Mining In Space

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to
sustain them in the New World. Rather they brought their tools with them
and constructed their habitats from local materials. Hence, he suggested
that the solution to the dilemma to which he referred required not so
much a shift in technology as a shift in thinking. Space, he argued,
should be considered not as a vacuum, totally devoid of everything. Rather,
it should be regarded as an ocean, that is, a hostile environment but one
having resources. Among the resources of space, he suggested, are readily
available solar power and potential surface mines on the Moon and later
other celestial bodies as well.

The Moon, Maryniak stated, contains many useful materials. Moreover, it
is twenty-two times easier to accelerate a payload to lunar escape
velocity than it is to accelerate the identical mass out of the EarthUs
gravity well. As a practical matter the advantage in terms of the energy
required is even greater because of the absence of a lunar atmosphere.
Among other things this ...

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of glass could be overcome by using glass-glass
composites. He also suggested yet another possibility, that of using Lunar
soil as a basis of concrete.)

One possible application of such Moon-made glass would be in glass-glass
composite beams. Among other things, these could be employed as structural
elements in a solar power satellite (SPS). While interest in the SPS has
waned in this country, at least temporarily, it is a major focus of
attention in the U.S.S. R. , Western Europe and Japan. In particular, the
Soviets have stated that they will build an SPS by the year 2000
(although they plan on using Earth launched materials. Similarly the
Japanese are conducting SPS related sounding ...

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