about lunar dust, and how to keep it out of living quarters, but what if that lunar dust includes small amounts of such chemicals? How much is too much?

What if it gets into the the water we think may be at the poles. Can we drink it? How costly will it be to purify that water?

It is already hard enough to deal with a lunar environment — what are the impacts of chemical spill on the Moon? Will we lose the entire lunar base? What is the cost of mitigating against a potential spill? Since this is a potential killer, do all the systems need to be “two-fault” tolerant.

That said, I don’t know if NASA’s lunar lander is designed to use NTO/UDMH (somebody please pipe up who does know) … but if they do plan to use this, there will be some nasty substances in the lunar lander rocket exhaust that is widely (and repeatedly) distributed around the lunar base.

In all cases, I wonder if NASA has thought about the potential environmental impacts on the people living at the lunar base.

I wonder if NASA has included these potential environmental costs/risks in their evaluation of alternatives for the propellants in the Constellation system.

– Al

PS — Again, I am a fan of LOX/Methane. This is just another reason.

Making nitrogen tetroxide — the dominant mass component of hypergolic fuels — may not be that much harder than making LOX. If you have nitrogenous materials at the lunar poles, then heating will liberate either ammonia or molecular nitrogen. Either can be reacted with oxygen to make NO2 (the latter in an arc, the former on a noble metal catalyst), which is converted to N2O4 under pressure.

Making hydrazine or hydrazine derivatives in space could be considerably harder. Maybe irradiate ammonia, say with a nuclear reactor? The efficiency would be bad, but it would be simple.

Donald,

I agree with you that a lunar oxygen industry has merit (and I don’t know enough about asteroidal oxyen to have an opinion.) To be clear, a commercial lunar oxygen industry would basically be a supplier to a monopsony government customer for a long-time.

BTW, I think there are a couple steps that are required before a lunar oxygen supply chain becomes practical from a business perspective. You mentioned a lunar base. That is necessary, but not sufficient.

We also need a transportation architecture that uses (and hopefully maximizes the use of) lunar oxygen, and a storable fuel to go with it (such as methane).

A problem is that NASA, or at least parts of NASA, appear to want a hypergolic based solution in the initial CEV and Constellation hardware. They make sounds about changing later to O2/Methane, but we all know it is much easier to build it into the system from the start, and that there will be a LOT of pressure to resist changing that once hypergols are designed in from the start. (Side note: I believe that hypergols were put back into the CEV when they were still focused on launching the CEV by 2012, and it became clear that O2/Methane could not be ready in time. Since they are now looking at 2015, hopefully they will go back to O2/Methane as the baseline.)

Next, we need the technology for storing and transferring O2 and Methane, in orbit, for long periods. I believe the short pole on the tent for this technology — and the easiest place to prove it out (other than in the tanks fo Constellation hardware — is a LEO propellant depot in LEO.

MY CONCLUSION: IF we actually had an operating LEO propellant depot — proving that the technology works to the satisfaction of the investors of grandma’s retirement money — and IF the Constellation hardware maximized the use of O2 and Methane — creating substantial demand for lunar oxygen — the development of a lunar oxygen industry at NASA’s lunar base would be a foregone conclusion. NASA would sound find multiple large companies competing for this business.

But without those two pre-conditions, just having a lunar base does not get you a commercial lunar oxygen industry.

As always, my opinion, and 3 dollars, will buy you a cup of coffee.

– Al

— Donald

Donald,

Actually, based on this statement of “decades” you are in danger of being counted as an optimist on commercial deep space compared to me. You can count me as a skeptic for commercial applications beyond LEO — excepting new supporting industries for comsats beyond LEO (such as what Orbital Recovery is proposing). If there is a successful commercial DEEP space industry by the end of this Century, I would be shocked. I think there is lots of opportunity in LEO, and in getting to LEO, but beyond is much more difficult.

I can get excited like the next space cadet about the prospect of capturing an asteroid for its material resources, but I don’t believe for a minute there will be commercial demand for deep space projects within my (currently) expected lifetime. Earth-based competitors are just so much cheaper .. and Earth-based technical advances (including nanotech) are much more likely to solve the Platinum resource issue better & cheaper than either asteroids or lunar PGM mines.

I am also highly skeptical (for other reasons) that viable Helium 3 mining industry, or a lunar power system, will happen in this Century.

Space solar power has a lot of potential, but it too is a long-term industry that depends on earlier breakthroughs in many other commercial space industries to become commercially viable. I think the U.S. government should conduct/support long-term R&D on all these potential industries, much beyond what is currently happening, but they are LONG-term projects.

BTW, I am intentionally distinguishing between “commercial demand” — which means commercial customers — and “commercial supply” to government customers. I think there can & should be “commercial supporting industries” that pop up to support the “government fort on the lunar frontier” — but I don’t count that as a 100% commercial deep space project.

My point in previous posts is there are many nearer-term market applications for “cheap access to space” industry to LEO, and that our priority should be to support a “more rapid” development of a commercial LEO industry. One way to do this is to use an O’Keefe/Steidle approach to going to the Moon.

There are many benefits of supporting development of these markets & industries, which can be measured in terms of the VSE metrics of economic, national security, and science. If we mix smart government policy & approaches with the American entrepreneurial culture and spirit, and in the potential of these nearer term industries, it should not take DECADES for grandma’s retirement money to start being invested in those industries.

Again – we have to be smart.

