Moon Miners' Manifesto

#100 November 1996

Editorial: Lunar Prospector II

IN FOCUS: Time to begin brainstorming "Lunar Prospector II"

Yet the probe's resolution will be crude at best. We will know that there is an abundance of this or that somewhere down there within a radius of many tens of miles. The first geo-economic globe of the Moon will be very blurred.

Given that the sidelines effort that resulted in LP has stretched more than a decade, the time is past ripe to brainstorm a worthy follow-on - let's give it a working name of Lunar Prospector II, "LP2".

• The above said, the first thing we will want aboard is more powerful instrumentation of the same general type, but with a resolution at least an order of magnitude (i.e. 10 x) sharper, the same for its level of sensitivity both so that we can discover skimpier resources, as well as better compare the concentration of resources from one field or patch to another. Only when we have such more detailed over-views of lunar resources will we be able to best prioritize competing settlement and development sites. That will be vital if we are to maximize the success of our lunar economic ventures, whether they involve mining super cold and hard water-ice or untypical concentrations of industrially valuable metals such as copper or platinum, generally found only in gossamer traces of fairy-tale value.

• Next on our dream list for LP2 is a radar instrument tuned to detect any cavities of size lying within a hundred meters of the surface terrain, i.e. lava tubes that provide ready-made shelter from cosmic weather: micrometeorites, cosmic rays, UV rays, and solar flares - for outposts, warehousing, industrial operations, and future settlements.

• For the same purpose, we would include a side-looking infrared detector that can peer down the entrance throats of lava tubes and thus detect a telltale temperature difference with surrounding surfaces, dayspan and nightspan alike.

• Perhaps less vitally important for economic decisions other than routing of overland highways, a synthetic aperture radar would produce a much more detailed topographic model of the lunar surface than that deducible from Clementine data.

Prior to the opportunities created by NASA's smaller, better, faster Discovery Mission series opportunities, Lunar Prospector was dead in the water. In an effort to get things moving again, inde-fatigable NSS and SFF activist David Anderman fathered the Lunar Data Services Purchase Act and then successfully shepherded it through Congress. David would now like to use this tool to create a market for data a follow on probe to Lunar Prospector might produce. For that reason he is seeking input from interested parties on what such an LP2 might include. The above is my two cents.

The returns from Lunar Prospector should be coming in in definitive details by the time of the 1998 ISDC (Milwaukee) and will either strengthen or further challenge the aspirations of would-be lunar developers. We can expect LP(1)'s findings to raise as many questions as it answers, thus to make clear the need to fly a much more capable mission.

LP2's returns, in contrast, would be of a quality not just to justify a pro-lunar development posture, but to whet the appetite of individual development companies, who could/would then bid on real development rights. 'Would', that is, presup-posing a favorable economic treaty regime. If you are following, or sprinting a step ahead of my argument, you will see that the political effect of a properly designed and successfully undertaken Lunar Prospector II mission could be to at long last motivate a groundswell of effectively influential support for just such a political-economic status change from the current Moon Treaty limbo.

LP2 as outlined above, is "not just the next step in discovery, but the first step in realization". We urge others with a serious interest to help in brainstorming the LP2 follow-on. You can send your thoughts to David at DavidA5625@aol.com via email, or for hard copy forwarding to the MMM submission address.

An LP follow on to Mars? Of course! We can push funding of LP1, then LP2 sister probes to Mars as part of the package. We do want to develop Mars economically too, after all!

Yet if it comes down to making hard either-or choices, we should/must remember that the Moon is a couple of days distant, not several months, that missions to it can be mounted at any time, not just every two years, and that the odds for early develop-ment return on investment from the viewpoint of such logistic issues alone, makes the Moon clearly target of opportunity Number One. We go for broke, promoting both - but settle wisely, if need be.

-- Peter Kokh

The Lure of the Moon's Hidden Covered Valleys

Past MMM Articles on Lava Tubes

Some Articles On Other Relevant Topics

Contents of this issue of Moon Miners' Manifesto