Commercial Lunar Crater Prospector Architecture and Economic Assessment

摘要

In order for any commercial enterprise utilizing resources from the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) of the lunar polar craters to be viable, it is essential for entities to know several important factors, to include, but not limited to: ? By area assay of volatiles in the PSRs to understand where best to excavate the desired volatiles-bearing material ? In-depth core sample to understand where the volatiles reside ? Understand the penetrability of the PSR lunar surface and how it varies from locale to locale This data collection is essentially the follow-on to existing data derived from orbiting probes. One of the more interesting missions was the LCOSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission, which used a spent Centaur stage to impact a lunar polar crater (Cabeus). The ejecta debris cloud was analyzed, and found to contain a wide range of usable resources~1. This case study analyzes the potential that a commercial prospecting mission, capable of obtaining in-depth samples from a multitude of locations and returning them to LEO (ISS) for assay. In this chapter we address prospecting for hire and excavation of water and other polar volatiles, and sale of the location and the sample assay information to potential users of the volatiles. The author employs an architecture employing orbiting tether systems for the initial sample collection and ultimately, if the extractive prospects warrant, to expand this to a complete resource utilization concept. The other end of this case study is a potential user of the lunar water and volatiles: a LEO propellant depot serving cis-lunar space operations and interplanetary exploration. The development of a cis-lunar transportation architecture will entail a high degree of risk; this reward must be commensurate with the risk. At this juncture, the author has used as a baseline, a mission value to NASA, (for example) a price to NASA of 30% of the present value for a Mars Sample Return mission, not for a single 300