Earlier, detailed work by the Lunar and Planetary Institute under NASA sponsorship (D. Criswell, Principal Investigator) had established that a chemical process plant on the lunar surface would be able to process at least 40 times its own mass per year.(4) The group budgeted six tons for such a plant, to yield in three months a total throughput of 60 tons, comprised mainly of an aluminum output of 8 tons, iron output of 3 tons, silicon output of 12 tons, and oxygen output of 24 tons. Such a plant could provide sufficient feedstock for a machine-shop to replicate in 90 days an additional mass-driver, process plant and machine-shop. The total installation on the Moon would be 37 tons. In the scenario of the workshop group, the lunar installation would be called upon to produce 33 tons of finished products in three months. The author had an opportunity to check the correspondence of that figure to the 6-ton mass of the machine-shop, in the course of a recent visit to Japan, and found that the 33 tons/6 tons rate of production assumed for the chemical process plant is well within current industrial practice on Earth. During the 90-day replication time, about four tons of specialized or labor-intensive conponents would have to be brought from the Earth to complete the replication of the facility. The liquid oxygen to bring that four tons from Shuttle altitude to the Moon is within the 24 tons of oxygen-output that the initial lunar facility would produce in that period. On commissioning of the replica of the original installation, the throughput of material into space from the Moon would be doubled, to 4,700 tons/year. Six more doublings, over a period of less than two years, would bring the total throughput to 300,000 tons per year, with operation only during the lunar days. That 300,000 tons of lunar material in space would be more than sufficient to provide the metals, glasses and silicon needed for the construction of 90% to 96% of the mass of one Solar Power Satellite per year.^^ The process plant and machine-shop located originally in orbit, and its replicas, would operate in full-time sunlight. The table below shows the figures for the process plant. Installation in space, to process initial ______throughput of 2340 tons/year_______ Process plant mass Machine-shop mass Habitat mass 29 tons 29 tons 12 tons Total mass 70 tons Outputs in 90 days: Aluminum 82 tons Iron 30 tons Silicon 117 tons Oxygen 230 tons
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