Moonrush

In case you are not familiar, this is Dennis Wingo's book about In Situ Resourcing on the moon.  It was an inspiration for the book, Platinum Moon, discussed previously on this blog with respect to LENR.

It isn't new material, so there's not a lot to say.  Something occurred to me in connection with the recent debt negotiations.  There was an idea to use a coin to retire debt, then to raise new debt so as to fund the government.  Why not fund Wingo's idea to fund a concept to mine pgms and then use those pgms to finance the enterprise?

It would work like this:  the mission would finance it with bonds purchased by the Fed.  That's like Quantitative Easing, but the twist is to retire the debt when the platinum comes back from the moon.  That is, to make coins from the platinum mined from the moon.  How many coins?  That would depend upon the denomination that you need to choose.

For example, if you were to bring back 1 metric ton, it would raise 39 billion dollars if the coins were denominated at a million apiece.  If 10 tons were to be brought back, it would be reduced to 100k, and so forth.

Wingo's ideas wouldn't require that much money, according to his book.  So, $39 billion would give plenty of wiggle room.   He believes there could be a lot of pgms on the moon due to asteroidal impacts.  He says that rich deposits of pgms on Earth are of the same type.  In fact, if this theory is correct, and it appears to be good reason to believe that it is, we are already using asteroidal metals.  That explains the logic of his proposal.   So, if the pgms came to Earth by way of asteroidal impacts, it should be true for the moon as well.

There is some iffy parts to this, of which the presence of pgms is one.  Another is the financing scheme just outlined.  There are those who would find fault with this idea, I'm sure.  But it would be legal, as far as I know.

Technically, it appears quite doable, as Wingo lays it out in detail.  On the Space Show recently, he said he doubted that the government would do his type of proposal. ( By conventional financing, not like this financing proposal I just mentioned, which is shall we say, "creative".)

That means that private industry would have to undertake the project, but are the amounts of money he discusses "a bridge too far"?  He doesn't think so, but the speculative part about the pgms would possibly make it so.  In that case, somebody would have to do a prospecting mission to look for pgms, and that may not be too far outside of the realm of possibilities.

Yet, if the government did it, that part wouldn't be too ambitious.  But is the government interested?  He seems to be doubtful on this point.

If the government is not, it may take the private sector to do it all, just like in the book Platinum Moon.  But there ought to be a way to do these things, because money should not be an issue, provided that the proposition is sound.

Update:

I did some checking on the internet with respect to the metal value of a coin.  A Sacajawea coin is worth about 3 cents for its metal.  That's a 30 to 1 ratio.  For collectible coins, the market value can be a multiple of its face value.  Let's say another 30 to 1 ratio.  In other words, a coin that costs the government 3 cents to make can be sold for nearly 1000 times what it cost to obtain the metal to make it.

Now, let's look at platinum.  It can be bought on the open market now for about the price of gold - 1600 an ounce.  If you multiply 1600 times 1000 you get 1.6 million dollars for each coin.  So, asking putting a face value of 1 million on each coin is not out of the question.  Most likely, people will not want to collect it though.

If you were to coin 35,200 of them at 1 million apiece, you would obtain the 35 billion dollars.  This would take 1 metric ton of the metal to do it.  Would there be 35,200 "purchases" of a coin struck of lunar platinum? Making it legal tender would obviate the need to sell it.   If you coined 35,000 of  them at 100k, you would only raise $3.5 billion.  But at 100k, you get closer to the same ratio that you have with the ordinary currency.

Lunar platinum coins would be worth more than an ordinary coin because of its novelty.  Plus if it was a limited edition coin such as this, it would have even greater value.  You could probably give it a 100k denomination and then sell it on the market for whatever it could bring.  Hopefully, it could fetch a premium on the face value, comparable to the Susan B Anthony dollar, thus recovering all of the debt and retiring it without costing the government a dime.

All of this from mining and refining on the lunar surface 1 metric ton of platinum.  The 2002 output of platinum in the USA was about 4 times that number, according to Wingo's book.   If they got really lucky, they may find a motherload worth a lot more than that.

It's worth looking into, don't you think?

Update:
The Sacajawea coin costs about 6 cents.  That is a bit different, but it could still work.

Update:
I tweeted and Facebooked this post.  I welcome any criticism of the idea.  Tell me where this is wrong.

