The Acquiring of Resources in Space Will Save Earth w/ Dana Andrews #35

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the Age of Infinite. Throughout history, humans have had and made significant transformational changes, which in turn has led to naming of periods we call ages. You've just personally experienced the information age, and what an amazing ride it has been and will continue to be with 5 g and with the IoT. We've got a lot ahead of us. Now consider that you might right now be on the age of another transformation.

This transition to the age of infinite, an age which is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but a redefining of a lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources. The ingredients for an unbelievable sci fi movie that has come to life as today we create a new definition of the future.

The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hot Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hot, through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem. Then we wanna use those endeavors, the paradigm shifting, the thinking, the innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring the acquiring of resources in space will save earth.

And we have a phenomenal guest with us, Dana Andrews. How are you, Dana? I'm great. Well, Dana's history goes back to 1965 in the in the space business. He's been with Douglas Space. He's been a long history with Boeing. But I think the important part makes this interview interesting was one of our team member members from Germany had recommended Dana's book to me, which is called Chasing the Dream. I don't normally promote books, but I he said, you've gotta buy this book.

You've gotta buy this book because it gives a whole history of space and, David, you're not a space person. And I read the first maybe 20 pages and Dana outlined how there was a rocket plane way back when. And NASA, I believe, or whoever was working on it, when they discontinued that rocket plane at this endeavor, they took all the data and tossed it. And if we had it today, it would it it might have revolutionized evolutionized the way we look at space.

And I said, I cannot read anymore because if you know how this program works is I do not know what the I only know the title that we've created together, but I don't know the content. And so Dana is an expert on all sorts of categories of space. What we're gonna talk about, you'll learn from him. So, Dana, you have an outline for us? Yeah. I do. I the the way I wrote up the the thought here was, can development of space help Earth's primary challenges? And I do believe it does.

And so I have some subtopics. First of all, what are Earth's primary challenges? Topic. Yeah. Primary challenges. Okay. Next. The second one is what is the best approach to raising the world's standard of living, which ties into the challenges. Of living? Next. And one of the things I'm gonna talk about there is we need more energy. We need more power. Yeah. And so the next topic is how do we increase power availability without fossil fuels?

And as you know, fossil fuels are what's causing global warming, so that's why we need to eliminate them. Okay. Next. What do we do about long haul trucks, ocean shipping, and aircraft? They are particularly dependent on fossil fuels, which is why they're a special topic. Long haul trucks. What's the second one? Ocean shipping and aircraft. And aircraft. Okay. Next. How does space development play into solving these challenges? These challenges?

Next. What are the elements we need to harvest on the Moon? Next. Where are they found on the Moon? Okay. Found on the Moon. Okay, so let's start with number 1. You start. Take us where we need to go. Okay, well, the as I see it, and a lot of other people see it, our primary challenge is overpopulation is using up resources. We're wasting our environment and we're faced with global warming, And they're interrelated.

The more people require more power, which requires more fossil fuels, which drives global warming. Okay. So the challenge there is we need to we need to raise the standard of living in the level of education, and we find out when that happens, the fertility rate goes down. And in parts of the world right now, if we could reduce the fertility rate, population earth earth's population would actually level off and begin to decrease.

But we need to get that level, that standard of living up, and that requires energy and resources. Well, when you say and it's this is a a in my own internal thought, when we talk about increasing the standard of living, this is maybe a personal question.

Do you believe that it's actually increasing the standard of living because are we leading better lives or increasing aid a different and improved or an alternate standard of living when we think of raising this standard of living, when you think of this construct? Okay. Well, I'm just saying, more resources, better housing, better education, better infrastructure, all the things that we, you know, that we value in the first world, as we say, in developed countries that works.

You know, better medicine, better health care. I mean, it's all there, and it's all tied to the to the infrastructure and the energy available. Okay. So, yes, I would just yes, if we increase or have increased population, which the estimates are in 40 years will be about 10,000,000,000 people. We will need more energy to be able to supply them, but yes, it is harming or causing challenges to global warming.

Yeah. And I'm I'm a little far afield here as a rocket scientist, but it's it's easy to see these trends. If you do a little research, it's not hard to see what's happening. So so what part and I just wanna dig a little bit here. What part of global warming, when you think about it, are your primary categories which you feel that we would be addressing or are causing challenges? Okay. Well, there's 3 approaches to solving global warming.

The first one is eliminate burning fossil fuel and dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's the primary one, and that's the one I'm addressing here. There are other approaches. One is you can increase the albedo of the Earth. In other words, okay, for instance, when Krakatau blew up, you know, 400 years ago Yeah. It dumped a bunch of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, and we had the the year without summer. You know what? It was 16 08, 1609. The world got extremely chilly.

So one way to beat global warming is dump stuff and, you know, increase the cloud layers, and you can do that while increase the albedo. And you you can do it either in the atmosphere or at the surface. You know, if you covered the Earth's deserts with the Mylar foil to reflect the the sun's rays back out of the atmosphere, you could reduce the albedo and reduce the temperatures, but that's fairly labor intensive.

That's a I hadn't even thought about that, but, yes, you could, you could put more clouds in the sky, and therefore, you could decrease the global warming because the reflect the reflection wouldn't happen the same way. Okay. And that's there has been proposed. One of the things you could do is doctor the jet fuel that that airliners burn Oh, really? To to generate clouds. Oh, to recede clouds. To seed clouds. But that's that's more hands on than most governments want to to get to.

So it's I doubt it could. It's possible, but I doubt it'll happen. Mhmm. And the other thing is to is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We can either go bananas planning or you can there is all kinds of devices being built and tested to do that, to actually remove c 02 from the air. And they sequester it and pump it down underground, where it will stay for 1000000 of years. Mhmm. So so there's you know, like I say, there's 3 different approaches.

The one I favor and I think most people favor is let's stop burning fossil fuels. Mhmm. And that's the one I'm addressing sort of in this talk. Okay. So okay. So then so take it from so we wanna increase the standard of living, decrease the population, housing, education, infrastructure, medicine, all of these things, all tying to a need for energy. Yeah. Well, energy enables all that.

If you look at plots of of standard of living versus energy consumption, it's very there's a very clear curve that shows the more energy you consume, the higher the standard of living, the better infrastructure, medicine, etcetera. All that's been plotted, and you can you can find that data. Okay. So how do we do this? Okay. Well, so the the bottom line is we need to we need to reduce fossil fuel burning, and and that's kind of the the theme of this talk.

Now energy is divided up into sort of stationary and mobile, if you want to break it down. There's electric. A lot of our civilization is powered by electricity, but a lot of it is power directly. We burn oil and natural gas to heat our houses and factories. We burn gasoline and diesel in our cars. We burn diesel and jet fuel in our large, you know, freighters and airplanes. So that's all contributing CO 2 to the atmosphere.

Mhmm. And as I'm sure you're aware, if we don't do anything, if we just ignore this by 21100, the the level of CO 2 in the atmosphere is going to reach about a 1000 parts per million. And the last time we saw a 1000 parts per million was during the Cretaceous. Okay? And and that's, you know, 20 some 1000000 years ago. And during the Cretaceous, Saint Louis was on the ocean. In other words, the entire center in the United States was was covered with saltwater.

So I have a feeling if we let it get that bad, we're gonna have some real issues. So you said the the estimates for a 1,000 parts are per million was when? In the 21100. Okay. In 211100, which is 80 years away. Not far? Yes, geologically speaking not far. Okay, got it. So that says we better pay attention, we better do something. So, if you look at well, first of all, we are we're making good inroads in generating electricity using renewable resources. I'm talking windmills.

I'm talking solar farms. We've sort of exhausted our hydroelectric. There's really not much more hydroelectric we can do because we've got dams on all the major rivers. Mhmm. Nuclear should have taken care of this problem, but nuclear power plants have a miserable record for safety, and that's not because it's inherent to the design, it's inherent to the way they've been operated. So that's that's a gone okay. That opportunity has probably passed.

There the, on two sides, the hydroelectric, I don't know if you've heard about these, new this this some technology I've seen, they're looking to take, let's call it a set of stairs. It's not exactly a stair or or a another one is a, like, a a drill bit of water where you take a small river, and on one side, you put this ladder stepladder configuration.

And so now you could do smaller rivers and places without damming up configurations, which is they're looking to use that throughout Asia, which I think is an interesting approach. And these new nuclear facilities that I've been reading about and you probably have heard about are these micro or smaller facilities that can generate a tremendous amount of energy but still are, fairly small, small footprint.

So we are working in that direction, but in 80 years, it it would we'd have to move very quickly to be able to solve it on global level. Yeah. The the small river power, sounds very infrastructure heavy. The the micro plants, nuclear plants, the beauty of those is they're built in a factory, and they can be trucked to locations, and they can they can serve neighborhoods. And they're buried, and they're designed to be fail safe. In other words, there are no operators Yep. To to screw things up.

Yep. So So that's But but it's not enough to be able to handle 10,000,000,000 people. Oh, it is, but we're not the government is not spending enough money to bring them online in any time frame that would help. The problem is is that, you know, there's, they're currently funding 1 test nuclear plant. It's going to go into Idaho, and it's a little bigger than the kind that you can build in a factory and deliver by truck. It's bigger than that.

So they're not addressing the real problem, and and they're doing it extremely slowly. And the propensity for people to accept these technologies is really gonna be challenging. While living in Luxembourg, we drive over to I think it was France. And there were the there's a nuclear power plant not far, and there's a lot of concern whether if something happened in France, it would impact Luxembourg.

And so there's a challenge between the older technology and the newer technology, but there's enough of that older technology out there that I do know there is a concern. So Well, the French did it right, though. The the French, the people running the plant have graduated in nuclear engineering. Okay? They're they know how to do it.

I lived part of my career, I was living in Alabama, and it turns out the house we bought had been owned previously by an operator at the nuclear power station nearby, and and he had the log logs up in the attic, and I found them for cleaning the attic. Okay. And I threw them. And and okay. I mean, it was these guys were paying zero attention to the nuclear power plant. They were having contests, you know, farting contests and everything else going on that was kept in the logs.

And it was obvious that no one, and that's that plant by the way, a gentleman was cold, sitting at the control station, so he took a candle down to find out where the cold breeze was, caught the wiring on fire, and they lost control of the power plant because of that. That is the type of that's where we have a problem with nuclear. It's not that the plants are inherently safe, it's the operators are inherently unsafe. Yes. And we haven't been able to fix that. And we won't be able to fix that.

So yeah. And then and I think that there's a mathematical part of this equation when you talk about, the parts per million is that you could go to 2,100, but there will be the increase at 2,050. And there is an increase at 2,060. It's not like it just jumps to 2,100. So there's a continual increase. And over that timeframe, there is climate change happening, and the impacts of them all across the entire timeline. Correct. Okay. So then how do we so where do we go then if this is the increase?

Got windmill, solar, there Where we're at right now, if you look at the current data, what they're what they're building in plants to generate electricity, about 45% is natural gas, and natural gas is much cleaner than coal or oil and much more efficient. So so the the utility companies are actually doing the best thing they can. It's about 45% natural gas, about 35% wind, and the remainder is solar. That's all the new plants that are going in.

Oh, and there's, you know, a fraction of a percent nuclear and, you know, whatever might fulfill. But those gentlemen are driven by cost. The people who are actually the utility companies are they're they're concerned with capital cost and operating cost. And these numbers these numbers, I'm assuming, are primarily Americans.

So when we're not when you take, the Chinese spat with the Australians right now has all this coal, it's coal, they're running off of coal sitting in the harbors off the coast of China, and they have been turning off cities where there's no electricity being generated within China because they don't have enough. So it means that there's a tremendous amount of coal still being burnt all over the world. Maybe at and probably at higher percentages than we're looking at on these numbers.

If you look at worldwide projections, in 2050, we're still gonna be 40% coal worldwide. Which is only 2 which which is only 20 years away. Yeah. Or, 30 years away. Exactly. The problem is severe, and we need to address it. Okay. Well, so what do we replace the natural gas with? Okay. It's nuclear. There's no other shots. Now it could be fission, which is what they're doing in Idaho, or it could be fusion. And it turns out in the in the world right now, there's probably a dozen.

In the United States, there's 6 or 8 privately run fusion companies. Okay. And they are generating small, you know, 10, 20 megawatt. They're not generating, they're developing small, 10 to 20 megawatt fusion power plants, and they're getting fairly close. They're doing they're doing good work. Most of this occasionally they get a government contract, but most of it is private investment.

And and it's it's Jeff Bezos, it's Bill Gates, I mean, all the all the big guys are investing in these small fusion power plants. Because you can imagine if if one of them has the breakthrough and has a working fusion power plant, can you imagine how many of those they can sell? Oh, I'm I'm not sure. I'm trying to, he was on LA Law, and I can't remember his name off the top of my head. He was one of the actors, and he was working when I was at the National Space Society Conference.

He had he was investing in fusion plants, and he had one plant that he was working with. So, yeah, it's a it's a big industry if it can be turned over into actually delivering on the promise of fusion. Like I said, they're I'm impressed. It's in the book if you do get to that chapter. I'll eventually get to it. I have to talk to you first. But they're making good progress, and and they're and they're they're they have efficient I mean, adequate funding to do this.

So Okay. So you're saying that 40% will still be coal, the rest will have to switch over to nuclear. Well, no. That's the projection, and the projection is because there is no fusion power plants. Mhmm. If if the if a fusion power plant were available in 5 years, that projection would change completely. What's your thought? I think we're 10 years away from a workable small fusion power plant. Why?

If you look at the progress, and it's been gradual, and I've been tracking this for 50 years, you know, for 50 years fusion's been 20 years away. Yes. Okay. Well, now I'm sitting here in 2020, and Fusion is 5 to 6 years away. I mean, they're getting, they're getting close to the conditions they need. There's been some real smart people involved, some real smart physics involved. And and there's like I say, worldwide, there's a dozen at least.