– Al

But, each of these markets will take time to develop. Each of them will take further time to incrementally reduce costs through second and third generation vehicles.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am convinced that humanity will develop LEO to commerce and a lot of it will be privately paid for. This, being “half way to anywere,” eventially, that will open the Solar System. Where I disagree with way too many space advocates, who look at the technical how and dream of what’s possible while ignoring the political and economic how, is that this will happen next year. Or, that anybody but an organization like NASA can skip some of the steps, and somehow privately proceed to the moon (or an asteroid or Mars) before we have private suborbital and then Earth-to-LEO transport supporting LEO industries (most likely tourism).

Privately paying for all of this will take time, lots of it. A few key government projects can create artificial markets (the Space Station) which might dramatically speed some of this up (e.g., COTS). But, even with that, it will still take decades (at a minimum) before the pool of grandmas’ money can be deployed on deep space projects. Until that financial breakthrough happens, deep spaceflight will always be a relatively small, mostly government financed activity.

I think we need to understand this because one of our greatest problems is over-promising. We say we’re going to industrialize the Solar System in our or our children’s lifetimes, and people believe us. In the best possible world, we could make a start on that — but doing it in this century almost certainly is not in the cards. To avoid disappoinment leading to political and financial burnout, we’ve got to be realistic about what we promise.

I’d love to be proven wrong, but I don’t expect to be.

— Donald

Donald,

I don’t disagree with your statement. The physics tells us that to get to Mach 24 it takes 64 times the energy it takes to get to Mach 3 (E=m*v-squared), which is what Burt Rutan accomplished.

Fortunately, there are some economically viable stepping stones between Mach 3 and Mach 24. For example, the Air Force appears to think that it makes a lot of sense to develop a launch vehicle with a reusable first stage (that goes to Mach 6-10) that carriers an expendable upperstage to pop things into orbit. This is called a “hybrid LV” and U.S. Air Force studies have concluded that a hybrid LV is the next correct step.

A Mach 6-10 first stage is an incremental and achievable step up from a Mach 3-4 vehicle. Operationally, it is much easier to get to Mach 6-10 than it is to get to Mach 24. Beyond that, the next incremental step might be a two-stage reusable RLV with a reusable (Mach 6-10 first stage) and a reusable upperstage.

There are other potential markets beyond “orbital tourism” that might drive industry, innovation and development.

Virgin Galactic has already stated that they believe the next big market is NOT orbital tourism, but point-to-point delivery on Earth. The energy required for this is almost the same as getting to orbit, but this is the market that Virgin is focused on — partly because “point to point” delivery is part of their existing business. Think of this as the “When it absolutely has to be there today” business (or it even “When it needs to be there yesterday” if you are sending packages from the U.S. to Japan). Nobody I know really understands how big this market is, but few people really understood the “next day delivery” market until FEDEX showed us all that a large market existed.

On top of that, if NASA were to go to a different architecture for exploration — of using a fuel depot in LEO — this would create additional demand deliverging bulk cargo to LEO in the lowest cost manner possible. This too is a market expansion decision — that could be made by one person in the right position — that can drive innovation & cost reductions in launch services … and is another market beyond “orbital tourism”. (NOTE: This month Boeing’s Orbital Express spacecraft, paid for by DARPA, is supposed to demostrate both rendezvous & docking, component transfer, and prop transfer technologies. I am surprised there has not been any commentary on this subect.)

On top of this, the DOD has a stated need for “Operationally Responsive Space” launch. More than ever since the Chinese ASAT demonstration.

In conclusion, the same basic technology that provides an “orbital tourism service” could also address three (3) other markets — “global same day package delivery”, “operationally responsive space access”, and “low-cost delivery of propellant to a LEO depot”. Oh yeah … it could also lower the cost of ISS cargo delivery. So that is five (5) potential market applications of one basic technology.

There are other potential markets that I have mentioned, that might be quite lucrative, but I will keep those to myself.

I do think your skepticsim is healthy, but there are some paths to work that could accelerate the process faster than you appear to think is possible.

– Al

— Donald

Because, while I don’t disagree with a word of that, and what Virgin Galactic is doing is exciting and I hope to be a customer someday, it is also close to irrelevant in the near term to the kind of space commerce that could “open the Solar System.” It’s like saying we’ve privately financed and built a littoral ferry carrying thousands of joyriders a year a tenth of the way to the nearest island and that it will lead to private financing of deep sea ships that can reliably deliver goods between the continents. This may be true, but in the real world it took thousands of years and a lot of military (government) help to get from early litoral shipping to safe and reliable transport between the continents. Orbital tourism for large numbers that might support the kinds of investments of “grandma’s money” in the kinds of technologies needed to support deep space commerce is far more difficult than suborbital flight, and probably a lot of time (and government money) away.

However, I don’t see that as skeptical or even pessimistic. I’ve always believed that anyone who truly believes that truly private deep space commerce is going to happen quickly is living in a fantasy world.

We are only fifty years in, yet already we have one truly private space-related business making significant returns to grandma’s retirement, several supporting industries, the demonstrated potential of another (orbital tourism), and the identified possibility of a third that has a currently small but significant and growing market (oxygen for use in space). We’ve visited the nearest visible island and we’ve managed to keep people alive near the shores for a year or two at a time.

Without exception I think, everyone here will (often violently) disagree with me, but the archaeologist in my background sees how difficult opening truly new frontiers (with no destinations at the other end) has been historically, and how long it has taken, and I view what we have accomplished so far as almost blinding speed. This is something that humanity has not really attempted since the end of the last glaciation of the current ice age, so it is something we have no modern experience in and no contemporary models for.

Economically self-supporting colonies in an extremely alien and difficult frontier without pre-existing markets will be a lot tougher than any of us (probably even I) think, but I also think we are making remarkably good progress.

— Donald