I've been saying this for a few years now, check out some of my recent posts, it's the obvious answer to the human colonisation of space. Instead of the dangerous practice of lifting fuel out of the earth's gravity well, use the fuel that is already up there, to reach and leave escape velocity.

Attaining and leaving escape velocity in the vacuum of space is much safer and cheaper, doing this with fuel from the moon makes it so.

Yeah marvellous idea, but surely it would be cheaper to send up hydrogen in a balloon from the surface of the earth, it seems to want to head in that direction already.

Thanks for the improvement to my idea!!

Many years ago I read a scifi story, that proposed a big dome on the moon full of breathable air, that because we would only weigh a 6th of what we do on the earth, we could strap on a big pair of wings on and truly fly like a bird.

Let us make it so.

I've lost count of the number of times I've posted the following to /., well anyway another try with my idea, a further thought, if we can control robots 70 odd million miles away on Mars, why can't we control mining robots an average of 238,857 miles away on the moon, some estimates have put the amount of oxygen in moon rock at 40%, there is also aluminium in moon rock. As well as being able to create rocket fuel from water, you can also create rocket fuel from oxygen + aluminium.

The high cost to the human race's colonisation of space is caused by the complexity and danger of reaching and leaving escape velocity within the earth's atmosphere.

The Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive and dangerous white elephant, the reason the Shuttle was so expensive is, because of its complexity with millions of different manufactured parts, and the need to cover it with the equivalent of bathroom tiles.

There is another route, we can reach the edge of space no problem Burt Rutan proved this with Space Ship one, when he won the 'X' prize by reaching over 100 km twice in one week.

Yes the Shuttle was 'reusable' but in name only. They could not have turned that around in a week.

What NASA should be doing is creating rocket fuel on the moon, there is lots of water on the moon, use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which when combined make very good rocket fuel, because of Newton's third law.

Use the rocket fuel to fuel a space tug, use the space tug to accelerate and decelerate Space Ship one, to and from escape velocity in the safe vacuum of space, no atmosphere = no friction = no heat = no bathroom tiles and no foam shielding on the external fuel tank.

Less bathroom tiles + insulation foam = less rocket fuel = less pollution in the Mexican Gulf.

Once we can accelerate and decelerate space craft with rocket fuel that is obtained from outside of the earth's gravity well, space travel becomes cheaper by many orders of magnitude, ok the capital cost would be very high, but once the systems are in place, the number of human beings, living in space increases exponentially.

A good example for the way very high capital cost projects work, is the Panama canal.

Just discovered via Wikipedia, he died of a heart attack.

The chess player Bobby Fischer also died at 64 and it could be said, he committed suicide. All the news media said, he died of kidney failure, but he refused dialysis, it would be a weird coincidence if Hart also died of kidney failure.

Just for the record, what did he die of?

Regards,

Peter

We do not know how easy it would be, or how hard it would be, because my route to the human colonisation of space, has not been tried yet. It is possible to control a robot, millions and millions of miles away on Mars, think how much easier it would be to control a robot on the moon, only around 238,857 miles away. We build a system on the earth that can prospect for water on the moon, we build another system on the earth, that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen and store the two gases in separate tanks. Some of the mass required to build a water prospecting system and elemental mining separation system, can be constructed from the elements that constitute the moon's surface, this lowers the payload costs substantially much of the moon's surface consists of aluminium and oxygen. With the Saturn 5 design, we can have a payload of around 40 tons, this is our design constraint, how many Saturn 5s would it take to build a rocket fuel plant on the moon?

The high cost to the human race's colonisation of space is caused by the complexity and danger of reaching and leaving escape velocity within the earth's atmosphere.

The Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive and dangerous white elephant, the reason the Shuttle was so expensive is, because of its complexity with millions of different manufactured parts, and the need to cover it with the equivalent of bathroom tiles.

There is another route, we can reach the edge of space no problem Burt Rutan proved this with Space Ship one, when he won the 'X' prize by reaching over 100 km twice in one week.

Yes the Shuttle was 'reusable' but in name only. They could not have turned that around in a week.

What NASA should be doing is creating rocket fuel on the moon, there is lots of water on the moon, use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which when combined make very good rocket fuel, because of Newton's third law.

Use the rocket fuel to fuel a space tug, use the space tug to accelerate and decelerate Space Ship one, to and from escape velocity in the safe vacuum of space, no atmosphere = no friction = no heat = no bathroom tiles and no foam shielding on the external fuel tank.

Less bathroom tiles + insulation foam = less rocket fuel = less pollution in the Mexican Gulf.

Once we can accelerate and decelerate space craft with rocket fuel that is obtained from outside of the earth's gravity well, space travel becomes cheaper by many orders of magnitude, ok the capital cost would be very high, but once the systems are in place, the number of human beings, living in space increases exponentially.

A good example for the way very high capital cost projects work, is the Panama canal.

One route to sort out the mess in the middle east, is not to fight over useless desert, but to provide water to make much more land usable.

The founders of Israel had a plan.

    http://discovermagazine.com/1994/nov/bettermedorredth452/

Why they have not carried it out, baffles me.

If the Jews set this plan into motion they would attract love and respect from the Arabs and the rest of the world.

My reply to both of you, is the mouth parts of slashdot are controlled by the mouth buying parts of people who own things, instead of loving them. The fact that my slashdot story is shunted off to the subscribers siding, speaks volumes as to the principles that control Slashdot. anonymous coward don't make me laugh, the people who run Slashdot disagree with people thinking for themselves. Perhaps Besos with his billions is greasing Slashdot's rear end entry point.