Occam's Razor and the E-cat Test of Oct 6th

Occam's Razor is, as I understand it, a simplicity principle.  With respect to explaining something, the principle asserts that the simplest explanation is most likely correct.  After writing that, my understanding turns out to be incorrect.  Here's what Wikipedia says:

is a principle that generally recommends, when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.

In the case of the Oct 6th test, what are the competing hypotheses?  I think that there can be only two: it works or it doesn't.

We have to assume that the conditions are what they are represented as being.  In short, there is no secret energy source that can escape the notice of the observers.  To postulate that there is one makes the assumption that this secret energy source can escape detection.  Therefore, the energy produced must come from the E-cat apparatus itself.

Secondly, the measurement apparatus is reasonably accurate for the purposes of this test.  This reason is self evident: if it was too inaccurate, this too would have been detected by the observers.  To assume otherwise violates Occam's Razor because it introduces a new assumption once again.

Finally, it has to be the case that nothing is up the sleeves of some tricksters.  This would require the assumption of some conspiracy amongst the observers to deceive everybody.  Such a conspiracy would entail a large group of people present to be able to keep the tricks a secret.  It seems unlikely to me.  The larger the number of observers, the harder it is to keep a conspiracy secret.  The more observers there are, the more likely that everything is as it appears to be.  To say otherwise would violate the principle of Occam's Razor, as it would add a new assumption of a conspiracy.

Unless the naysayers can come up with an explanation that doesn't require these new assumptions, or does not require some form of another assumption not mentioned here, then the test is as represented.

From where I stand, the test looks like a success.  The E-cat produces more energy than it consumes.  That makes it a successful test.  By the way, that is the simplest explanation too.  In other words, it is as it appears to be.

It’s a gas, man!

Paul D. Spudis, The Once and Future Moon


We really do need to take a closer look at the Moon.

Update:

I think this will be the last post of the day.  Thanks for coming by, I appreciate your support.  Tomorrow, I may have something to say about Wingo's book.  I have some more thoughts about the E-cat, too.  

Better graph showing net energy from E-cat test of Oct. 6, 2011

Peswiki

You can see that the area under the curve for the "Potenza OUT"  ( output power) is greater than the area under the "Potenza Resistore" ( power resistor, input power to run the heater)  Or input power vs output power.  Time shift it toward the right and the whole curve will fit under the output curve.

http://imgur.com/a/iwZQ8

Update:
This video shows the apparatus in detail. It is now on YouTube. I saw this on Ny Teknik already, but it is also handy on YouTube now.

Basically, you can see where and how the delta t's were obtained for the graph above. Delta t, or change in temperature, is one of the data points needed to calculate the power. The other is the water flow, also shown as 600 liters per hr.

Rossi's appeal- a design "for the People"

Just saw this on Peswiki

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=510#comments

Moonrush arrives

The latest book that I ordered. I want to read about it because it may have something about resources on the moon. I know all the rage in the E-cat world is the, er, E-cat, but I write about other things too. Thanks to all for your support. Time for me to go read my book. See you tomorrow!

Morning Summary, 10/7

Good morning.

An early scan of the E-cat news sources reveals nothing new yet.  Evidently, the excitement wore everybody out, eh?  Well, somebody is awake early.   I was expecting a flood of pictures, interviews, and the like. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place?  I will check back later, other things to do.

The Plan to Bring an Asteroid to Earth

Wired Science

Stephen Hawking: The final frontier

COSMOS magazine September 2008

The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Or, you can build your own new world at the Earth Moon Lagrangian points - L4 and L5. This reminds me of my series of posts on O'Neil Colonies.  The weakness in that idea was that it depended upon the Shuttle living up to its billing, which it didn't.  Let us hope that the Skylon can do what the Shuttle couldn't, as well as SpaceX's reusable rocket technologies.  If there was a way to get people and cargo into space at a reasonable rate and a reasonable price, O'Neill's ideas could become feasible.

Why look for worlds far away when you could build them close to home?  This does not preclude travel to other worlds, but could enable them by creating an economic beach head in space.  If the economics can't be made to work, it will never happen.  On the other hand, if the economics can be made to work, what could stop it?  Then Hawking's vision could be made into reality.

Ohio the next boom state?

American Thinker

But a renaissance of prosperity and revival of manufacturing may be at hand, thanks to a happy combination of technology and natural resources.

The left doesn't want prosperity. They want to "spread the wealth". They will oppose anything like this with all their might.