Development of industrial operations in deep space would be prohibitively expensive if most of the construction and expendable masses had to be transported from earth. Use of lunar materials reduces the needed investments by a factor of 15 to 20. It is shown in this paper that judicious selection of lunar materials will allow one to obtain hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, helium and other specific elements critical to the support of life in large space habitats at relatively low costs and lower total investment even further. Necessary selection techniques and extraction schemes are outlined. In addition, tables are presented of the oxide and elemental abundances characteristic of the mare and highland regions of the moon which should be useful in evaluating what can be extracted from the lunar soils.


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    Title :

    Lunar materials for construction of space manufacturing facilities


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Conference on Space manufacturing facilities II - Space colonies ; 1977 ; Princeton, NJ


    Publication date :

    1977-01-01


    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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