And in the United States, there's, I can name 6 or 8, that are working the problem. They're making good progress. So but if it if it is 20 years away always and we hit 2050, we've already gone through 30 of the 70 years that you put at the 21100 timeline. Yeah. But remember, it's this is per pop per person, and and the population's increasing. So it gets it becomes asymptotic near the end, because the population just keeps going. Okay. So if if we can yeah. We won't hit a 1,000.

We may only my best guess is that we'll get to around 700. And, again, if you if you visit my website, there's a blog that talks about all this. Okay. What is that what is a key point that I should take out of what you're saying when you say on my blog? Is there a specific not a specific article. What's the content you want me to know about? It's a blog on global warming. No. No. That's what I mean. Is there a specific thing that you're because I'm not gonna go look at your blog.

I don't tend to do those things. What's the information you want me to know? Well, the info that's the information I tell you. The the the the international, committee on global warming, whose acronym I forget at the moment, has funded, spent 1,000,000 funding various organizations to do detailed projections on how global warming is progressing and where we're going to end up.

And a lot of those projections are in that blog and show a variety of different assumptions, and I pick out some I think are probably accurate, and then show where those what what they project. Okay. Okay. So where do we go from here? Well okay. So how do we there there's there's issues. In other words, it'd be fine if if we could build all the windmills we need and all the, you know, solar panels and all the nuclear power plants.

But there are some issues with increasing, like windmills, for instance. Okay. One megawatt windmill requires, 1 metric ton of Niobium metal to build the super magnets that power the generators. And so we're starting to get now into the there's shortage of various materials on Earth, and rare Earth elements are are one of those subjects, and the other is platinum group metals.

And platinum group metals, start to enter when we talk about the the long haul trucking and shipping and airplanes, especially, long haul trucking is going to switch to hydrogen as a fuel and use fuel cells because the batteries aren't good enough for, you know, to haul heavy loads long distances. Right. The the kilowatts per kilogram, you know, chemistry. There's a limit to how active the chemistry can be. And, you know, with lithium, we're just about at the limit.

So we're not going to have an order of magnitude improvement in batteries, for instance. You know, we're talking 20, 30 percent maybe. But fuel cells are an order of magnitude as far as kilowatts per kilogram. So you can do long haul trucks, you can do short range airplanes. And that's a lot of the market out there. That's they're burning a lot of fossil fuels right now. So to to take that to take that part of the fossil fuel market away, we need platinum group metals.

And we need them, you know, like 4 or 10 times what we can produce if we're going to replace the world's long haul trucks, for instance. With the new plants they're looking to bring online because of the price and the value of the rare earth metals in certain parts of the world. I know America is looking at and other countries are now that they're at the higher rate.

Is it still enough production that would be able to deliver on these long haul or for ocean shipping or any of the other airplanes? Are there is is there enough capacity to be able to fulfill? I think there is, but at what cost? In other words, we what you do is you mine the richest deposits first, and then you start mining the the lesser ores.

And there's gonna be a point at which it will be cheaper to take them off the moon than to mine them on to continue to to mine the the lessening orders on earth. Okay. And and and and where that crossover point is is extremely hard to predict. So what do we do about long haul trucks ocean shipping aircraft? What do we do? I mean, we're making some transitions with the fuel cell, the hydrogen. They're improving. Maersk is the largest. They're improving shipbuilding.

Maersk is the largest shipholder in the world in terms of, capacity. They've gone to 30% more efficient ocean going vessels. They're they're adding that capacity on. So what do you suggest we do? Well, I think you're gonna see a transition. Long haul trucks, I think, will jump from diesel to hydrogen fairly quickly. There's already some talk. There's actually some people out there offering, hydrogen fueled long haul trucks right now. They haven't been. Hydrogen's expensive.

It's about $6 a kilogram. And that's another part of the problem is that, the electrolyzers that turn water into hydrogen also use platinum electrodes as do the fuel cells. And we rapidly I mean, within a year a few years, there will be no more platinum on the market because, the truckers can use, you know, 4 or 5 times what's produced now. So no one else is gonna be able to compete. That's gonna drive the price up.

And then again, we're gonna get to a point not too far in the future where it's cheaper to get the platinum off the moon than it is to continue to to drive these mines 2 miles down in South Africa.

I did some research on this because of with project Moon Hot Platinum came up, and it takes 62,000,000 tons of dirt that has to be moved, which is 62,000,000 Toyota Corollas, that's kind of the analogy that I put into it, to dig up about 90 some odd tons of platinum, which is an unbelievable number if you try to fathom that. 62,000,000 Toyota Corollas to get the 92 tons, and I didn't do the math, but I I ran a rock quarry when I was younger.

I was assistant supervisor to one of the largest plants that fed New York City, and the, semi, an American style semi would be, you'd need about 4 of them using stone as compared to platinum as a weight. You'd need about 4 of them, and that would hold 90 to, the amount of tonnage we get out of the earth an entire year, which is amazing how little it is. Yeah. So in in effect, we're in violent agreement here. Yes. I mean, it's a it's an astronomical number.

And when I brought it down, when we would have trucks going out, semis going out with a crusher run or a stone composite, it's to only have 4 trucks at the end of 62,000,000 tons of dirt, but it also shows how valuable this little bit of platinum is to our world because it's in so many of the pieces of the electronics and so many of the tools that we use, which include an aircraft or shipping vessel, to be able to survive on this planet as we do it today.

Well, that's my point is that we need, platinum is one of those metals that that really impacts fossil less fuel energy production and usage. It's it's it's necessary, at least with current technology, it's necessary to generate the hydrogen and also to use it in fuel cells. Now for aircraft and shipping, we'll probably just burn the hydrogen in turbines. It it makes no sense to a fuel cell's way more efficient than a turbine, but when you need huge amounts of power, you can't beat a turbine.

But isn't is I'm looking this up, but platinum is all are also in solar cells. Yes. Okay. So another area where this It's a fairly minor constituent in solar cells. Okay. So to, we're shifting over to hydrogen trucks. What are we doing on ocean shipping and aircraft? Well, that's where we would go to hydrogen turbines. We burn the hydrogen in a turbine engine, and and that's that's, the only issue there is generating hydrogen.

You know, burning hydrogen in a turbine engine is existing technology. We were doing that back in the fifties experimentally. But generating the hydrogen, again, we're gonna need a lot of platinum group metals. What explain to me because I've never my background is organic chemistry, physics calculus, but we never really talked about hydrogen group metals, platinum group metals. What does that what does that consist of, and and how what percentages or give me some more data on what that means.

Well, okay. The platinum group metals let me just look at my notes here. No problem. Ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Okay. And they're often and and the reason I'm knowledgeable on them and I was working, nickel iron asteroidal material contains 100 to 200 parts per million ceridophiles, and those are iron loving metals, and they're dissolved in the nickel iron that you find in in asteroids and meteorites.

And what you do, for instance, on the Moon is you collect, and it's the regolith on the Moon is a mix of everything, it's kind of like a dog's breakfast. Okay? You got everything there, but you can go out and essentially scoop up and run through a separator and pull out because the nickel iron is highly magnetic, you can pull out all the the good stuff very simply and put the rest of it back.

And while you're at it, you can heat that the regolith that you're processing and drive out the gases, which is hydrogen, you know, some water vapor, a little bit of nitrogen, helium, including helium 3, which is a fusion fuel. So you essentially build these devices on the moon, and, again, look in the book. And they go around and and and mine acres of of regolith, okay, a week, and separate out all the good stuff. And it's just a continuous processor.

It moves slowly and picks up the regolith, treats it, collects the good parts, and dumps the rest out the back. The the way I was first described or introduced to platinum on the moon was that when I sat at my first meeting ever in NASA, my first real orientation to space, Bruce Pittman at the space portal in Ames had said to me, do you know where platinum comes from? And my ignorance, I said, comes from the ground. And he said, no. Actually, platinum comes from asteroids.

It's not indigenous to Earth. And then his second question was, when you look at the moon, what do you see? And I, didn't you know, there's asteroids all over. And and he so the the connection was that the moon is full of platinum. And one of the research pieces, maybe you could tell me if I'm right or wrong, is there are 2 types of asteroids. There are a few different types, but let's say there's, organic and then there's metals.

And for every one thou for every 1,000 asteroids that have hit the moon, there'd be 1,000,000, 3 of them have more platinum in them than each than we've used in the history of mankind. So the reason I bring that up is you're saying it's also in the regolith, which I'm trying to get my mind around because I had always thought I mean, I can know that it'll disperse itself, but you're saying it's actually in the regolith itself. It's mixed in.

It's like it's not a soil, but it's like a composite of a soil, or is it built baked into the regolith? No. It's you you were right. You know? We call them metallic asteroids, and and several metallic asteroids have impacted the moon. And there's one up there in Mareebrium, which is you if you look at the moon, it's the upper left hand corner. And it it, you know, caused a huge crater and broke up, and pieces of it are scattered all over the place.

And that's where so there's there's large pieces and there's small pieces. And of course the small pieces scattered especially far. So if you pick up a cubic yard or regolith, you will find chunks in in in little teeny bits, you know, the the moon's been pulverized by 1,000,000,000 of years of of asteroids hitting it, big ones and little ones. So the upper 6 meters or so is pulverized.

Mhmm. And and all these all that iron has been dispersed because it's been hit by something and broken up and tossed. So it's just it's well dispersed, but it's in that general area, it's fairly intensive. So when the when you say small and big, how big was Meribian? How do you say it? Meribian? It's about 800 kilometers across. Okay. And the size of this asteroid that hit, do we have any knowledge?

There's probably some estimates somewhere, but if it cost a crater 600 meters 600 kilometers across, you can bet it wasn't small. No. Okay. So the so in theory, we could set up a mining operation or a it's not actually a mining.

It's a separation facilities across this region and be able to dig up and find the, this platinum group series in enough concentration as well as the other hydrogen rarer, the Helium 3, we could be able to separate out and be able to bring that material back to Earth is what you're suggesting to be able to fuel or give the technology necessary to run trucks, ocean shipping aircraft, and and the types of energy needs we have.

Yeah. And and the point is is that we could probably do it cheaper than trying to generate that much platinum here on Earth because we the okay. South Africa was hit by a metallic asteroid a long time ago, and all the platinum on Earth sunk to the core, you know, 4 and a half 1000000000 years ago when we were molten. So the only platinum you can find in the crust is asteroid impacts way back when Yep. After the after the crust hardened.

And and so it's limited, and it's getting damn hard to find. So the I I heard that there was or I read. I don't remember which. I like to hear a lot. It we had the South African. I also heard there's a there's one in Canada that's extremely large. It's also and Russia is the other or the in the Russian area. There tends to be another large, And those are the primary three sets of asteroids that can deliver on the promise of the platinum as of now. There are others, but those are the threes.

Am I correct? Am I off? I do believe you're correct. Okay. So the it's becoming more and more difficult in South Africa. How much does it cost to pull up in South Africa? Well, the okay, platinum is currently going for, what about $1,000 a gram? I think the current price, thereabouts. Okay. And if you look at the normal mining to sales cost, okay, is around 80%. So it's probably costing them $800 an ounce to mine it. Your platinum price per ounce, today is $1,092.

Okay. Per gram per gram is 35.1. No argument. Okay. So you're saying that it's 80% of it to be able to extract that. So even if the but if the price goes up, doesn't it gives a higher, margin, but it's still that price. Yeah. And and the price has been there for a long time, which is what I what I'm that's what I'm basing the 80% on is that, this is a pliable if if the, you know, if if it costs more to mine it than they can sell it for, the the the you can't buy it. You just can't find it.

They they stop mining it. Right. So that's where I'm I'm assuming that we're talking about, on an average, $800 an ounce. Okay. And what would it cost, or how do you look at it when you look at the moon? How do you do the math? Okay. Now we're getting I taught a class at the University of Washington, a space senior space design class back in 2012, and we picked the topic of minding the moon as that was, for this is, 26, Arrow and Astro Seniors, and that was an excellent they did a fantastic job.

And they went in with my help in places and developed a system to mine and get it back. Okay? The and what the driving, what drove the cost was the cost to get a kilogram in the low Earth orbit. That's what drove the overall program cost. Okay? Now in 2012, the cost of of, platinum was about $25,000 a kilogram. Yep. And we assumed that we could sell it at half that cost and make and and so that's what we assumed. And we had a return on investment at that price of 37, 38% return on investment.

But we were assuming $600 a kilogram to get stuff into low Earth orbit. SpaceX spaceship, which is, you know, in development, I've run numbers there and and they're going to be able to deliver it for $100 a kilogram. What about the cost of setting up the mining facility? Remember I was in the in the, we we're dropping 22,000 ton of stone a day, and we had very, very, very big equipment, very heavy equipment. And what about the cost of setting up the mining operations, in space?

So getting it there, establishing it, supplying food, shelter, and all of the other, life support components to be able to deliver. How do you amortize amortize that into the equation? Well, we had a a 5 year development. We again, what we assumed was, is that this was an international effort and there was money set aside, and we assumed it cost $18,000,000,000 Mhmm. Over 5 years to design, build, and test the mining equipment and the the delivery system and all that.

And that was based on tools that I had been using in my career. In other words, these are proven tools proven cost estimation tools. Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't seem off just off my first numbers because the numbers that I we've been extrapolating is to to be able to facilitate a lot of the activities on the moon, the numbers are a 170,000,000,000 to 270,000,000,000 depending on what's being achieved to be able to get some of these activities going on the moon.

So to take 18,000,000,000 to do mining is not that is not far off. Well, this the we generated a paper at the end, and that paper's been downloaded and read 100 of times. And and no one has gotten back to us to argue with our numbers. So do you do you is this remote mining? Is this human? It's remote, but we included, a a manned, facility for maintenance. The it was all we can teleoperate on the moon. Mhmm. Okay. It doesn't need to be a robot. It can be teleoperated.

