This forward-thinking book examines how the exploration of space may eventually transform the global economy.
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"...a very readable and entertaining piece..." -- Magazine of Astronautics and Outer Space, 2005.
From the Inside Flap
Recently, the World Wildlife Federation declared that it would take the equivalent of two more Earth's to sustain our planetary population at the level of affluence that the western world enjoys. Today we live in a world of six billion people who are gobbling up our planet's resources at a tremendous and accelerating rate. The advent of cheap emergy in the form of oil has been the key factor that has enabled us to develop a planetarey civilization of unprecedented size, complexity, and comfort. However, that same energy is accused of altering our climate and at best will be depleted within a hundred years. Additionally, tremendous amounts of water and air pollution are generated by the extraction of increasingly minute amounts of nickel, copper, aluminum, and other primary metals from the Earth. In other areas, resources are strained; from the fisheries of the North Atlantic to clean water in India and China. Indeed, many in the environmental movement believe that we have gone beyond the limits to growth and that it is only a matter of time before the whole system collapses.
"More Worlds" is what this book is about. While in this solar system there are no more Earths, there are several planets, hundreds of Moons including our own, and millions of smaller planetoids that can provide resources for the betterment of life here on the Earth. This book will concentrate on the economic development of the world that is closest to us in space: our Moon. The author will outline a scenario about how the resources of the Moon can dramatically increase our planetary wealth, to help transcend our dependence upon oil, provide for a diversified energy and resource future, and provide the means to improve all of our lives. The technologies and resources developed there can aalso make the grand human voyage to Mars much more than what we were given in Apollo -flags and footprints.
This scenario is intended to broaden the participation in space efforts beyond the solely scientific approach that is the hallmark of NASA. NASA will be a vital contributor of space-specific technology and will be a valuable paticipant in the enterprise, but if we are going to actually develop these resources as an economic engine, the effort must include, to the maximum extent possible, the participation of private enterprise and more than a few government employee-scientists-explorers. The eventual goal is for the economic development of lunar resources to contribute taxes to the treasury and to help tilt the balance of payments (the ratio between imports and exports)to one more favorable to the United States. If we were able to fully develop technologies associated with fuel cells (Lunar Platinum Group Metals) and the "Hydrogen Economy", we would be able to use the vast resources of methane ice located at the edges of the North American continental shelf. Dropping our dependence on foreign oil would eliminate the dramatic deficit today between imports and exports. Recent advances in technology make this much more than just a dream. Indeed the Moon and Mars could become the testing ground for the full implementation of the Hydrogen Economy.
In the past 30 years since the end of the Apollo Lunar missions, a technological revolution has taken place tht has given us satellite television and radio, and a personal computer in almost every home in the developed world, connected to a global Internet whose impact is still growing in our lives. A profound digital divide has developed between Silicon Valley and the aerospace community to the detriment of aerospace. A simple example is that the code that operates our desktop computers is orders of magnitude more complex than that used in computers on spacecraft. This divide will be examined and examples will be fiven of how the dramatic advances in the world of silicon devices and the skills of Silicon Valley can help lower the costs of space hardware and enable The Second Space Age. It is even very possible that the first landing on Mars will come from a space ehicle that is built on the Moon. With the advances in tele-presence, computer controlled fabrication, and human jparticipation this may be the most cost effecitve way to open Mars for human exploration and development.
Lowering the costs of executing this vsion of space for the Moon and Mars is absolutely neccessary and we must look beyond the traditional NASA/contractor model to do this. In the past the U.S. government has provided incentives for entirely new modes of transportation.In the early days of the U.S. as a nation, canals were built to speed the transport of goods across the northeast. In 1804 Robert Fulton's steamship was given statutory support from the state of New York that enabled private risk capital to bring the steam age to shipping. The railroads were similarly enabled by government policy in the Railroad Act of 1862 to bridge the North American continent with bands of steel.
Early in the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt's administration and congress passed laws that enabled the construction of the Panama Canal brining the U.S. to commercial parity with the great nations of Europe. Succeeding administrations created similar incentives and passed laws to enable the rise of the U.S. aerospace industry that has helped make the U.S. the world's greatest superpower. As the 21st century dawns, we must examine these historical precedents and implement similar ones that do not bankrupt the treasury and enable private enterprise to enter this new domain. As the 20th century was the Century of Flight, the 21st century should be the Century of Space. This is a proper role for government: to foster, facilitate, and proide incentives to enable private enterprise to open up a new world for development. This is a role that transcends NASA's solely scientific efforts although NASA will be a vital part of this process.
There are many who would say that today is not the time to go to the Moon or onto Mars. It has been said since the end of the Apollo program that our national treasury would be better spent on education, or healthcare, or the environment. This argument did not sway the Congress or Lincoln in the depths of the War between the States when, in the midst of fighting for the life of the nation, money was spent and laws were passed for the completion of a "National Railroad", to bridge the North American continent. When the very future of the nation was in doubt, and thousands were dying per day on the battlefields of the divided nation, these leaders looked a hundred years in the future and provided scarce funds to enable a better day for their posterity.
For a nation to provide for its citizens, it must create wealth. Education, healthcare, and the environment are all noble areas to spend taxpayer money, but without new sources of wealth, very few of those noble areas can be addressed successfully. On the Moon, Mars and the other bodies of the solar system there is wealth to help power our civilization for hundreds of thousands of years. This is our task today to provide for our posterity.
