We are not a lost generation at all – many predictions didn’t come true, and many things that weren’t predicted occurred….this is normal, and very often, the best things were the ones that were not predicted. Very often I feel that what does end up occurring in reality, was because past desires were replaced things of greater need…..people have been asking for flying cars for decades; aside from the un-practicality of such a vehicle, we instead got the Internet, not to mention other advances in genomics, and other fields that will have vastly greater implications then sending people up into space. With nano-tech, VR/AR, and potentially mind-uploading in the near-future….. Mars colonies? who needs them?

Perhaps the time for such things simply hasn’t arrived yet, or maybe needs will change and they never will….it’s not like we’re not getting things done in the meantime that benefits us all the same.

For a one time capital cost of US$800Million 2012, a lunar elevator can be built today using existing available materials. This first generation lunar elevator will softly deliver an infinite number of payloads to the lunar surface, each weighing 100 kg, and retrieve the same amount of material from the lunar surface. The alternative of using chemical rockets to soft land on the Moon is prohibitively expensive.

The first generation lunar elevator kit weighs 11,000 kg and can be delivered today to the Lunar L1 lagrange libration location, using a single Delta-IV (or Ariane-V) launch. From there the tether is unreeled upwards and downwards. The lower end anchors itself into the lunar soil using robotic penetrators.

The lunar elevator will cheaply transport oxygen from the Moon to Low Earth Orbit where it can refuel tugs to take satellites from LEO to GEO, a significant revenue source. This reduces the cost of launches to GEO by a factor of Eight times.

Your comments and thoughts would be welcome.

And get people there on that cool PanAM shuttle. AND YES, IT MUST SAY PANAM.

Now just think about how much better robots will be by the year 2021. That’s nine years from now. That’s six doublings by Moore’s Law. If things go on as predicted by Moore, robots will have 64 times the processing power that they do today.

Sure there have been slowdowns in silicon chip technology, but carbon nanotube and graphene as conductors and semiconductors will take over and keep the Law working as predicted.

Just last night, while watching Nova Science Now, I saw two teams of little autonomous robots playing soccer. When they bumped together and knocked each other down, they got back on their feet.

By 2021 there just could be the robots to operate a 3-D printer and assemble more robots. It will need to take along a large canister of processor wafers, but the SLS that was written about here last week has a payload of 60 tons. That should allow for hundreds of pounds of processors in a can, as well as a few tons of printer feedstock to get the operation started.

Once the first robot prints up a small team of helpers, the team can then print up and build a processing plant so that the robots can start mining and turning the minerals of the moon into a larger processing plant and many more robots and many more printers. The large workforce thus assembled can set up large parabolic mirrors for melting moon rocks. When they have materials enough, they can build a radio telescope bigger than the thousand-foot dish at Arecibo. As the workforce grows they can go from one crater to the next, build bigger radio telescopes.

Once they have the processing plant needed to get nitrogen and carbon out of the Moon’s upper layer of dust, they can set up pressure domes by roofing over craters with glass and start farming. They might have to prospect a number of craters to find one made by the impact of a carbonaceous chrondite, but a lot of asteroids are this kind, so there will be carbon waiting to be found.

Here is an article about carbon on the moon:

http://www.space.com/8693-stuff-pencils-discovered-moon.html

Here is one about nitrogen on the moon:

http://www.space.com/1396-earth-air-trapped-moon-dirt-scientist-speculates.html

http://mars-one.com/en/