A copy of their first paper, which is published in Space Manufacturing 14, is here:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Affordable_Lunar_Base.pdf

And their (more detailed) AIAA Space 2011 paper is available here:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Bibliography/p/102.pdf

Not really. You are on the right track John, except for relying on the space tourism business to get you Beyond Earth Orbit. You better take a look at the math again on soft landing payloads at the lunar poles where the water is. Or you can just take my word for it.

There is no substitute for an HLV with hydrogen upper stages.

Take a look at my Plowshare in Space article here if you get a chance.
Regards,
Gary

However, again, time is of the essence. We date not wait for cautious business investors to feel totally confident of the low risk of a lunar mining operation. So I see an appropriate role for NASA to do what the businesses world cannot do:
1) Fund the development of a minimalist self-sufficient colony where there is no rate of return.
2) Establish the initial infrastructure to lower the hurdle to investment.

Giorgio, I agree that the permanent opening of space requires an economically sustainable model. And, granted, more people living in space means more chances for survival should Earth’s ecosphere be lost. However time is of the essence. Scientists are even now researching what are the fundamental properties of self-replicating chemicals. I fear that they will openly publish their findings thereby speeding the day when someone (accidentally?) creates a chemical ecophage.

So, we cannot afford to wait for the business model to emerge for a small lunar colony any more than we should wait for anything else which is important but not yet profitable (e.g. Apollo, Space Shuttle, Hubble, etc).

Now, having said that, I’m going to turn around and largely disagree with myself. I think that a good business plan should be part of the plan for establishing a minimalist colony on the Moon for two reasons. 1) A financially sustainable model will help the colony grow and so add to the couldn’t’ve redundancy. 2) To get the plan funded through NASA (i.e. Congress) in austere times, showing how it will eventually pay for itself will help get it funded eventually. Fortunately I believe that a good business case can be made based upon the telerobotic exploitation of lunar ice to ship propellant to Earth orbit for sale to NASA, the DOD, comm says, and tourists.

We are no longer in an age where it is sufficient for people to be cheerleading from outside the space center fence or to pretend they are vicariously supporting a space program by their general contribution to national productivity. No one buys that stuff anymore. If one cannot directly participate and see the benefits more directly then the usual Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon of space agency technology transfer, one has no reason to care. In telerobotics I see the potential for this kind of participation because, frankly, the suppression of the advance of space robotics in space agencies for the sake of the circular rationale of manned space activity has resulted in a general level of technology that really isn’t all that more advanced than the hobby robotics of kids in Japan and the current Maker community. And while there is a great amount of work that needs to be done, it is not work that, by and large, requires multi-billion-dollar facilities and an engineering elite to perform. There are a lot of problems that can be explored at the garage and university lab level. Indeed, that’s currently where most of the problems in robotics development are explored.

Certainly, one still needs rocketry to get to space and this remains a stumbling block to broad participation. There is today an obsession in the space industry and space advocacy with CATS. But, again, this problem revolves around an assumption of manned spaceflight. We, in fact, already have CATS. We have–for quite some time–had the technical means for $1000 and less-per-kilogram launch capability. We simply haven’t had that in a context that works for manned space flight and conventional giant Faberge Egg payloads. With telerobotics we have the potential to radically reduce the inherent value of unit payloads by virtue of the means to build value on orbit/on site rather than launch it all at once.

Launch costs are not high because there is some inherent flaw in the contemporary technology of launch systems. They are high because systems are engineered around an assumption of high payload values whose capital risks must be absolutely minimized. When you are shipping the Mona Lisa you aren’t very concerned about the MPG rating of the truck. And so it becomes impractical to develop low-cost low-reliability systems in the same manner of an ‘acceptable yield’ as is commonly used in industrial production. But base your program on a premise of telerobotically building value out there, unit payload values and criticality drops radically and the means to building viable facilities in space becomes much more tenable. This is the equation for feasibility and plausibility of space development that has long been overlooked.

Ultimately, passenger spaceflight is necessary for the settlement of space. But we face a basic problem in that, regardless of the technology, passenger spaceflight may not be self-justified for a very long time and will most certainly not be in any near-term. This is not a technology problem. That is the delusion common to those obsessed with CATS. It is a logistics problem keyed to the operational economies of scale of spaceflight systems. A lot of transportation never achieves a small operational economy of scale at a tenable cost. It takes a regional population of millions to justify the existence of a single airport for conventional airliners. What then a Pan-Am Orion?