This is why we need to go to the Moon and on to Mars and do it now: to make life better for all of us on the Earth, not just for today, and not just for a hundred years. The World Wildlife Federation was right; it does take more than one Earth to enable a prosperous future for all the people of the Earth. Fortunately there are literally millions of worlds just in our solar system for our use. This can be the best legacy that our generation leaves the world: a way beyond the limits to growth, and toward a peaceful and prosperous future.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good set-up, but poor follow-through,
By
This review is from: Moonrush: Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources: Apogee Books Space Series 43 (Paperback)
I found this book to be eye-opening and very persuasive in explaining the reasons and motivation for developing the resources of space. However, I felt it had poor follow-through when discussing possible implementations and scenarios.
The book starts off very well in talking about the history of energy, and how the rise of industry and natural resource utilization has directly correlated with the lengthening life expectancy rate and standard of living. The story becomes even more engrossing when looking ahead, and seeing that even with the most optimistic estimates, we will exhaust fossil fuels within the next 50-100 years. This sets up a very good case for developing the resources of space. Unfortunately, I found the author's arguments to be less persuasive here. First in talking about Quantum Dot technology for solar cells. This sounds like an exciting breakthrough to make solar cells more efficient and economical. However, when explaining why the funding was canceled, the author comes dangerously close to a rant about "lack of vision," etc. An informed discussion, including what competing programs Congress chose instead to fund, would have been more constructive here. I was also disappointed with the discussion of nuclear fusion. There's a very good discussion of how deuterium/trittium fusion may become economical within 20 years. There's also a good discussion of how fusion research over the last 50 years has led almost to a solution where the necessary high temperatures and magnetic fields can be sustained. Then, however, there's a relatively short discussion of how helium-3 would provide fuel for an even better fusion reaction, unfortunately it requires even higher temperatures and energies. Since helium-3 is a major hoped-for resource from the Moon, a better-developed discussion of the advantages _and_ problems of helium-3 would have made this section more credible. Simlarly with the discussion of platinum-group metals and other minerals from the moon. The author does an excellent job of explaining why they are useful for the hydrogen economy, and the problems and limits with mining them on the Earth. He also builds his case well for the abundant resources on the Moon. Then, I felt he got sidetracked with an overly long discussion of past lunar exploration architectures, and a proposed commercial infrastructure. This would have been OK, but then there's only a very short section on how exactly lunar minerals might be extracted, with an overview of work done by Wolfgang Steurer. Overall, I thought this book built its motivations very well with its discussions of resource limits on the Earth, but then failed to follow through by showing how extraterrestrial resources might be used to solve those problems.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Moonrush by Dennis Wingo,
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This review is from: Moonrush: Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources: Apogee Books Space Series 43 (Paperback)
This book is somewhat analogous to one that an enthusiastic promoter might have written about the California Gold Rush in 1809 instead of in 1849 (i.e., long before gold had even been discovered there). Therefore, if you are hoping to find a detailed discussion of difficulties, opportunities, and methods for lunar resource development, you will probably be disappointed. The first 8 chapters deal largely with the upcoming energy crunch on Earth, the presumed need for hydrogen fuel to replace fossil fuels (competing technologies such as synfuels and batteries are not considered), and the presumed need for large quantities of platinum mined on the Moon (and derived from impacts by metallic asteroids) to catalyze hydrogen fuel cells here on Earth. (Space-derived helium-3 needed to power future fusion reactors is also briefly discussed.) The next 4 chapters deal largely with a history of ideas and missions related to how to explore and develop the Moon, and the last 4 provide a specific vision of how entrepreneurs might do so in the near future (including mining of oxygen and metals, and vacuum processing of materials) using extant launch vehicles and the International Space Station as an assembly and staging area.
Although clearly written and highly provocative, this book is narrowly focussed and surprisingly naive in places (e.g., in assuming on pp. 202-3 that deep lunar mining should be more practical than surface mining, and that the amounts of metals and oxygen recovered should correspond to the the amounts given in mineral formulas). I might have preferred a more balanced, complete, and better referenced treatment in place of the author's gushy enthusiasm. Nevertheless, his basic argument, that one way to contend with the limits to growth inherent in this planet's limited resource base is to go off-planet for additional resources, would appear difficult to refute (unless you are a pathologically pessimistic economist). The main arguments then should involve whether or not the Moon is the best place to search for those off-planet resources, and when and how the search for them should begin. I agree with the author that the Moon, despite its less-than-promising external appearance, is THE logical initial exploration target, if only because of its proximity to Earth. In addition, I give him credit for recognizing that commodity pricing and availability are affected by supply and demand - an economic consideration ignored in at least one previous book on space mining.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good reasons to go back to the moon here,
By
This review is from: Moonrush: Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources: Apogee Books Space Series 43 (Paperback)
This is a book that could be highly enjoyable for anybody with an interest in the space program, returning to the moon or building a way to go to Mars.
In Dennis Wingo's book, "Moonrush," great attention is paid to an America divided and burdened by war and a president who wants to commit the nation to an expensive project that would last years and require new technologies to build. Sound familiar? The story is not President Bush's January call for NASA to put astronauts back on the moon and then Mars. The president is Abraham Lincoln, and during the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress approved a costly plan to connect the nation via the railroad. The railroad cut trip times to California, opened the West and helped exploit the discovery of precious minerals, including gold, thus bolstering the fledgling American economy. Going back to the moon, Wingo maintains, then a "moonrush" - hence the book title - could be the 21st-century equivalent of California's gold rush. The book is a basic primer on what industry could do on the moon, but "Moonrush" also works as a reference book on the history of NASA endeavors to reach the moon. In a few brief chapters, Wingo takes the reader from the early Wernher von Braun concepts through the Apollo program and the failed attempts to make it back to the moon in the 1970s and '90s. Wingo points out in "Moonrush" that all the reasons naysayers give not to invest in new space exploration don't add up.
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