By fits and starts, governments and their industrial partners are planting the seeds of an off-planet commercial marketplace in low Earth orbit (LEO). The International Space Station (ISS) partner nations, China’s Manned Space Engineering Office and the Indian Space Research Organization are spending money on the hardware, software and technical expertise necessary for humans to live and work in LEO, and private-sector innovators are scrambling to satisfy their government customers.
The ISS is the biggest market in space today, but it remains to be seen if it will serve as a catalyst for a true space economy that can survive without total dependence on the deep pockets of public treasuries. A NASA-backed study released this summer raises—again—the possibility of a more lucrative market deeper into space that holds at least the promise of providing something more than services to sell.
As reported by colleague Mark Carreau July 28 on the Aviation Week Intelligence Network, analysts at NexGen Space LLC believe a serious effort to mine the Moon for rocket fuel, in the form of water ice that can be broken into hydrogen and oxygen, could send humans back to the lunar surface at a cost of about $10 billion. If robotic prospectors can demonstrate that the ice scientists have long known is there can be exploited, it could set the stage for a major new in-space industry.
“America could lead the development of a permanent industrial base on the Moon of four private-sector astronauts, in about 10-12 years after setting foot on the Moon, that could provide 200 [metric tons] of propellant per year in lunar orbit for NASA for a total cost of about $40 billion (±30%),” states the report, funded by NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist, the National Space Society and the Space Frontier Foundation. That, in turn, “might substantially reduce the cost and risk” of exploring Mars and other deep-space targets, cutting the number of heavy-lift Space Launch System flights needed for various scenarios by making the fuel to travel beyond LEO available in the Moon’s gravity well instead of Earth’s.
To read more, click here.