The answer to this dilemma is demonstrated in history. I have long maintained that launch systems are more like trains than they are like planes. They have hugh minimum operational economies of scale and are engineered to link very specific destinations. If you understand this you see the historical parallel to the development of American frontier rail systems in the 19th century. These systems were not predicated on passenger traffic–because there were no destinations for passengers to go to! They were predicated on the access to natural resources to supply the established industries of the coasts. Passenger travel could never justify that infrastructure investment itself. It was subsidized by industrial transit. Comprehensive western settlement was keyed to the logistical support needs of the rail transit system predicated on resource exploitation.

The problem for space transit is that it has yet to establish a plausible industrial potential that would justify the capital investment in infrastructure necessary to exploit it. And that’s largely because even ‘roughing it’ in space for the sake of exploration and assay is untenable in cost when relying on humans. You see, the basic error of the First Space Age was that governments were engaging in Mt. Everest climbs for the sake of geopolitical prestige and not Louis and Clarke expeditions of exploration and ASSAY upon which later capital speculation could be based. Government completely blew its logical role. Now that government has effectively bowed-out of space almost altogether it is up to academic science, commercial interests, and–yes–hobbyists to develop the lowest-cost practical means to that assay and initial infrastructure development. And that means robots. Unless the Singularity hits tomorrow, space development will remain keyed to industrial development and settlement will be keyed to the logistic points established for that industrial activity and _its_ transportation. It will be some time before we have developed the necessary facilities of scale in space to subsidize routine human travel for any reason.

Thus I see current propositions of manned lunar bases as cart-before-horse. I see much more logic in the proposition of creating The Biggest Model Train Layout Ever–the kind you might eventually go live in.

Doesn’t it seem that a terrestrial bunker is something right down the line of what the Lifeboat Foundation ought to be doing — like right now? Organizations such as the Mars Society have their field station where they have volunteers spend summers. The Lifeboat Foundation could partner with the Moon Society since it could serve the purposes of each organization. Such a joint project could also help the Moon Society adopt a survival of the human species as one of its goals.

Launching such a project could also help in creating partners in the biologic community as collecting biologic stores at the terrestrial bunker would logically meet the goals of both terrestrial and lunar colonies.

I would like to request that the Lifeboat Board and Executive Committee consider officially launching a terrestrial bunker specifically with a purpose of preparing for a lunar colony. Launching a real project could also gain the Lifeboat Foundation good press and hence fundraising and member recruitment opportunities.

I think robotics is the key. Establish robotic systems that can build, repair and operate all the functions in a Moon Base, and with them test the systems needed for human survival and support, long before you think about building an enduring human base.

Once established, a bases air, water, food and clothing can all be continuously /recycled using carefully designed biological systems. Hemp for fiber, mushrooms for food and waste material breakdown, fish for food and fertilizer, and so forth. Plants can convert CO2 into oxygen and help clean the air by removing pollutants and provide food. Properly selected livestock can produce all the fertilizer needed for the crops. Mycological, bacterial and plant (lichen) organisms can process regolith (basalt) into soil and other useful materials.

Solar cell power is one alternative, but a rather bulky, expensive choice, requiring a large support structure and infrastructure to make it viable. It would be very vulnerable to even small meteor impacts and would be difficult to repair or replace. I believe it is wiser to have multiple sources of power rather than relying on a single technology/source. The new eCat technology looks promising, and there is plenty of hydrogen and nickel available on the moon to fuel them. There is also nuclear decay/heat generators like the one on the Curiosity rover, which put out power for many years. The downside to that is the radiation they produce and the fact that the materials for them are in short supply.

The biggest challenge I believe to a sustainable base or colony on the moon is going to be the gravity. All of the species of plants, animals, mycelium and other biological entities we would need to take with us have spent millions of years adapting to function optimally in Earth gravity. There are indications that people and even bacteria grow and function very differently in micro gravity. We simply do not know if plants and animals can survive, let alone thrive, in the vastly reduced gravity of the Moon. Things that live in water probably can do okay, but that is just what I imagine, we need testing and hard science to determine what will and what won’t do well in reduced gravity before we start planning a base where growing food is required for human survival.

Do you think about what you write?