And these are fairly simple systems. They're complicated, but the the they don't do I mean, you know, a bucket wheel grabbing regolith is not really, really complicated. The when I was I'm, who was I with? I was Daniel Faber. I was with Daniel Faber in my early stages of the space project moon hot. And I had mentioned something about mining on the moon, and the first reaction he had was, we don't even know if we can mine on the moon. We have never dug onto the moon on the moon.

And I thought that was an interesting reaction. He says, we've gone a little bit down, but we've never really done full mining. Another individual I spoke to said, we use resistance on earth. We use gravity and resistance on earth to be able to mine, or to dig, or to do any type of digging. And this individual is in the architectural space said to me, well, what happens when you push a shovel on earth? You use your force to drive down. She said, I ask engineers all the time.

So what is the resistance when we're digging on the moon? And unless the equipment is heavy enough, we might not be able to mine on the moon. What's your thought? I think that's a very valid question. And like I said, we researched lots and lots of data to figure out, could we mine on the moon? And if you look at the dynamics of a bucket wheel, okay, once if you have a once you have a So John, just just for the just for the sake of clarity, a bucket wheel to you is?

It's kinda like a a, a water wheel with buckets. And it just rotates in the bucket scoop and then come over the top and dump. Okay. So you've got this wheel where there are 20 buckets on it. It comes down. It picks up some dirt, brings it up, and at the top of it, it drops it into either a transport any some some type of transportation or belting system so that the material is then brought to a they the the separation stages. Correct. Okay. It's and it's pretty straightforward.

It it gets a little complicated because we're trying to do a lot of things with the ore, but we don't need to get into that. Right. It's just it's still the concept Go ahead. Your question is is will the bucket wheel work? In in my opinion, my personal opinion is we may have to blow with using explosives, with a drill and explosives, dig a hole to begin with, so there's an edge for the bucket wheel to start with.

Okay. So what we or or, and I don't mean iron ore, but ore, we explode and then drop the legs or the part of the equipment down deep enough, refill it back in, and that becomes the gravitational that becomes the force, the the, the resistance so that the bucket wheel can hold and maintain a dick. Yeah. Well, the the way I saw it was is that the this device is on, you know, treads, tractor treads, and it moves forward. And when it's operating, it has a lot of regolith on board.

So it's not we delivered it, weighs less than, 15 tons. But when it's operating, it probably weighs 80 tons. Because the yeah. It's full of the material. Full of regolith. Is regolith heavy? It's about the it's let's see. About the consistency, little less than aluminum, I think. Well, and so yeah. You look at it from a scientific perspective. I'm looking at it as aluminum foil, and aluminum is very light. Just because we come from different worlds, you're looking at it as material.

And, yes, if you saw aluminum in its in the in a factory on a wheel, it's extremely heavy. And it's then processed down to lighter and lighter and thinner and thinner material. So would Okay. Well, think of it as as a little lighter than aluminum BBs Yep. That you're trying to scoop. But you're getting enough of it to be able to fill it up with 80 80 ton in the wheel at a time. So it's generating its own downward force to be able to keep it solid enough to be able to dig. That's correct.

Okay. And the energy to run one of these? Okay. We patterned our device after several studies done by the University of Wisconsin, who have spent, several graduate careers developing a device to mine the lunar regolith. Well, we we took their device, which was powered by a Beam Solar and put a small nuclear reactor in it. We okay. In in our our class, we contacted the Idaho nuclear facility, and they helped us put together small nuclear reactor designs and costs.

So that's what we based a lot of our power on where these the the Idaho National Laboratory, designs for small nuclear reactors. So we had a 25 megawatt nuclear reactor onboard our miner, And it was unmanned, and I wouldn't recommend putting people on it. The it's very easy to take our where we live on Earth and then translate it to to spaces to be equivalent, yet there's zero atmosphere and or very minimal atmosphere on the moon and there's minimal, gravity, 16 gravity.

So the an explosion, if it did happen on the moon, would not be the same as an explosion on earth. Correct? Correct. What would happen if there was an explosion on the moon of a 25 megaton megawatt. A 25 megawatt. First of all, reactors don't explode. They melt. Oh, okay. Okay. So it'd be a a puddle. Okay. And and I get it. Have you been to NASA in San Francisco and seen the regolith pet? Or I've I'm assuming you've seen regolith pets?

Yes. They're neat because the material to me is it's it's more like a coating than it is dirt. So the bucket so what what technology are you leaning towards? The explosion of it or we don't know? Or the, the scooper being able to pick it up? Which one do you think is going to be the one that's most probably going to work? Well, the regolith is is, you know, it's essentially fractured. Most of it's fractured basalt.

Mhmm. Okay. So, the problem is air is a pretty good insulator, and so electrically all those small teeny particles stick together real well. Yes. And the regolith, most of the regolith is, you know, sub millimeter size. I mean it's almost micron sized dust. So there's no reason I mean, if you look at the photos of the astronauts, they were able to pick stuff up and pick up samples of soil. It wasn't, you know it it had the characteristics of dirt. It's just it's it's stickier.

Okay. So okay. So I I now see the the the bucket loader on there. Can you I had a conversation just recently with somebody who, when I think about space, because I am not a space person, I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'm trying to be real in in timelines and thinking only because I don't know enough. And I run into people in the space industry who give me timelines that if they had to bet their life on them, they would all die. And I recently had a guy on the phone.

We were talking about Project Moon Hut, and they were looking to get involved, and I said, we try to be pragmatic. I don't believe that within 7 years, we'll have 50,000 people floating in a space or Orion type of floating capsule with gravitational, 50,000 people living there within 7 years. And there are people out there promoting these type of things. When, my question to you is if you were to give me and and your life depended on it only because I really want to know.

If we were to put a pragmatic timeline to this, a a realistic timeline mean we have to get to the moon, The first rockets that where people might live or machinery is there that can land, and and we have to bring this equipment, this, how many tons did you say? You said 15 ton piece of equipment plus other equipment, and then we have to operate it and we have to be able to send things back.

If you were to kinda give me a timeline of what you're thinking so that myself, and I'm gonna say, which I normally don't get into, is the listeners are going to be able to say, that sounds kind of real, and I'd like to be able to say that. How would you take 2021 and push me forward into creating this ecosystem or this, economic system, earth and space receiving, shipping, doing? How would you lay that out? Okay. Well, the way I would start is it's kind of like Buck Rogers. Okay?

Without the Bucks, there is no Buck Rogers. Okay. And this is all driven by money Yep. And need. Okay. Elon Musk is gonna put Starship in orbit. Mhmm. Now he thinks he's gonna do it in 2 years. I give him 4 to 5. Okay. Once we have low cost access to low Earth orbit, okay, then it becomes very economical to put space stations, tourist hotels, and huge test facilities in low Earth orbit. And and that's a real economic driver.

You can make very good money doing that if you have low cost access to low Earth orbit. And is is there a number that when you think of when you think of low cost access? Well, like I said, if studies that I was involved in 30 years ago or 20 years ago, said that if you can get down to 250, you can make all that work and make good money. Well, Elon is all if I look at and analyze Starship, I get a $100 a kilogram, and he still makes money. Okay. Just making so at a 100 a 100 Dollars a kilogram.

Oh, that is I had I had a person from Italy on the phone today, part of the team that we're working on, and we talked about cost. And I said, take a wild guess how much it cost to send an individual up to the International Space Station. And she had no clue. I says, is it 3,000,000? Is it 7,000,000? Is it 20,000,000?

And I said, the range, and you probably know more than I do, is somewhere in the neighborhood of it could be anywhere from 50 to 80,000,000 to put someone into the International Space Station to stay for their period of time and bring them back. And she had no clue.

So that's why I'm asking this question if we're talking about Space Station and tourist hotels is if we're at a 100 kilograms, that's the number you think if we stay there that we can get this low earth orbit access, and that can be the driver for phase I'm gonna call it phase 2. Is that what you're saying? I think it's really phase 1. In other words, we we have to to get down to a $100 a kilogram, you need a lot of traffic. You need to fly often.

Okay. And and we'll fly often because, well, you know, if a tourist can go to low Earth orbit and spend 2 weeks for $50,000, okay, which is reasonable in a $100 to look around, there will be traffic you won't believe. Oh, yeah. The because yes. Yes. The because people are doing it right now when they do these trips to Balconore and the things. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. So the the traffic the the launches will be, you know, 1,000 a year, 800 to a 1000 a year.

That drives us down towards the $100 a kilogram level. Okay. And now you can afford to to put the to put a program together and and do the financing to go to the moon. So what's the next phase? So we've got we get up to I figure okay. So 2024, they start flying. Yep. Assume the tourism starts in 2026. Okay. Yep. By 2030, the flight rate should be starting to get pretty reasonable Yeah. Which drives the cost down to where where we want it for for mining. Okay?

It's gonna take, you know, my guess is 8 to 10 years to to to to build the equipment, get everything together, get all the approvals, and get to the moon. Okay. So now what are we talking about? 2035? 20 30 let's say 2038 to 20 let's say 2038 we're at now. Okay. Yep. Sounds good. Okay. That would be then we'd we we would start minding the moon, and and we we start bringing back the the Helium 3 and the the platinum group metals. And incidentally, and and one of the other, Seadrill files is gold.

So you might wanna bring some of that back too. Yep. But whatever. And and when you're including in there is in that time frame, from 2021 to 2038, we're going to be able to then also be able to return from the moon using the resources on the moon, including the hydrogen and the oxygen that comes out of, the separation of water or whatever it may be so that we can return. So by 2038, and I'm not holding it's you're not gonna dive by making this estimation.

But by 2038, you believe that we can start to address this challenge of earth based challenges of, the long haul truckers, the ocean chipping, the aircraft, and everything else. Yeah. No. Actually, I don't think we need the the, the hydrogen on the moon to come back. You're aware of, David and Goliath. Right? What you can do with a sling? My my my name is David. So in my lifetime, I've heard that multiple times.

Okay. Well, it turns out you can mount a sling on the surface of the moon and throw capsules back to earth and put them in the South Pacific Ocean or South Indian Ocean where there is no traffic, and periodically stop throwing them when the, when, you know, that part of the Moon is in shadow, so there's no solar power, and pick them all up, and then when the Sun rises again on the Earth facing side, you start throwing more of them. So the all that takes is a little electrical power.

Okay. So okay. Yeah. I've this is the first time you've got me. My my my my ears went up. I'm I'm a dog. My ears went up. I've never heard I I know about the the ability to throw and and the gravity allows you to escape the, the moon's gravitational pull, But I no one has ever said in all these 6 years I've been involved, 7 years in space, no one's ever talked about throwing these capsules.

So what's the catapult look like and what size would these capsules be, and anything else that we know about this? Okay. The catapult is, the arms are, I would say, a 100 to 200 meters long. They're not it's not rope. It's it's probably metallic or carbon fiber, and the capsules would weigh, half a ton to a ton, and they're built from, remember we mined the, we mined nickel iron, to get to the platinum.

Yep. So we used the nickel iron to build the shell, and part of the part of the the facilities is making oxygen for rockets, and the byproduct is rutile, which is a titanium oxide, which is extra excellent insulator. So these capsules are built on the moon, and thrown to earth and then they're they're they're designed so they float.

And there's a little little tracker on them and, so then you recover them and, and recycle, you know, you have you get some nickel iron along with all the platinum and gold. Right. Yes. There's a there's a tremendous amount of iron ore on the moon. There's all sorts and one of the thing, we could have every building, we can have every bridge on earth made of stainless steel if we wanted to with all the things that we could bring back. You got it. So so we we shoot these capsules.

How are we sure that they're safe going through lower earth atmosphere with all of the satellites and the traffic that might be established by this time frame of 2030 with all these floating tourist hotels and everything else? Will we have boosters on them? Will we have wings on them? Will will they be yes to all of them or no? No. They're they're they're statically stable. They're thrown into the South Indian Ocean where there is absolutely no traffic. No. There's no traffic even in space?

Well, Because you have you have asteroid, you have you have satellites going around the earth, you have these hotels going around the earth. There is traffic, but if you run the if you run the numbers, they're they're at the altitude where the traffic is for such a short time that the chances of collision are are very small. Okay. So so hauling something at earth is an okay thing, and we we shoot these capsules.

I I guess I guess the part of it in my head is I see a lot of them, but you might be thinking we send 1 a day or 2 a day or one every week, or is are you thinking when you see 2038 and it's starting, are we shooting 10 capsules per year per day at the Earth? Well, it depends. Okay. We we wanna return the platinum doesn't do us any good on the moon. Right. Okay. And and we're talking, in the time frame we're talking around, we're probably talking 4,000 tons a year.

We want to return to Earth at the platinum. Mhmm. So we're probably talking, 20,000 capsules a year. And and the the the that's not a problem. We can easily do that. Okay. So I okay. No. I can I could see that we could do it? I just had not thought of I was, again, being naive.

I was thinking that we'd have some type of space logistics where the there would be a vessel or vehicle, a rocket, or something that would launch off, it would bring it to low Earth orbit and then brought down in some way, but you're just saying, heave ho and and let these babies fly. Well, this is a company. We wanna make money. No. I understand that. I just never had thought. I mean, I've I've heard of a lot of ideas. I this is an interesting if there is It's it's in the book, David.

No. No. No. But I it I'm not I probably won't finish the book. The the space is not it's I have a lot of other things that I like to read. I'm trying to the only one real book that I read years ago was, On Space gave me some of the orientation. It's it's a very technical book, and there are a lot of things, and I'm glad that I have a my background that I do because for me, it was a little challenging to grasp some of the as quickly as it's thrown at me, some of the concepts on it.

So this it's throwing the it's throwing it at how fast do these suckers go? I mean, they gotta be hauling. Yeah. They're about 2.2 kilometers a second. And do they slow down? Oh, yeah. The Earth's the the moon's gravity slows them down, but when they're when they get to Earth, okay, they're traveling about 7 and a half kilometers a second. And it'll send up a lot of water. No. No. No. No. They slow down to, you know, a 100 kilometers an hour or so when they when they splash.

Okay. In other words, they're designed to slow down. They're they're purposely blunt. Okay. So that's a 100 kilometers per hour, is a lot better.

Now for, for those of you listening in, if you're not if you're American or you're used to miles per hour, when you drive in Europe, you might be traveling at 90 kilometers per hour, which I don't know what the exact orientation is, but I know when I was driving in Europe, I'd be 80 to 90 kilometers per hour, and that's a reasonable speed, like a 60 to 70 miles per hour in the United States. Someone can look up the numbers. So it's not that high to say a 100 kilometers per hour.

It's not really that fast. Right. Okay. Yeah. We don't wanna break it when it hits the water. Yeah. I didn't didn't think of a breaking. I think of this solid rock being tossed at the at the Earth. Okay. So and the and the cost that you that the numbers came back was $15,000,000,000 or $18,000,000,000 to be able to build this infrastructure system. And you are you including by 20 38 humans participating in this for maintenance, or are you assuming at this point we still are robotic?

Okay. In the class, we assumed we were in 2012, we assumed we needed people to do maintenance. I I'm sure you're aware that Moondust is extremely abrasive. Yes. Okay. So you gotta expect things to break. And it's also it also gets into all the joints and all the mechanisms. It's a it's it's like a it's one of the challenges of the astronauts was not just being on the moon, but these particles would get into areas their lungs were one of them, but would get into the, I'm gonna say, outfit.

I can't think of it. The, spacesuit, And it would it would bind up the joints. Correct? Exactly. Now, okay, in 2019, when I wrote the book, okay, I revised the 2012 approach, assuming that we could teleoperate and have robotics available in 2020. So we didn't need to send the people. And we would we get Yeah. Further along the line here of 2038, probably even less. Probably, we need people. Absolutely.

Because the the robotic exponential curve is is in the works tied with artificial intelligence, machine learning, tied with 3 d printing, and its own ability to being able to make parts on the moon would all be able to facilitate creating or solving or fixing whatever happens up there. Exactly.

So by so we're we're we're also assuming that long haul trucking, ocean shipping, and aircraft, because I'm still kind of there playing down on the list that you gave, is that they will maintain or keep the need for platinum or the rare earth metals that are capable of being used in in a in a higher degree because we're going up to 4,000 tons a year as compared to 92 tons per year, we're assuming that there'll be an exponential growth need in the electronics and in any, and this tech or battery tech, energy tech that would need this type of growth curve?

As as far as we can predict now, yes. Is anybody actually building this? Yeah. There there you can go buy a hydrogen fuel cell truck right now. You might have a problem getting hydrogen. No. I meant our is anybody Project Moon Hut has its 4 phase development. It has all the pieces in it. We're talking to people about creating feasibility studies and and showing and putting together. You've got a feasibility study done by the students.

Is anybody today on Earth saying this is exactly what we're going to build? I don't think so, and I wouldn't condone it until, you know, until Starship flies. Right now at current prices, it makes no sense. You know, price the cost to to orbit. So until we have something cheap to orbit, it makes no sense to start making serious plans. Well, that's why we have project Moon Hut. Come on.

I mean, that's why I'm I've been trying to get I have been pushing low cost to orbit reusable rocket systems for 9 on 40 years, David, and I'm I'm not there yet. I understand. Hopefully, I won't have to wait so long because I I'd probably get tired of all this stuff. So, when we anything to add to the long haul trucking, the shipping, or any other in the your that line, that category there. Is there anything else you'd like to add that adds to this? I think okay.

Helium 3 from the moon really helps fusion. The reason is is if you look at the reactions, the current fusion fuel cycle is deuteriumtritinium. And that's that's that's essentially heavy hydrogen with heavier hydrogen. And the problem with that reaction is it releases a 14.1 Megavolt Neutron every time you get a a fusion. Okay. And and that is hard to stop. You have to have heavy shielding, and that shielding becomes radioactive.

Now if you use deuterium helium 3 as fuel, what you get is helium plus a proton, and the proton interacts with the magnetic field, never makes it to the you don't need a shield, shielding wall. Yep. Doesn't generate radioactivity, and makes the fact then you can make a much smaller cheaper reactor. And remember smaller cheaper is where we want to go. So What's a what's a reactor costing today, even the small the small micro reactors? Who knows? No one's built one. The one that they're testing.

What are they Oh, good question. I wish I could answer it. Okay. An old fashioned nuclear reactor cost? Reactors are currently running, 4 to $5,000 a kilowatt electric. That's to build a plant. So a total cost if you were to take a wild range? Okay. If you were if you were doing a, say, a 10 megawatt system, you're talking what? 10000 times, 4000? Yep. Still what? About 40,000,000,000?

Yeah. So so what you're the way I'm kind of visualizing this because I as you know, I take notes and I draw, is that what you're saying is we get to this 2038 timeline. And at 2038, we actually see multiple things happening. We have the we have our first shipments coming back, which allows us to be able to expand the use of platinum in multiple areas.

So not only are we talking the ability to do long haul trucking, we do ocean shipping, we do aircraft, but we also have the capacity to modify other electronics because now the cost of platinum has dropped significantly, and and availability is there. The age of infinite, infinite possibilities, infinite resources. So we now have the ability like aluminum, which was $800 an ounce back when it was first created and now or $900, and now it's in our mobile phone or in our laptop.

So we have other implications from having it, not only the transportation side of it, but we have other electronics. And what you're also saying is at the same time, because we're doing the separation tech the separation, we're getting some other spin offs. So there's value added in multiple areas, and another one is the Helium 3. Correct? Correct.

And that allows us to be able to create a low cost reactor, fusion reactor, that is no longer radioactive and as dangerous as the existing technology we have today, which is okay. That's just what it is. What spin offs That means we we can replace I'm sorry. No. You're right. That means that means we can replace the the natural gas we've been burning all this time. Okay. So we can replace natural gas, and then we don't have any coal being used. And okay.

What else comes out of this 2038 date of the materials coming back. That's about it. I mean, that's the the the the purpose of the this exercise I've been working on that I'm telling you about Yeah. Was to try to not visit the Cretaceous again. Okay. To to drop it does still leave the carbon emissions in the air, and there will be a a drag of by the time it gets implemented, let's say 2038. So we're going 2038 to 202068, giving 30 years for the world to catch up with this.

Is there any technology, that you see in terms of cleaning the air or that come out of this? Well, this the whole purpose of this was to get rid of the fossil fuels, and and the first step is to replace all the coal and coal and oil with natural gas Yeah. Which burns much much cheaper, much cleaner. It's both cheaper and cleaner, which is why no one is building coal plants anymore except in the 3rd world in China.

And China if China had natural gas resources, they would be They would definitely be. Person in it too. Yeah. If such I I worked with the in the coal somewhat industry and not in the industry, but I spoke to them about certain types of technologies and work with them some. And the in the United States, we have sulfur, high sulfur coal. We have cleaner coal, and we're actually shipping we're still mining the sulfur coal, but we used to in past decade.

We used to ship our high sulfur coal to China. China would burn it, and it flows back over to the United States.

Yep. So the high sulfur the the good coal, which was created in the north of the United States, but the high sulfur coal, which was down in the Tennessee Valley, is the Tennessee Valley shipped it, and then you have to transport all of this coal from the northern part of the United States down to Tennessee Valley for them to be able to burn it, which is kind of a, if you think about it, a really odd way of trying to maintain coal.

The reason I I asked that question so let me give you a feeder to do you see anything else, is when I started to talk about, you have air oh, I would say in the beginning of Project Moon, I haven't said this in a long time, is that a lot of the technology we're creating for doing what you did bring up in the very beginning, which was the removing the c o two from the atmosphere, one of the challenges is the cost.

So now you can use the energy created by these this cheaper energy source, whether it be solar power, ready back to earth or platinum that's now on earth to be able to reduce costs or these nuclear facilities. Now it's cheaper to run air cleaning systems and water filtration systems, which are highly desalination plants. And that actually will help to drive down other environmental challenges and clean the air at the same time. Does that make sense?

Yes. So that's why I was asking have since you've come up with this, did you think did you add this equation? Mine biggest one was we have technology to clean the air or to take out the c o two, one of the challenges. It's costly. It's energy intensive. But if we can drop the cost of energy, we could then turn them on. The problem I have with that is we can build the nuclear power plants because people will buy the electricity. Yep. Okay. Who's buying the c02 we're removing from the air?

I don't know. Maybe at that point, there'll be credits for it. Maybe there'll be a, or even countries in and of themselves because there it's 20 We're 2040 already. We've already seen some more climate activity. Maybe countries themselves put in place. I'm gonna call it a c o two scrubber, whatever the name may be. But maybe the society as a whole on an impact level sees the threat.

And around the world, there are countries who are willing to put in these just for the purposes of making sure that there is a a better tomorrow. Yeah. The the problem is is that 80% of the fossil you know, the the carbon put in the atmosphere is put in not by the, you know, the US and Europe. The people who can afford to buy the scrubbers, we're not the problem. Okay. The it doesn't matter if we're the problem, we're impacted by it.

And to it's for for the people listening today, I'm just bringing it up because no one knows when these interviews are done. I never say the date, and I it's not intentional. I just never thought of setting the date. It is it is right after the insurrection in the United States historically.

We, having lived in Asia for the past 10 years, in Hong Kong and Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and all these countries and seeing what's happening, what will happen in the next 30 years within the Asia Pacific region and Asia, in my opinion, will be unbelievable compared to what we have seen in the past. Korea has absolutely become a phenomenal environment as compared to 30 years ago. Bangladesh might be on the same tracks and many other countries in the region. So in 30 years Mhmm.

The world may be a very different place even including China if we were to use that as the one scapegoat for the world. I I think that we could see a more unified approach to solving this. So that's why in my in my formulaic component is that maybe the world knows that they need to do this and there's enough. Maybe it's put into maybe just throwing this up. Maybe the cars that people use have built into it little tiny carbon filtration systems. So as you drive your car, you are cleaning.

As you do certain functionality, you're cleaning. Might just just be plants. It might be because of this platinum that we've brought back, we've got this. Does does that make sense? It's possible. I'm not again, I'm I think it's more likely that we will add something to jet fuel and drop the temperature by increasing the cloud layer. Okay. Makes sense. So It's cheaper. It it yes. And the the number of flights in the air, would be able to facilitate that.

So I hadn't thought about it from that angle. So we've got the the long haul, the trucking ocean. Is there anything else to add to that line of trucking ocean shipping aircraft? Well, there there are 2 other large contributors to CO 2 in the atmosphere. Okay. One is iron making, and the other is concrete. Yeah. I was gonna say cement. Cement. Yep. And the there is a a process being tested that removes the oxygen from iron ore, electrically, like, using electrolysis.

In that, I think and these are 2 major contributors. I mean, we're talking, you know, millions of tons a year Yeah. I of carbon dioxide. I don't know what the number is, but it's huge. Yes. Yeah. So and and there's also a a a process, I believe using it's a process to to remove the CO2 from the concrete before it, hardens. And and I I've read about it, but I'm blanking out on it right now. So there's a there's potential there. There is work being done testing that looks pretty interesting.

And even the replacement, of some of the materials within cement, has being is being looked at. But I just looked at the number. 8% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from, it's estimated, from cement. Yeah. So it's it's obviously you know, we're you know, the US does about 10% of the of the world's emissions. So if it's 8% versus 10%, it's huge. Mhmm. And these numbers, when you take them to the size of the planet are huge, huge numbers. Okay?

So the making of, iron or in cements in the applications or even the new materials that might come about in the next 20 years or 30 years could do some replacement. Anything else to the long haul to that one category? Well, okay. I don't no. I don't think so. Automobiles, obviously, were going batteries. I drive an I drive an electric car, so I'm I'm very familiar with the ins and outs of batteries. Batteries are getting cheaper.

They will continue to get cheaper, and that's all, you know my electric car requires no maintenance, I mean, ZIP. It's much cheaper to operate than you know, my wife has a hybrid. Okay? And and, you know, she's she's looking at, you know, 7, 8¢ a mile. I'm looking at at 1.3¢ a mile. Okay? Tremendous difference. So once batteries become a little cheaper, so you can buy an electric car cheaper than you can buy a gas car, I would assume that that, you know, gas cars are gonna disappear.

All the the other data point, and this is not gonna be accurate. It's just to give a reference that a car has 5,000 moving parts where a battery vehicle has something like the main parts are, like, 25. And, again, don't hold me on these exact figures. I'm throwing it out. And that one of the things that you have to do is change the batteries. I mean, change the brakes ever at a 100000 miles as compared to all of the maintenance that has to go on with a typical vehicle.

The the challenge that the one thing I do and like your opinion on it when it comes to the batteries, and hopefully, we'll come up with something that's far superior, is that the batteries will do leak, and they leach into water systems and creeks and all of that. How, when it comes to using space, as the topic is, the resources and space, do you see of anything that would be able to mitigate the challenges that we have with battery technology today? 2 things.

First of all, obviously, we need to recycle batteries, and and I'm surprised that technology is not here already. Mhmm. The second thing is there is something better than a battery. It's called a flywheel. And the technology for flywheels, you could build a flywheel powered airplane. In other words, you get that order of magnitude, kilowatt hours per kilogram with a high technology flywheel. Can you explain the flywheel, please? Because I I know about it, but I don't know about it.

Well, it's essentially you take a a mass and you spin it. Mhmm. And it's you it's in a vacuum and it's have magnetic bearings, so there's almost no drag. And the electric there's an electric motor part of the flywheel, so you can spin it up and also pull power out of it. Okay. And with modern technology materials, okay, you could get an order of magnitude better and and, you know, kilograms per kilowatt than you can with a battery. And flywheels don't wear out. They don't age.

They're good forever. The problem is that that technology that that technology is laying dormant. I mean, it's just not there. It's an No one's pursuing it.

Well, maybe someone will listen and and start to pursue it a little bit more because the challenge I have, and I wanna go back to the flywheel, but the challenge I have with batteries is no matter how many batteries you collect, there will always be somebody who will leave a car with batteries all underneath, and they will leave it to degrade in their backyard. It just happens to be the nature of human beings. There's barns that fall down, cars that rust on the side.

There will be somebody who get a cracked battery, and that cracked battery will leach into the aquifer that exists below them and damage it. And you don't need a lot to damage an aquifer. So when I think of batteries while they are improving, I do have a fear that this will happen, which is not unlike the fear that individuals have with solar power is that the solar cells will one day have to be replaced.

And today, we don't have the tech to be able to separate the, rare earth metals, the dangerous toxic metals that were then that or any chemicals, and they will be shipped off to, level 1 countries, countries that have less than a dollar per day as compared to level 2, 3, or 4, and we're in the 4 category. So they the challenge with batteries becomes how fast can we find something else in the flywheel I will have to look into. But no one in your that any thoughts as to why no one's working on it?

Because batteries are right now a lot easier to use. There was, about 10 years ago, a serious look at fall flywheel energy storage, you know, for stationary storage. Mhmm. And and no one, you know, batteries came on, born, were popular. I I do wanna make one comment on your your car out in the backyard thing. Sure. A busted automobile is worth nothing, literally. A battery, the chemicals in a battery are still valuable.

So the the the guy may haul may tow the the his his battery car into a place that'll give him money for the battery. Okay. Because he wouldn't do it for a busted automobile. Okay. That's a a good so we're hoping that the the impetus to be able to get the value just like copper or metals or scrap that this battery will have enough value. And the more batteries and easier and the cheaper they are to produce, the less valuable be become.

But we're hoping that there'll be enough value that they'll still bring it in for whatever currency they can get. Yeah. Nickel cobalt both nickel and cobalt are fairly valuable. So When I when I think of this, I I I've actually I have a diagram that I've drawn, and I have batteries on one side and flywheel on the other. And in my head, I go back to 1900. And I go back to the fact in 1900, there were more electric vehicles on the road than there were, the combustion engine.

But by the 1915, that number had completely reversed with the, the the automatic starter as compared to having to crank the shaft. And we have combustion engines because of that split in the road. Is gee, could the flywheel and the battery actually have been be our next mistake that we didn't pursue the one that was more value more environmentally friendly because we made choices for batteries.

Well, the back in 1900, the range on a battery automobile could not compete with an internal combustion engine system. Yes. But it's still we still took a path instead of continuing with electric. My point is today would be farther along. Could we be facing that same challenge here that the battery is where we focus, but the flywheel is probably the better option? It's possible. I wouldn't again, I I don't have enough data to make that projection. Okay. Just a question. So, let's see.

We the next one, how does space development, solve these challenges, which I think we've kind of is there anything else to add to that? No. I think we've pretty well covered it. And then the all the elements we need to harvest on the moon, where found on the moon. So if we take those other 2, we've taken the the the main elements you've given. Is there anything else on the moon besides the Helium 3 and the platinum or the the platinum group?

Is there anything else on the moon that you read about or say to yourself, here's a great opportunity also? Yes. Okay. This is a little further down the line, but there is a the the crater Copernicus seems to have a lot of uranium in its regolith. And, again, up in that, you know, up in the left upper part of the moon in Mare Iridium, there seems to be a lot of thorium.

So there's a lot of nuclear fuels on the moon that are in the in the crust, which makes them readily, you know, in the regolith, makes them readily available. And if Earth doesn't want nuclear power, the moon may love it. If anybody's living on the moon, there's advanced spaceships that use nuclear power. You know, they're pulse type like Project Orion.

And you could build and operate those ships on the moon and not worry about, you know, the reason that Project Orion never made it on Earth was the fallout. Well, the earth, the moon atmosphere, I mean, just the environment is radioactive. You need shelter. So, the lunarites or whatever we call them, your people in the lunar hut, they might develop nuclear powered spaceships and develop the rest of the solar system. So when we I'm assuming you know the name, Chas Diaz?

Yes. He his, what is it called? His the interview we had with his, what's the name of the engine? It's a, cash Casimir. Yeah. One of the things we talked about was the it couldn't get us out of atmosphere. But in space, it needs a tremendous amount of energy. And so what you're suggesting, and I'm tying 2 pieces together, excuse me if I'm wrong again, is that we could take the energy for this, this engine, and we can supply the fuel to be able to fly this engine into space?

Well, it probably still isn't enough thrust, but once you're away from the moon, it would do fabulously. But you'd you'd use some other system to get off the ground, so to speak. The VASIMR engine. That's what I was trying to get, the VASIMR. Yeah. So the so yeah. So you're saying yes, it would, or am I mixing 2 things? You you can't it doesn't develop enough thrust to lift off from the moon.

But once you're in orbit around the moon, you could use it to go to, you know, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, wherever. Okay. Quite well. So and plus, Vazimir probably can use water's propellant. And, you know, water is probably readily available on the moon. So so that once you once you have the lunar hut or whatever, you once you have people on the moon The moon hut. There's lots of resources, and they could they could move out and develop the rest of the solar system. They have everything they need.

The the the Mearth ecosystem, moon and earth ecosystem was I I kinda go back to how do we be able to facilitate doing what we do in space. So I could see the VASMIR engine helping to facilitate potentially just even going between the moon and Earth or no? Yes. Very definitely, but not all the way to the lunar surface. You can go from low Earth orbit to low lunar orbit using VASMIR. And that would be yeah. It would be like a cross stock.

You bring your you bring it up to low Earth orbit, you put it onto the VASMIR engine, onto a vehicle that ships it, goes to near the moon, it cross stocks and brings it down. You got it. Like a a long haul trucker would do. Is that And and the the the lunar lander that comes up and visits Vazimir in lunar orbit is based on the moon. And, again, the all the propellants you need are readily available with this mining system I talked about.

So you could support a a lunar lander at your mining facility. And it would go up and take, you know, supplies up and bring supplies back. So we've got how from what knowledge we have today, the far side of the moon, similar do we know the composition? We you were talking about here thorium and uranium and platinum. Obviously, there'll be platinum on the other side. There'll be these on the other side, on the far side.

Are there any, do we know the composition as well as we do know the the near side? Well, yes. As it turns out, that most of the valuable minerals are on the near side. Why is that? We have, no I suspect it'll be a very large meteor I mean, asteroid hit. We've had satellites in orbit around the moon for many years looking down, using, neutron scattering and and gamma rays to measure what's on the surface.

And it's been US, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians have put these observation satellites in in polar orbit around the moon. So we have a pretty good set of maps is where the minerals are, and interesting enough, the far richest deposits are on the near side. And you you've mentioned the north, northwest a lot. Well, looking from the earth. Yeah. I know I know. That's what the reference is, the northwest. Any anywhere else that there are higher concentrations or is if or other cut.

You know, I'm asking. Primarily there. I mean, yes. There are other deposits. There's a lot of Helium 3 on the the northeast side, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of deposits on the backside. So so what we're more or less saying that another asteroid hit the moon and gave us these resources. You got it.

So even even Earth, for human consumption, Earth and the moon having been hit and struck in the second one, second, becoming and forming on as the moon, we still are looking at the, the metallic and the organic meteors to be this next iteration of, energy or resources that we should are are looking at. It's still the same family of did the same thing for both Earth and moon. You got it.

Are the the resource these critical resources we're mining were deposited on both bodies by asteroid collisions. And and we've been we've been using up that supply on Earth, and it's about time maybe to tap the supply on the moon. Okay. And anything else with, where found on the moon? Which was your last No. That's, again, there are all kinds of maps out there, and, you can download them. And you'll see that the that that northwest corner seems to be extremely rich.

I will be looking at the northwest corner for the for for now on. I had not known that. So any other when you're thinking about acquiring the resources and spaces or any and saving Earth, is there anything else that Well, I have many friends in in in rocket science group and in NASA that wanna do a solar power satellite and essentially beam the power down from geosynchronous orbit and replace all the electrical power plants. Yep. And, physically, that works.

The problem is the economics don't work too well. Yeah. We had, Strickland. What's his name? Jim Strickland? Is it Jim? Okay. Yeah. You know do you know him? I think you would know you as I know his name. Yeah. He did one he did one of our podcasts on Space Solar Power. So you're saying the economics don't work. What's the numbers? The first well, the I was involved just back in 75. Okay? And we did an extensive study, and we came up with the first kilowatt was $200,000,000,000.

It's the capital cost, not the operating cost that gets you. In other words, no utility can afford $200,000,000,000. Right. So even though it works, and and plus the power the cost of power on earth has gone down in real dollars by couple orders of magnitude since we did that study. In other words, technology is getting better all the time. Mhmm. But not but not the but not the 200,000,000,000 reducing. Well, yeah. They're down to maybe 80 or a 100,000,000,000 now.

And and once again, it's the cost to get a kilogram to low Earth orbit has been the driver. Now once, you know, if star if Starship is successful, you can start running the numbers again for solar power satellites and see see how it comes out. I go to futuristic movies in my head, and I think of, okay. It's not it's not going to be one solution. There'll be multiple solutions. So maybe let's use the same timeline, 2038, because we're dropping the cost of energy as you've just described.

And for for localized supply demand, you could be using many, facilities and and much of what we've spoken about today. And at the same time, there could be space solar power delivering simultaneously, so it's not an it's not an and or it's not an a, an or and or, but it's a it's not an or. It's an and or so that you could be choosing between multiple forms of, tech to be able to service your community depending on where it is, rural versus urban, how much is needed.

And so the combination will probably by 2040, we'll have many more options. Yeah. And and part of this is that we did a study back in 93. All the all the major aerospace companies in the United States combined and did a study looking at commercial space transportation study, and we're looking to see we're looking at at at market pull instead of technology push. In other words, if we drop the price, who's gonna want to to use space? And and it turns out everybody did.

Mhmm. But we couldn't get the price down. We kept trying, and and NASA well, I won't get into this. You know, read the book. I might not get to it, so tell me. You keep on saying that. Well, NASA kept we tried to justify the cost of a reusable single staged orbit. And we couldn't make the numbers work. In other words, we could if if we got the cost down to where everybody would use space, we couldn't make enough money operating the system.

And that was because it cost too much to build the reusable system, And that was an artifact of the tool we were estimating with, which was a NASA tool, and since it was a NASA study we were kinda we're gonna use their tool. Right. So and what happened was is Elon said, Elon said well, I'm not NASA. Yeah. I'm gonna cut some corners. I'm gonna do it the right way, and he did. And he got reusable space working. He got reusable launch systems working.

And and there and there was re there were re reusable there was a reusable return to Earth rocket in I think it was Pete Wharton spoke about this, and I might not have shared it on this program, but back in and, again, my dates might be off at 19 seventies, 19 eighties. There were rockets that would come up, go up, and they could come down, but not in the same scale and capability that we have today and not going all the way up into low Earth orbit.

Yeah. And and I know Pete very well, and he and I have we were involved in some of this. Okay. So, yes, you're correct. But they weren't they were they were studies. They got again, they were joint Air Force NASA studies, and and we were almost there. And then we won the Cold War and all the money dried up. Yeah. And that's where you and I came back to this conversation is that I'm reading the first few pages of your book.

And, as I shared with you in our pre interview is I don't wanna know anything before our call because then the listener cannot learn alongside of me so that we learn together. And I ask the questions that I would ask normally. There's no curse of knowledge. And when I saw that in the 9 the I don't know. It was the x something, x 15 or whatever was developed. Actually dinosaur. Dinosaur. Is that the name of it? Dinosaur?

Okay. Where a rocket was developed that was a a rocket plane, and it could take off and land, horizontal takeoff, horizontal landing, and it had gotten far enough. And then someone came in and canceled it, and every all the data, all this work, years of research was thrown into the trash. And I think you wrote physically thrown into the trash. Yeah. I I I worked with and carpooled with the people involved. In dumping the trash?

No. No. No. This was years later, but they were very bitter about the way that ended. Explain to me because I think this is the first time I'm asking this. Explain to me why data in 19 seventies or eighties or sixties, why this data is so valuable that it would save time today? Is that do you understand what I'm asking that question? Because it's it seems odd. I would say, no, no, start again. It's new. We need this, and we could do it faster and cheaper and better.

Can you give it to me from that perspective? Okay. You may not like the answer. I know. I wanna if there's no like, this is pragmatic to me. I we wanna get a box of the roof and a door on the moon. We wanna create the Mearth ecosystem, the Mearth economic system. You gotta here. We get you gotta here. Okay. Well, DINOSAUR was an air force program. Okay. And they were developing a metallic a high temperature metallic airplane with metallic heat shield. And they got, they were ready.

They had all the drawing released. They were ready to assemble the first vehicle. And the program got canceled by Robert McNamara for cost reasons because they were going after a mission that the corona satellite was already doing, and the corona just started operating correctly. What is the corona satellite? That was spying. They were spying on the Soviet Union and China.

They were taking pictures, and that was the original purpose of dinosaur was to fly over China and the Soviet Union and take photographs. So he said, well, we don't this is not cost effective. He canceled it. He wasn't even thinking of the technology. Well, now we now 10 years later, we're doing the Space Shuttle, and Eisenhower formed NASA as a civil organization, not a DOD organization. And he did that for a purpose.

He wanted to claim that we, you know, that we were not going to militarize space. Well, NASA and the Air Force were competing for some missions. So NASA developed they went and developed spacecraft, but they decided they wanted to use aluminum structure and a ceramic TPS system, which was dumber than dirt. Okay. And it ended in, you know, killing the crew on Columbia.

Okay. All the and and and the Air Force had flown their TPS system, they had launched it on a Thor and actually flown it and proven that it worked and it was lighter than what NASA was doing. But NASA was in competition with the Air Force at this time, and they were not about to use an Air Force solution to their problem, even though it was safer and lighter. So we got the shuttle, and the shuttle, the shuttle tile is, what is it, antihydromic?

It it absorbs water readily, So it has to be waterproofed or it would sit out in the floor to be add add weight on every second it sat. Yeah. It would essentially absorb 3 times its weight in water. And when you launched, the tile would get hot, the water would turn to steam and blow the tiles off. Mhmm. So they absolutely had to waterproof it. It took 18,000 man hours to waterproof the shuttle every time it returned, and the material they used was extremely toxic.

So they had to be in escape suits, which is essentially a spacesuit with with air being fed into it, from remote remote location so that they they wouldn't breathe any of the silane they were injecting into the tiles. So the shuttle originally was to fly every 160 hours turnaround and fly for $4,800,000 a flight.

By the time they rebuilt the engines, which was another mistake, and did the tile, it took 40 to 50 days to turn it around, and it was costing over 500,000,000 of light instead of 4.8. K. So that is why I say the loss of the dinosaur technology was a very okay. Had dinosaur flown, then it would have been very difficult for NASA not to use in that technology. So the dinosaur was the air force's technology.

NASA decided to take their own, but the country, the United States of America, decided to take the NASA route instead of the air force route. There was no sharing of the tech between them. If so that is if in fact it flew, but what about these pot this pile of data? Like, someone I I talked into one of our team members in Germany, and he said, oh, if we only had the data, I'm thinking it's 25 year old data, it's 40 year old data. What does data when it comes to rocketry?

How do you why is it so, so, so, so, so valuable? It's not the data per se as much as it is as the the the data results. In other words, had had you proven and and that data exists. In other words, they they flew I think it was called Prime. They they flew, some test vehicles, small test vehicles with the data, and that was Langley had had that data. So NASA Langley had it, but NASA Langley was not in the loop in picking the shuttle. This is all politics, David.

Yeah. Oh, I the first thing I learned when I started in this project Moon Hut and with NASA was the team that I sat with said to me, we've lost 1,000,000,000 because of politics, and they gave me one example that I remember. There are many others that I could share as he said, do you know how you get a raise or you move up in NASA? Now I might be stabbing myself as I say this. I'm not saying to be mean. It was what was shared with me, and it was a surprise. As they said, there's 2 things.

You either have more people or more budget. And what you would do or some people did, I don't know what true this is. This I've checked to talk to other people is you would delay a project and ask for more money so that you'd have more people and you had a higher position in NASA. That is correct. Okay. So no. I I I understand that it is a very political game, space flight. And that's where someone like Elon is being able to play a different game.

And he's able to and and I don't like to only speak about Elon because this needs to be an an economic system. It needs to be a Mearth economic system. We need to not have one entity that we're relying on. We need to be have a full system of rockets, life support, or whatever technology is being developed by multiple players so that this economic system can grow and develop. If it's only on one, it becomes challenging.

Now Jeff Bezos up here in Seattle, has Blue Origin, and a lot of the people that used to work for me are now working at Blue Origin. And they're doing good job, and they're not all that far behind, Elon. It's just that they're they're going they they do it quietly. They're not, sharing as much data with the put with the press as as SpaceX does. The, I think it's the CEO is Bob Smith or something, was Blue Origin? Just changed.

Yeah. I don't remember Well, the the only reason I'm gonna ask is that I'd like to get Bob or somebody at Blue Origin on our podcast. So that's where I was kinda going with it. So it's a it's a means to help other people like you've helped us today. So, anything else to add? No. I can probably help you with that. Okay. I would love that. I we've we've had some amazing people, including yourself on the program, and I highly, highly thank you for taking the time.

And for those of you listening, once again, we develop a title, a month or 2 ago, whatever the timeline was. And then Dana goes out and he does this thing. He decides the program, and every one of our guests does the same thing. I ask for no information, no outline, no no questions, no nothing. And I don't have any questions when I start. I'm in the moment. I'm learning. And alongside of me, you're learning too.

And so, I appreciate that you've Dana, that you've taken the time to delve into this, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain some of these, some people might say, basic concepts. However, I would argue that I've been around the world, and I talk to people who are space enthusiasts and people in the space industry, and they often don't know these things. So it's there it's not a ubiquitous industry. Everybody doesn't know everything.

And so I appreciate you taking the time to put all this together. So thank you very much, Dana. You're welcome. Is there one best way that sync people can get a hold of you? My website is probably and it's retired rocket doc, all lowercase.com. Retired rock rocket dot com. Doc. Yeah. Doc. Say it again? Yeah. Yeah. Retired Rocket Doc, d o c. I actually am a rocket scientist, and I do have a doctorate. So we have a retired rocket doc.com.

Yes. So, again, we wanna thank you for taking for all of you out there who have taken the time in out of your day to listen in. And I do, and I both of us do, Dana, myself, and everybody within Project Moon Hut. Hope that you've learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Now the Project Moon Hut Foundation is we are looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, through this accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem. What we're doing right now, talking about and and working on developing this ecosystem. And then to take those endeavors, that paradigm shifting, these innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

And if you're interested in participating in project Moon Hut, we are working on all sorts of technology from computer technology to biotech. We've got a whole plethora of different activities. We also we're a 501c3. We are looking for contributions, and we're looking for companies and organizations who could participate in what we're doing, whether it be from feasibility studies to helping us with with data access and individuals and and you name it. So please reach out to us.

You can reach me at, [email protected]. You can connect with us on Twitter at projectmoonhut. Mine is, at goldsmith if you want me. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. Even if you wanna get to know me a little bit more, it's Instagram at davidgoldsmith. So there are many ways to get a hold of us, and we would, almost every single day, we are talking with people around the world who are participating in Project Moon Hut. And I don't say almost every day.

Every day we are, and we would love to have your participation. So please reach out to us. So with that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening. Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the Age of Infinite. Throughout history, humans have had and made significant transformational changes, which in turn has led to naming of periods we call ages.

You've just personally experienced the information age, and what an amazing ride it has been and will continue to be with 5 g and with the IoT. We've got a lot ahead of us. Now consider that you might right now be on the age of another transformation. This transition to the age of infinite, an age which is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but a redefining of a lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources.

The ingredients for an unbelievable sci fi movie that has come to life as today we create a new definition of the future. The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hot Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hot, through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem.

Then we wanna use those endeavors, the paradigm shifting, the thinking, the innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring the acquiring of resources in space will save earth. And we have a phenomenal guest with us, Dana Andrews. How are you, Dana? I'm great. Well, Dana's history goes back to 1965 in the in the space business. He's been with Douglas Space. He's been a long history with Boeing.

But I think the important part makes this interview interesting was one of our team member members from Germany had recommended Dana's book to me, which is called Chasing the Dream. I don't normally promote books, but I he said, you've gotta buy this book. You've gotta buy this book because it gives a whole history of space and, David, you're not a space person. And I read the first maybe 20 pages and Dana outlined how there was a rocket plane way back when.

And NASA, I believe, or whoever was working on it, when they discontinued that rocket plane at this endeavor, they took all the data and tossed it. And if we had it today, it would it it might have revolutionized evolutionized the way we look at space. And I said, I cannot read anymore because if you know how this program works is I do not know what the I only know the title that we've created together, but I don't know the content. And so Dana is an expert on all sorts of categories of space.

What we're gonna talk about, you'll learn from him. So, Dana, you have an outline for us? Yeah. I do. I the the way I wrote up the the thought here was, can development of space help Earth's primary challenges? And I do believe it does. And so I have some subtopics. First of all, what are Earth's primary challenges? Topic. Yeah. Primary challenges. Okay. Next. The second one is what is the best approach to raising the world's standard of living, which ties into the challenges. Of living?

Next. And one of the things I'm gonna talk about there is we need more energy. We need more power. Yeah. And so the next topic is how do we increase power availability without fossil fuels? And as you know, fossil fuels are what's causing global warming, so that's why we need to eliminate them. Okay. Next. What do we do about long haul trucks, ocean shipping, and aircraft? They are particularly dependent on fossil fuels, which is why they're a special topic. Long haul trucks.

What's the second one? Ocean shipping and aircraft. And aircraft. Okay. Next. How does space development play into solving these challenges? These challenges? Next. What are the elements we need to harvest on the Moon? Next. Where are they found on the Moon? Okay. Found on the Moon. Okay, so let's start with number 1. You start. Take us where we need to go. Okay, well, the as I see it, and a lot of other people see it, our primary challenge is overpopulation is using up resources.

We're wasting our environment and we're faced with global warming, And they're interrelated. The more people require more power, which requires more fossil fuels, which drives global warming. Okay. So the challenge there is we need to we need to raise the standard of living in the level of education, and we find out when that happens, the fertility rate goes down.

And in parts of the world right now, if we could reduce the fertility rate, population earth earth's population would actually level off and begin to decrease. But we need to get that level, that standard of living up, and that requires energy and resources. Well, when you say and it's this is a a in my own internal thought, when we talk about increasing the standard of living, this is maybe a personal question.

Do you believe that it's actually increasing the standard of living because are we leading better lives or increasing aid a different and improved or an alternate standard of living when we think of raising this standard of living, when you think of this construct? Okay. Well, I'm just saying, more resources, better housing, better education, better infrastructure, all the things that we, you know, that we value in the first world, as we say, in developed countries that works.

You know, better medicine, better health care. I mean, it's all there, and it's all tied to the to the infrastructure and the energy available. Okay. So, yes, I would just yes, if we increase or have increased population, which the estimates are in 40 years will be about 10,000,000,000 people. We will need more energy to be able to supply them, but yes, it is harming or causing challenges to global warming.

Yeah. And I'm I'm a little far afield here as a rocket scientist, but it's it's easy to see these trends. If you do a little research, it's not hard to see what's happening. So so what part and I just wanna dig a little bit here. What part of global warming, when you think about it, are your primary categories which you feel that we would be addressing or are causing challenges? Okay. Well, there's 3 approaches to solving global warming.

The first one is eliminate burning fossil fuel and dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's the primary one, and that's the one I'm addressing here. There are other approaches. One is you can increase the albedo of the Earth. In other words, okay, for instance, when Krakatau blew up, you know, 400 years ago Yeah. It dumped a bunch of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, and we had the the year without summer. You know what? It was 16 08, 1609. The world got extremely chilly.

So one way to beat global warming is dump stuff and, you know, increase the cloud layers, and you can do that while increase the albedo. And you you can do it either in the atmosphere or at the surface. You know, if you covered the Earth's deserts with the Mylar foil to reflect the the sun's rays back out of the atmosphere, you could reduce the albedo and reduce the temperatures, but that's fairly labor intensive.

That's a I hadn't even thought about that, but, yes, you could, you could put more clouds in the sky, and therefore, you could decrease the global warming because the reflect the reflection wouldn't happen the same way. Okay. And that's there has been proposed. One of the things you could do is doctor the jet fuel that that airliners burn Oh, really? To to generate clouds. Oh, to recede clouds. To seed clouds. But that's that's more hands on than most governments want to to get to.

So it's I doubt it could. It's possible, but I doubt it'll happen. Mhmm. And the other thing is to is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We can either go bananas planning or you can there is all kinds of devices being built and tested to do that, to actually remove c 02 from the air. And they sequester it and pump it down underground, where it will stay for 1000000 of years. Mhmm. So so there's you know, like I say, there's 3 different approaches.

The one I favor and I think most people favor is let's stop burning fossil fuels. Mhmm. And that's the one I'm addressing sort of in this talk. Okay. So okay. So then so take it from so we wanna increase the standard of living, decrease the population, housing, education, infrastructure, medicine, all of these things, all tying to a need for energy. Yeah. Well, energy enables all that.

If you look at plots of of standard of living versus energy consumption, it's very there's a very clear curve that shows the more energy you consume, the higher the standard of living, the better infrastructure, medicine, etcetera. All that's been plotted, and you can you can find that data. Okay. So how do we do this? Okay. Well, so the the bottom line is we need to we need to reduce fossil fuel burning, and and that's kind of the the theme of this talk.

Now energy is divided up into sort of stationary and mobile, if you want to break it down. There's electric. A lot of our civilization is powered by electricity, but a lot of it is power directly. We burn oil and natural gas to heat our houses and factories. We burn gasoline and diesel in our cars. We burn diesel and jet fuel in our large, you know, freighters and airplanes. So that's all contributing CO 2 to the atmosphere.

Mhmm. And as I'm sure you're aware, if we don't do anything, if we just ignore this by 21100, the the level of CO 2 in the atmosphere is going to reach about a 1000 parts per million. And the last time we saw a 1000 parts per million was during the Cretaceous. Okay? And and that's, you know, 20 some 1000000 years ago. And during the Cretaceous, Saint Louis was on the ocean. In other words, the entire center in the United States was was covered with saltwater.

So I have a feeling if we let it get that bad, we're gonna have some real issues. So you said the the estimates for a 1,000 parts are per million was when? In the 21100. Okay. In 211100, which is 80 years away. Not far? Yes, geologically speaking not far. Okay, got it. So that says we better pay attention, we better do something. So, if you look at well, first of all, we are we're making good inroads in generating electricity using renewable resources. I'm talking windmills.

I'm talking solar farms. We've sort of exhausted our hydroelectric. There's really not much more hydroelectric we can do because we've got dams on all the major rivers. Mhmm. Nuclear should have taken care of this problem, but nuclear power plants have a miserable record for safety, and that's not because it's inherent to the design, it's inherent to the way they've been operated. So that's that's a gone okay. That opportunity has probably passed.

There the, on two sides, the hydroelectric, I don't know if you've heard about these, new this this some technology I've seen, they're looking to take, let's call it a set of stairs. It's not exactly a stair or or a another one is a, like, a a drill bit of water where you take a small river, and on one side, you put this ladder stepladder configuration.

And so now you could do smaller rivers and places without damming up configurations, which is they're looking to use that throughout Asia, which I think is an interesting approach. And these new nuclear facilities that I've been reading about and you probably have heard about are these micro or smaller facilities that can generate a tremendous amount of energy but still are, fairly small, small footprint.

So we are working in that direction, but in 80 years, it it would we'd have to move very quickly to be able to solve it on global level. Yeah. The the small river power, sounds very infrastructure heavy. The the micro plants, nuclear plants, the beauty of those is they're built in a factory, and they can be trucked to locations, and they can they can serve neighborhoods. And they're buried, and they're designed to be fail safe. In other words, there are no operators Yep. To to screw things up.

Yep. So So that's But but it's not enough to be able to handle 10,000,000,000 people. Oh, it is, but we're not the government is not spending enough money to bring them online in any time frame that would help. The problem is is that, you know, there's, they're currently funding 1 test nuclear plant. It's going to go into Idaho, and it's a little bigger than the kind that you can build in a factory and deliver by truck. It's bigger than that.

So they're not addressing the real problem, and and they're doing it extremely slowly. And the propensity for people to accept these technologies is really gonna be challenging. While living in Luxembourg, we drive over to I think it was France. And there were the there's a nuclear power plant not far, and there's a lot of concern whether if something happened in France, it would impact Luxembourg.

And so there's a challenge between the older technology and the newer technology, but there's enough of that older technology out there that I do know there is a concern. So Well, the French did it right, though. The the French, the people running the plant have graduated in nuclear engineering. Okay? They're they know how to do it.

I lived part of my career, I was living in Alabama, and it turns out the house we bought had been owned previously by an operator at the nuclear power station nearby, and and he had the log logs up in the attic, and I found them for cleaning the attic. Okay. And I threw them. And and okay. I mean, it was these guys were paying zero attention to the nuclear power plant. They were having contests, you know, farting contests and everything else going on that was kept in the logs.

And it was obvious that no one, and that's that plant by the way, a gentleman was cold, sitting at the control station, so he took a candle down to find out where the cold breeze was, caught the wiring on fire, and they lost control of the power plant because of that. That is the type of that's where we have a problem with nuclear. It's not that the plants are inherently safe, it's the operators are inherently unsafe. Yes. And we haven't been able to fix that. And we won't be able to fix that.

So yeah. And then and I think that there's a mathematical part of this equation when you talk about, the parts per million is that you could go to 2,100, but there will be the increase at 2,050. And there is an increase at 2,060. It's not like it just jumps to 2,100. So there's a continual increase. And over that timeframe, there is climate change happening, and the impacts of them all across the entire timeline. Correct. Okay. So then how do we so where do we go then if this is the increase?

Got windmill, solar, there Where we're at right now, if you look at the current data, what they're what they're building in plants to generate electricity, about 45% is natural gas, and natural gas is much cleaner than coal or oil and much more efficient. So so the the utility companies are actually doing the best thing they can. It's about 45% natural gas, about 35% wind, and the remainder is solar. That's all the new plants that are going in.

Oh, and there's, you know, a fraction of a percent nuclear and, you know, whatever might fulfill. But those gentlemen are driven by cost. The people who are actually the utility companies are they're they're concerned with capital cost and operating cost. And these numbers these numbers, I'm assuming, are primarily Americans.

So when we're not when you take, the Chinese spat with the Australians right now has all this coal, it's coal, they're running off of coal sitting in the harbors off the coast of China, and they have been turning off cities where there's no electricity being generated within China because they don't have enough. So it means that there's a tremendous amount of coal still being burnt all over the world. Maybe at and probably at higher percentages than we're looking at on these numbers.

If you look at worldwide projections, in 2050, we're still gonna be 40% coal worldwide. Which is only 2 which which is only 20 years away. Yeah. Or, 30 years away. Exactly. The problem is severe, and we need to address it. Okay. Well, so what do we replace the natural gas with? Okay. It's nuclear. There's no other shots. Now it could be fission, which is what they're doing in Idaho, or it could be fusion. And it turns out in the in the world right now, there's probably a dozen.

In the United States, there's 6 or 8 privately run fusion companies. Okay. And they are generating small, you know, 10, 20 megawatt. They're not generating, they're developing small, 10 to 20 megawatt fusion power plants, and they're getting fairly close. They're doing they're doing good work. Most of this occasionally they get a government contract, but most of it is private investment.

And and it's it's Jeff Bezos, it's Bill Gates, I mean, all the all the big guys are investing in these small fusion power plants. Because you can imagine if if one of them has the breakthrough and has a working fusion power plant, can you imagine how many of those they can sell? Oh, I'm I'm not sure. I'm trying to, he was on LA Law, and I can't remember his name off the top of my head. He was one of the actors, and he was working when I was at the National Space Society Conference.

He had he was investing in fusion plants, and he had one plant that he was working with. So, yeah, it's a it's a big industry if it can be turned over into actually delivering on the promise of fusion. Like I said, they're I'm impressed. It's in the book if you do get to that chapter. I'll eventually get to it. I have to talk to you first. But they're making good progress, and and they're and they're they're they have efficient I mean, adequate funding to do this.

So Okay. So you're saying that 40% will still be coal, the rest will have to switch over to nuclear. Well, no. That's the projection, and the projection is because there is no fusion power plants. Mhmm. If if the if a fusion power plant were available in 5 years, that projection would change completely. What's your thought? I think we're 10 years away from a workable small fusion power plant. Why?

If you look at the progress, and it's been gradual, and I've been tracking this for 50 years, you know, for 50 years fusion's been 20 years away. Yes. Okay. Well, now I'm sitting here in 2020, and Fusion is 5 to 6 years away. I mean, they're getting, they're getting close to the conditions they need. There's been some real smart people involved, some real smart physics involved. And and there's like I say, worldwide, there's a dozen at least.

And in the United States, there's, I can name 6 or 8, that are working the problem. They're making good progress. So but if it if it is 20 years away always and we hit 2050, we've already gone through 30 of the 70 years that you put at the 21100 timeline. Yeah. But remember, it's this is per pop per person, and and the population's increasing. So it gets it becomes asymptotic near the end, because the population just keeps going. Okay. So if if we can yeah. We won't hit a 1,000.

We may only my best guess is that we'll get to around 700. And, again, if you if you visit my website, there's a blog that talks about all this. Okay. What is that what is a key point that I should take out of what you're saying when you say on my blog? Is there a specific not a specific article. What's the content you want me to know about? It's a blog on global warming. No. No. That's what I mean. Is there a specific thing that you're because I'm not gonna go look at your blog.

I don't tend to do those things. What's the information you want me to know? Well, the info that's the information I tell you. The the the the international, committee on global warming, whose acronym I forget at the moment, has funded, spent 1,000,000 funding various organizations to do detailed projections on how global warming is progressing and where we're going to end up.

And a lot of those projections are in that blog and show a variety of different assumptions, and I pick out some I think are probably accurate, and then show where those what what they project. Okay. Okay. So where do we go from here? Well okay. So how do we there there's there's issues. In other words, it'd be fine if if we could build all the windmills we need and all the, you know, solar panels and all the nuclear power plants.

But there are some issues with increasing, like windmills, for instance. Okay. One megawatt windmill requires, 1 metric ton of Niobium metal to build the super magnets that power the generators. And so we're starting to get now into the there's shortage of various materials on Earth, and rare Earth elements are are one of those subjects, and the other is platinum group metals.

And platinum group metals, start to enter when we talk about the the long haul trucking and shipping and airplanes, especially, long haul trucking is going to switch to hydrogen as a fuel and use fuel cells because the batteries aren't good enough for, you know, to haul heavy loads long distances. Right. The the kilowatts per kilogram, you know, chemistry. There's a limit to how active the chemistry can be. And, you know, with lithium, we're just about at the limit.

So we're not going to have an order of magnitude improvement in batteries, for instance. You know, we're talking 20, 30 percent maybe. But fuel cells are an order of magnitude as far as kilowatts per kilogram. So you can do long haul trucks, you can do short range airplanes. And that's a lot of the market out there. That's they're burning a lot of fossil fuels right now. So to to take that to take that part of the fossil fuel market away, we need platinum group metals.

And we need them, you know, like 4 or 10 times what we can produce if we're going to replace the world's long haul trucks, for instance. With the new plants they're looking to bring online because of the price and the value of the rare earth metals in certain parts of the world. I know America is looking at and other countries are now that they're at the higher rate.

Is it still enough production that would be able to deliver on these long haul or for ocean shipping or any of the other airplanes? Are there is is there enough capacity to be able to fulfill? I think there is, but at what cost? In other words, we what you do is you mine the richest deposits first, and then you start mining the the lesser ores.

And there's gonna be a point at which it will be cheaper to take them off the moon than to mine them on to continue to to mine the the lessening orders on earth. Okay. And and and and where that crossover point is is extremely hard to predict. So what do we do about long haul trucks ocean shipping aircraft? What do we do? I mean, we're making some transitions with the fuel cell, the hydrogen. They're improving. Maersk is the largest. They're improving shipbuilding.

Maersk is the largest shipholder in the world in terms of, capacity. They've gone to 30% more efficient ocean going vessels. They're they're adding that capacity on. So what do you suggest we do? Well, I think you're gonna see a transition. Long haul trucks, I think, will jump from diesel to hydrogen fairly quickly. There's already some talk. There's actually some people out there offering, hydrogen fueled long haul trucks right now. They haven't been. Hydrogen's expensive.

It's about $6 a kilogram. And that's another part of the problem is that, the electrolyzers that turn water into hydrogen also use platinum electrodes as do the fuel cells. And we rapidly I mean, within a year a few years, there will be no more platinum on the market because, the truckers can use, you know, 4 or 5 times what's produced now. So no one else is gonna be able to compete. That's gonna drive the price up.

And then again, we're gonna get to a point not too far in the future where it's cheaper to get the platinum off the moon than it is to continue to to drive these mines 2 miles down in South Africa.

I did some research on this because of with project Moon Hot Platinum came up, and it takes 62,000,000 tons of dirt that has to be moved, which is 62,000,000 Toyota Corollas, that's kind of the analogy that I put into it, to dig up about 90 some odd tons of platinum, which is an unbelievable number if you try to fathom that. 62,000,000 Toyota Corollas to get the 92 tons, and I didn't do the math, but I I ran a rock quarry when I was younger.

I was assistant supervisor to one of the largest plants that fed New York City, and the, semi, an American style semi would be, you'd need about 4 of them using stone as compared to platinum as a weight. You'd need about 4 of them, and that would hold 90 to, the amount of tonnage we get out of the earth an entire year, which is amazing how little it is. Yeah. So in in effect, we're in violent agreement here. Yes. I mean, it's a it's an astronomical number.

And when I brought it down, when we would have trucks going out, semis going out with a crusher run or a stone composite, it's to only have 4 trucks at the end of 62,000,000 tons of dirt, but it also shows how valuable this little bit of platinum is to our world because it's in so many of the pieces of the electronics and so many of the tools that we use, which include an aircraft or shipping vessel, to be able to survive on this planet as we do it today.

Well, that's my point is that we need, platinum is one of those metals that that really impacts fossil less fuel energy production and usage. It's it's it's necessary, at least with current technology, it's necessary to generate the hydrogen and also to use it in fuel cells. Now for aircraft and shipping, we'll probably just burn the hydrogen in turbines. It it makes no sense to a fuel cell's way more efficient than a turbine, but when you need huge amounts of power, you can't beat a turbine.

But isn't is I'm looking this up, but platinum is all are also in solar cells. Yes. Okay. So another area where this It's a fairly minor constituent in solar cells. Okay. So to, we're shifting over to hydrogen trucks. What are we doing on ocean shipping and aircraft? Well, that's where we would go to hydrogen turbines. We burn the hydrogen in a turbine engine, and and that's that's, the only issue there is generating hydrogen.

You know, burning hydrogen in a turbine engine is existing technology. We were doing that back in the fifties experimentally. But generating the hydrogen, again, we're gonna need a lot of platinum group metals. What explain to me because I've never my background is organic chemistry, physics calculus, but we never really talked about hydrogen group metals, platinum group metals. What does that what does that consist of, and and how what percentages or give me some more data on what that means.

Well, okay. The platinum group metals let me just look at my notes here. No problem. Ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Okay. And they're often and and the reason I'm knowledgeable on them and I was working, nickel iron asteroidal material contains 100 to 200 parts per million ceridophiles, and those are iron loving metals, and they're dissolved in the nickel iron that you find in in asteroids and meteorites.

And what you do, for instance, on the Moon is you collect, and it's the regolith on the Moon is a mix of everything, it's kind of like a dog's breakfast. Okay? You got everything there, but you can go out and essentially scoop up and run through a separator and pull out because the nickel iron is highly magnetic, you can pull out all the the good stuff very simply and put the rest of it back.

And while you're at it, you can heat that the regolith that you're processing and drive out the gases, which is hydrogen, you know, some water vapor, a little bit of nitrogen, helium, including helium 3, which is a fusion fuel. So you essentially build these devices on the moon, and, again, look in the book. And they go around and and and mine acres of of regolith, okay, a week, and separate out all the good stuff. And it's just a continuous processor.

It moves slowly and picks up the regolith, treats it, collects the good parts, and dumps the rest out the back. The the way I was first described or introduced to platinum on the moon was that when I sat at my first meeting ever in NASA, my first real orientation to space, Bruce Pittman at the space portal in Ames had said to me, do you know where platinum comes from? And my ignorance, I said, comes from the ground. And he said, no. Actually, platinum comes from asteroids.

It's not indigenous to Earth. And then his second question was, when you look at the moon, what do you see? And I, didn't you know, there's asteroids all over. And and he so the the connection was that the moon is full of platinum. And one of the research pieces, maybe you could tell me if I'm right or wrong, is there are 2 types of asteroids. There are a few different types, but let's say there's, organic and then there's metals.

And for every one thou for every 1,000 asteroids that have hit the moon, there'd be 1,000,000, 3 of them have more platinum in them than each than we've used in the history of mankind. So the reason I bring that up is you're saying it's also in the regolith, which I'm trying to get my mind around because I had always thought I mean, I can know that it'll disperse itself, but you're saying it's actually in the regolith itself. It's mixed in.

