I thought the first product from the moon would be oxygen (7/8 the mass of your rocket "fuel") and that you'd produce it by reducing hematite (one astronaut scooped up powdered iron ore about as good you'd find at any mine on Earth.) Thus you get iron as coproduct; use it to make storage tanks for the oxygen you're producing.
I wonder if you could possibly get rare earths or any other moonproduct to Earth economically with one of these bad boys:
Delivering O2 to Low Earth Orbit by skimming the Earth's atmosphere seems possible but would take close attention to maneuvering to lose the right amount of energy and get into the phase space footprint of the catching machine.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 12.4 ms ] threadI thought the first product from the moon would be oxygen (7/8 the mass of your rocket "fuel") and that you'd produce it by reducing hematite (one astronaut scooped up powdered iron ore about as good you'd find at any mine on Earth.) Thus you get iron as coproduct; use it to make storage tanks for the oxygen you're producing.
I wonder if you could possibly get rare earths or any other moonproduct to Earth economically with one of these bad boys:
https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/us-navys-railgun-entering-ne...
Delivering O2 to Low Earth Orbit by skimming the Earth's atmosphere seems possible but would take close attention to maneuvering to lose the right amount of energy and get into the phase space footprint of the catching machine.
Lol. I'm going to patent a driving route to Walmart. I'll be rich.