Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: 1992 moon base
Message-ID: <1989Feb14.171358.17916@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Feb13.074530.17504@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 89 17:13:58 GMT

In article <1989Feb13.074530.17504@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>Wonderful, Henry.  Lunar colonies (= a handful of people huddled
>underground) are feasible if you don't have to pay for little things
>like labor, materials or launchers...

Not quite what I said, which was that a startup lunar colony was very cheap,
and looked feasible *BY 1992*, if most of the big-ticket items were donated.
(As for "a handful of people huddled underground", most of the early colonies
in North America started with not much more, especially after the first
winter.)

>By the way, how many shuttle
>flights per year would be needed for support of this thing?

This was a *colony*, not a base, meaning no crew rotation and the intent
to be self-sufficient in basic materials essentially at once.  Remember
also that it was conceived in the days when shuttle flights were supposedly
going to be cheap and plentiful, so one or two a year for vital materials
and expansion wasn't a big deal.  I don't remember the numbers, but it did
not assume massive ongoing support from Earth.
-- 
The Earth is our mother;       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
our nine months are up.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu