TABLE 5 USEFUL LUNAR PRODUCTS poses (23,27a). Table 5 summarizes some of the products we already recognize as being producible from lunar soils and the elements and oxides which can be derived from them. However, the refined engineering materials, their oxides, and alloys must be won from the common lunar soils using solar power and the minimum assisting mass (preferably zero for open ended growth) from Earth (28-32). This is not easy but does seem possible. Use of sunlight to create “gifts of nature” from common resources of the moon and Earth-approaching asteroids makes reasonable the possibility of very large scale growth off Earth. For illustration, mankind has produced approximately 7 E+11 tons of Demandite in the last 380 years. This corresponds to the mass in one 8 km diameter asteroid or the material tossed out from four or five 4 km (radius) craters on the moon. There are thousands of kilometer size lunar craters and asteroids. A 4 km (radius) crater would be invisible to the naked eye from Earth. Conversely, our use of some terrestrial minerals already exceeds the known rate at which they are created by natural terrestrial processes such as hydrotheraml leaching and deposition in rift zones (4,6). The raw and beneficiated lunar minerals and glass contain approximately 90% of the elements which make up U.S. Demandite if the fuel carbon is excluded (line 1 in Table 1) (28, 31, 32). If carbon could be eliminated as a primary energy source then worldwide annual production of Demandite could actually be moderated as shown by curve C in Fig. 2. The two limits assume average per capita consumption rates of Demandite of 5 and 10 tons for a 6 B+9 people world. The lower limit is approximately the present day extraction rate of Demandite. It is sensible to realize that terrestrial and space/lunar industries face a common problem — eliminating the use of fuel carbon. Research and development directed to producing cheaper space power systems will be useful on Earth and vice versa. Given the possibilities of deriving known building and life sustaining elements (Tables 1 and 3) from the dead moon and learning how to dependably recycle the water, air (or equivalents) in space as is done on Earth, then our C + C + C's will truly represent net gain.
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