You mean a real process like aluminum manufacture on earth:

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Aluminum.html

Every step where there is settling will take longer (or have to be modified to use a centrifuge on the moon)…

Or left alone with additional tanks to improve throughput. Or a combination thereof.

…not to mention the extra costs that will incur.

You can’t even say whether or not the “extra” cost will make aluminum production more or less expensive on the Moon.

Sodium hydroxide: on earth made from salt. However most salt mines are the results of ancient seas….the moon likely has no available salt and so you must import or find some way to create it. Sure there is sodium on the moon, just not in a handy form.

Cryolite(or Fluorite to turn into synthetic Cryolite)… Minerals that require liquid water to form(again not likely found on the moon).

Carbon (very rare on the moon).

Other problems :

The large amounts of electricity needed

Just making the aluminum for satellite manufacture is daunting at best.
And that does not cover all the other stuff you need to make a satelight (like oh copper wiring). This is why making complex stuff on the moon like satelights is not likely to happen any time soon.

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Aluminum.html

Every step where there is settling will take longer (or have to be modified to use a centrifuge on the moon)…not to mention the extra costs that will incur.

Could you please try actually reading what I write before you respond to it? I said “the plant _and the necessary supply chains_…”. It’s the supply chains and the necessary supporting services that are the killer — as I and others have pointed out repeatedly on this thread. High technology is very dependent on a vast web of supply chains and support services that ultimately involve billions of people and trillions of tons of structure and equipment. Take any piece of high technology out of the economic context of our global economy, try to make it in a smaller economy with smaller supply chains, and it will both be far less efficient in its production and operation, and will require a radical redesign.

But I forgot: space is heavenly. Space is magic. None of the economics we must follow here on earth apply, so why bother thinking about the dismal science? Just let the laws of voodoo apply. Just put a few astronauts in a hobbit hole on the moon, and soon we will have a thriving lunar economy! That’s all the economics we need to know!

“Units? I’ll assume metric tons”

Mass throughput ratio is a ratio: mass output per unit time divided by mass of equipment, which gives units of 1/time. So, for example above 1,000/year is a good target MTR for a lunar process, and above 100/year for the end-to-end supply chain (for the various kinds of overhead reasons previously specified).

“1. Why does your throughput requirement decrease as you enlarge the system?”

The MTR doesn’t much decrease or increase with scale. But the absolute costs do increase. The astronaut scale is two to three orders of magnitude too large compared to the market for propellant in earth orbit. At most a few tens of tonnes per year, which translates to about a few hundred kilograms of equipment end-to-end. A single useless astronaut, his spacesuit and his lunar hab would consume more than the entire mass budget!

“So every day SpaceX doesn’t launch a human being, DCSCA’s right?”

It doesn’t matter what SpaceX has accomplished, since DCSCA will always taunt people about what they haven’t done, regardless if they have plans or contracts to do so.

Regarding our topic of conversation, which started with Marcel declaring that the Moon would be a good place to manufacture satellites, I know of no one in aerospace or the satellite industry that has talked about the desire or ability to build satellites on the Moon. Building lunar colonies, sure, most people see that as doable, but sophisticated factories? Too far in the future to even consider, and not one of the reasons to go back to the Moon.

See, more incomplete thoughts

In what way was it incomplete?

…you drifted off to another topic before you had a chance to identify the supposed $5B worth of activities. Focus, Prez, focus.

frequentlyWe’ve had this discussion for months now. I’m not sure if it’s age or years of professional fabulism, but seems you’re going senile.

Not bold at all. I would expect anyone with business sense would come to the same conclusion.

It’s not a conclusion. It’s pithy truism.

As far as backing up my prediction, every day no factory is built on the Moon, I am right.

So every day SpaceX doesn’t launch a human being, DCSCA’s right?

You are the one that needs to prove the opposite…

Actually, I don’t, because I haven’t argued the opposite. Think you can get that through your thick skull?

Ah manufacturing uses more than gas and plasma flows.

Strawman.

Let’s say you are using the fluid to separate something.

I’d use centrifuges, as differential pressure increases as a square of the angular velocity and the outer radius. You know, like in a real manufacturing process.

Ah it is not NASA’s job to exploit the resources of the moon.

Strawman, and quite frankly who gives a crap?

What you and Marcel don’t seem to get is that you need to spend about 15.3km/s worth of delta V…

Floor starts north of 16 km/s if we want to go from Kennedy to a lunar pole.

…to transport anything from the earth to the moon in the first place and the moon is rather lacking in things such as tools, machinery, spare parts, labor, and certain chemicals.

Addressed that in my reply to Googaw. Floor starts on the order of $100 million per year assuming you’re sourcing everything (feedstock to tools) from Earth and you intend to scale production up to 1 percent of today’s total production. Also assumes that transport through LEO to lunar surface is reusable (or at least annual costs are negligible compared to the recurring bottom line).

This makes for very expensive import costs and very expensive costs in general.

“Very” isn’t a useful figure.

Ah manufacturing uses more than gas and plasma flows.

Let’s say you are using the fluid to separate something. Let’s say your product falls down to the bottom of the solution while a waste product remains floating(or vice versa). Less gravity means that the time it takes for something to fall will increase. Less gravity also mean that any effects of surface tension might be increased (i.e. your product remains at the top because it is too light to break the surface tension in lunar gravity). Also the change in gravity will affect buoyancy (i.e. a product that sinks at 1g might float in 1/6 g).