And it also mentions the manned mission would take place in the 2030s?
Long time to wait to visit a boulder.

Wasn’t the ARM mission set to be defunded anyway?
I seem to recall hearing about that.

Not so sure about the aspect of 1000 people working and living in cislunar space in 30 years. Might be more like 100 or less.

“Such a project might start in GEO with Moonwater-shielded manned platforms.”

Billgamesh, Lunar iron seems to be a better shielding material than water.

“For a given thickness, iron outperforms lead by a factor of 5 and hydrogenous materials on average by a factor of 20, making it the shielding material of choice for neutrons above 20 MeV.”

From: Page 76 of ‘Cosmic Ray Interactions in Shielding Materials PNNL-20693 Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830’ By E Aguayo, RT Kouzes, AS Ankney, JL Orrell, TJ Berguson, and MD Troy July 2011
At: http://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-20693.pdf

Lunar iron shielding for GEO and LEO satellite electronics might allow them to last longer and present fewer issues with 24/7 operation.

Lunar aluminum could burn pretty good as an ISRU propellant. Time will tell on that one.

As for artificial gravity, I like trains going around and around in circles and shielded from Galactic Cosmic Radiation by lots of dirt on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and any other place we want to visit or
live. Why? Maybe because my brothers and I had a train set when I was quite young. That train rolled and rolled. I’ve also enjoyed riding trains for very long distances.

Yep, artificial spinning worlds will also eventually be built.

And large pressure fed boosters could probably be quite useful in reducing Lunar mission launch risks and costs.

Since the total mass that would have to be delivered to LEO would be more than 20 Metric Tons, this does not seem much like a good mining prospect.

I believe the project started out with an intended recovered mass of 500 metric tons.

Not an expert on density of the various categories of asteroids, but I wonder if someone (perhaps Dr. Spudis) who is could say how big this” new rocky neighbor” would be.

I agree with your other point. Though I’m encourage by growth and activity in the “cislunar community” in recent years, our host and Mr. Wingo stand out for promoting Moon activities. Obviously, they each come from their own perspective and I don’t speak for either of them. But for my money, I’m grateful for their grasp of the hard collision between science, engineering and money that is needed to bring cislunar space into our economic sphere.

“Bolden says that third phase is so close he can taste it. And if the timeline stays on target and the expected $1.4 billion worth of funding gets approved, we might have a new rocky neighbor orbiting the moon within a decade.”

Wow, “so close he can taste it.”

Close to what? This kind of stuff just leaves me completely discouraged.

What market is ISRU going to create? Dr. Spudis has allowed me to explain my views on this for years- water shielded GEO space stations to replace the telecom satellite network.

What is your pitch besides “help create”?”

We actually do not disagree by all that much as to long term goals. If you have any more need to know why Lunar ISRU development is essential to achieving those goals and thus creating a market, you could review Dr. Spudis’s plans for Lunar development.

I realize you believe you know the exact one and only way to proceed in detail and reject any variation (however small) from your plan, would just be nice if you would show the same tolerance for other views (many of which are not all that different from your) that you demand for yourself.

ULA, which with the support of their CEO Tory Bruno is pushing their Cis-Lunar 1000 plan, wants the BE-4 for their Vulcan rocket which they say they would use in implementation of Cis-Lunar 1000.

They therefore disagree with you.

I realize that you believe you know exactly the only way to proceed and that is OK, just wish you would drop the condescending attitude towards anyone who dares to disagree with you.