It's like it's not a soil, but it's like a composite of a soil, or is it built baked into the regolith? No. It's you you were right. You know? We call them metallic asteroids, and and several metallic asteroids have impacted the moon. And there's one up there in Mareebrium, which is you if you look at the moon, it's the upper left hand corner. And it it, you know, caused a huge crater and broke up, and pieces of it are scattered all over the place.

And that's where so there's there's large pieces and there's small pieces. And of course the small pieces scattered especially far. So if you pick up a cubic yard or regolith, you will find chunks in in in little teeny bits, you know, the the moon's been pulverized by 1,000,000,000 of years of of asteroids hitting it, big ones and little ones. So the upper 6 meters or so is pulverized.

Mhmm. And and all these all that iron has been dispersed because it's been hit by something and broken up and tossed. So it's just it's well dispersed, but it's in that general area, it's fairly intensive. So when the when you say small and big, how big was Meribian? How do you say it? Meribian? It's about 800 kilometers across. Okay. And the size of this asteroid that hit, do we have any knowledge?

There's probably some estimates somewhere, but if it cost a crater 600 meters 600 kilometers across, you can bet it wasn't small. No. Okay. So the so in theory, we could set up a mining operation or a it's not actually a mining.

It's a separation facilities across this region and be able to dig up and find the, this platinum group series in enough concentration as well as the other hydrogen rarer, the Helium 3, we could be able to separate out and be able to bring that material back to Earth is what you're suggesting to be able to fuel or give the technology necessary to run trucks, ocean shipping aircraft, and and the types of energy needs we have.

Yeah. And and the point is is that we could probably do it cheaper than trying to generate that much platinum here on Earth because we the okay. South Africa was hit by a metallic asteroid a long time ago, and all the platinum on Earth sunk to the core, you know, 4 and a half 1000000000 years ago when we were molten. So the only platinum you can find in the crust is asteroid impacts way back when Yep. After the after the crust hardened.

And and so it's limited, and it's getting damn hard to find. So the I I heard that there was or I read. I don't remember which. I like to hear a lot. It we had the South African. I also heard there's a there's one in Canada that's extremely large. It's also and Russia is the other or the in the Russian area. There tends to be another large, And those are the primary three sets of asteroids that can deliver on the promise of the platinum as of now. There are others, but those are the threes.

Am I correct? Am I off? I do believe you're correct. Okay. So the it's becoming more and more difficult in South Africa. How much does it cost to pull up in South Africa? Well, the okay, platinum is currently going for, what about $1,000 a gram? I think the current price, thereabouts. Okay. And if you look at the normal mining to sales cost, okay, is around 80%. So it's probably costing them $800 an ounce to mine it. Your platinum price per ounce, today is $1,092.

Okay. Per gram per gram is 35.1. No argument. Okay. So you're saying that it's 80% of it to be able to extract that. So even if the but if the price goes up, doesn't it gives a higher, margin, but it's still that price. Yeah. And and the price has been there for a long time, which is what I what I'm that's what I'm basing the 80% on is that, this is a pliable if if the, you know, if if it costs more to mine it than they can sell it for, the the the you can't buy it. You just can't find it.

They they stop mining it. Right. So that's where I'm I'm assuming that we're talking about, on an average, $800 an ounce. Okay. And what would it cost, or how do you look at it when you look at the moon? How do you do the math? Okay. Now we're getting I taught a class at the University of Washington, a space senior space design class back in 2012, and we picked the topic of minding the moon as that was, for this is, 26, Arrow and Astro Seniors, and that was an excellent they did a fantastic job.

And they went in with my help in places and developed a system to mine and get it back. Okay? The and what the driving, what drove the cost was the cost to get a kilogram in the low Earth orbit. That's what drove the overall program cost. Okay? Now in 2012, the cost of of, platinum was about $25,000 a kilogram. Yep. And we assumed that we could sell it at half that cost and make and and so that's what we assumed. And we had a return on investment at that price of 37, 38% return on investment.

But we were assuming $600 a kilogram to get stuff into low Earth orbit. SpaceX spaceship, which is, you know, in development, I've run numbers there and and they're going to be able to deliver it for $100 a kilogram. What about the cost of setting up the mining facility? Remember I was in the in the, we we're dropping 22,000 ton of stone a day, and we had very, very, very big equipment, very heavy equipment. And what about the cost of setting up the mining operations, in space?

So getting it there, establishing it, supplying food, shelter, and all of the other, life support components to be able to deliver. How do you amortize amortize that into the equation? Well, we had a a 5 year development. We again, what we assumed was, is that this was an international effort and there was money set aside, and we assumed it cost $18,000,000,000 Mhmm. Over 5 years to design, build, and test the mining equipment and the the delivery system and all that.

And that was based on tools that I had been using in my career. In other words, these are proven tools proven cost estimation tools. Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't seem off just off my first numbers because the numbers that I we've been extrapolating is to to be able to facilitate a lot of the activities on the moon, the numbers are a 170,000,000,000 to 270,000,000,000 depending on what's being achieved to be able to get some of these activities going on the moon.

So to take 18,000,000,000 to do mining is not that is not far off. Well, this the we generated a paper at the end, and that paper's been downloaded and read 100 of times. And and no one has gotten back to us to argue with our numbers. So do you do you is this remote mining? Is this human? It's remote, but we included, a a manned, facility for maintenance. The it was all we can teleoperate on the moon. Mhmm. Okay. It doesn't need to be a robot. It can be teleoperated.

And these are fairly simple systems. They're complicated, but the the they don't do I mean, you know, a bucket wheel grabbing regolith is not really, really complicated. The when I was I'm, who was I with? I was Daniel Faber. I was with Daniel Faber in my early stages of the space project moon hot. And I had mentioned something about mining on the moon, and the first reaction he had was, we don't even know if we can mine on the moon. We have never dug onto the moon on the moon.

And I thought that was an interesting reaction. He says, we've gone a little bit down, but we've never really done full mining. Another individual I spoke to said, we use resistance on earth. We use gravity and resistance on earth to be able to mine, or to dig, or to do any type of digging. And this individual is in the architectural space said to me, well, what happens when you push a shovel on earth? You use your force to drive down. She said, I ask engineers all the time.

So what is the resistance when we're digging on the moon? And unless the equipment is heavy enough, we might not be able to mine on the moon. What's your thought? I think that's a very valid question. And like I said, we researched lots and lots of data to figure out, could we mine on the moon? And if you look at the dynamics of a bucket wheel, okay, once if you have a once you have a So John, just just for the just for the sake of clarity, a bucket wheel to you is?

It's kinda like a a, a water wheel with buckets. And it just rotates in the bucket scoop and then come over the top and dump. Okay. So you've got this wheel where there are 20 buckets on it. It comes down. It picks up some dirt, brings it up, and at the top of it, it drops it into either a transport any some some type of transportation or belting system so that the material is then brought to a they the the separation stages. Correct. Okay. It's and it's pretty straightforward.

It it gets a little complicated because we're trying to do a lot of things with the ore, but we don't need to get into that. Right. It's just it's still the concept Go ahead. Your question is is will the bucket wheel work? In in my opinion, my personal opinion is we may have to blow with using explosives, with a drill and explosives, dig a hole to begin with, so there's an edge for the bucket wheel to start with.

Okay. So what we or or, and I don't mean iron ore, but ore, we explode and then drop the legs or the part of the equipment down deep enough, refill it back in, and that becomes the gravitational that becomes the force, the the, the resistance so that the bucket wheel can hold and maintain a dick. Yeah. Well, the the way I saw it was is that the this device is on, you know, treads, tractor treads, and it moves forward. And when it's operating, it has a lot of regolith on board.

So it's not we delivered it, weighs less than, 15 tons. But when it's operating, it probably weighs 80 tons. Because the yeah. It's full of the material. Full of regolith. Is regolith heavy? It's about the it's let's see. About the consistency, little less than aluminum, I think. Well, and so yeah. You look at it from a scientific perspective. I'm looking at it as aluminum foil, and aluminum is very light. Just because we come from different worlds, you're looking at it as material.

And, yes, if you saw aluminum in its in the in a factory on a wheel, it's extremely heavy. And it's then processed down to lighter and lighter and thinner and thinner material. So would Okay. Well, think of it as as a little lighter than aluminum BBs Yep. That you're trying to scoop. But you're getting enough of it to be able to fill it up with 80 80 ton in the wheel at a time. So it's generating its own downward force to be able to keep it solid enough to be able to dig. That's correct.

Okay. And the energy to run one of these? Okay. We patterned our device after several studies done by the University of Wisconsin, who have spent, several graduate careers developing a device to mine the lunar regolith. Well, we we took their device, which was powered by a Beam Solar and put a small nuclear reactor in it. We okay. In in our our class, we contacted the Idaho nuclear facility, and they helped us put together small nuclear reactor designs and costs.

So that's what we based a lot of our power on where these the the Idaho National Laboratory, designs for small nuclear reactors. So we had a 25 megawatt nuclear reactor onboard our miner, And it was unmanned, and I wouldn't recommend putting people on it. The it's very easy to take our where we live on Earth and then translate it to to spaces to be equivalent, yet there's zero atmosphere and or very minimal atmosphere on the moon and there's minimal, gravity, 16 gravity.

So the an explosion, if it did happen on the moon, would not be the same as an explosion on earth. Correct? Correct. What would happen if there was an explosion on the moon of a 25 megaton megawatt. A 25 megawatt. First of all, reactors don't explode. They melt. Oh, okay. Okay. So it'd be a a puddle. Okay. And and I get it. Have you been to NASA in San Francisco and seen the regolith pet? Or I've I'm assuming you've seen regolith pets?

Yes. They're neat because the material to me is it's it's more like a coating than it is dirt. So the bucket so what what technology are you leaning towards? The explosion of it or we don't know? Or the, the scooper being able to pick it up? Which one do you think is going to be the one that's most probably going to work? Well, the regolith is is, you know, it's essentially fractured. Most of it's fractured basalt.

Mhmm. Okay. So, the problem is air is a pretty good insulator, and so electrically all those small teeny particles stick together real well. Yes. And the regolith, most of the regolith is, you know, sub millimeter size. I mean it's almost micron sized dust. So there's no reason I mean, if you look at the photos of the astronauts, they were able to pick stuff up and pick up samples of soil. It wasn't, you know it it had the characteristics of dirt. It's just it's it's stickier.

Okay. So okay. So I I now see the the the bucket loader on there. Can you I had a conversation just recently with somebody who, when I think about space, because I am not a space person, I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'm trying to be real in in timelines and thinking only because I don't know enough. And I run into people in the space industry who give me timelines that if they had to bet their life on them, they would all die. And I recently had a guy on the phone.

We were talking about Project Moon Hut, and they were looking to get involved, and I said, we try to be pragmatic. I don't believe that within 7 years, we'll have 50,000 people floating in a space or Orion type of floating capsule with gravitational, 50,000 people living there within 7 years. And there are people out there promoting these type of things. When, my question to you is if you were to give me and and your life depended on it only because I really want to know.

If we were to put a pragmatic timeline to this, a a realistic timeline mean we have to get to the moon, The first rockets that where people might live or machinery is there that can land, and and we have to bring this equipment, this, how many tons did you say? You said 15 ton piece of equipment plus other equipment, and then we have to operate it and we have to be able to send things back.

If you were to kinda give me a timeline of what you're thinking so that myself, and I'm gonna say, which I normally don't get into, is the listeners are going to be able to say, that sounds kind of real, and I'd like to be able to say that. How would you take 2021 and push me forward into creating this ecosystem or this, economic system, earth and space receiving, shipping, doing? How would you lay that out? Okay. Well, the way I would start is it's kind of like Buck Rogers. Okay?

Without the Bucks, there is no Buck Rogers. Okay. And this is all driven by money Yep. And need. Okay. Elon Musk is gonna put Starship in orbit. Mhmm. Now he thinks he's gonna do it in 2 years. I give him 4 to 5. Okay. Once we have low cost access to low Earth orbit, okay, then it becomes very economical to put space stations, tourist hotels, and huge test facilities in low Earth orbit. And and that's a real economic driver.

You can make very good money doing that if you have low cost access to low Earth orbit. And is is there a number that when you think of when you think of low cost access? Well, like I said, if studies that I was involved in 30 years ago or 20 years ago, said that if you can get down to 250, you can make all that work and make good money. Well, Elon is all if I look at and analyze Starship, I get a $100 a kilogram, and he still makes money. Okay. Just making so at a 100 a 100 Dollars a kilogram.

Oh, that is I had I had a person from Italy on the phone today, part of the team that we're working on, and we talked about cost. And I said, take a wild guess how much it cost to send an individual up to the International Space Station. And she had no clue. I says, is it 3,000,000? Is it 7,000,000? Is it 20,000,000?

And I said, the range, and you probably know more than I do, is somewhere in the neighborhood of it could be anywhere from 50 to 80,000,000 to put someone into the International Space Station to stay for their period of time and bring them back. And she had no clue.

So that's why I'm asking this question if we're talking about Space Station and tourist hotels is if we're at a 100 kilograms, that's the number you think if we stay there that we can get this low earth orbit access, and that can be the driver for phase I'm gonna call it phase 2. Is that what you're saying? I think it's really phase 1. In other words, we we have to to get down to a $100 a kilogram, you need a lot of traffic. You need to fly often.

Okay. And and we'll fly often because, well, you know, if a tourist can go to low Earth orbit and spend 2 weeks for $50,000, okay, which is reasonable in a $100 to look around, there will be traffic you won't believe. Oh, yeah. The because yes. Yes. The because people are doing it right now when they do these trips to Balconore and the things. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. So the the traffic the the launches will be, you know, 1,000 a year, 800 to a 1000 a year.

That drives us down towards the $100 a kilogram level. Okay. And now you can afford to to put the to put a program together and and do the financing to go to the moon. So what's the next phase? So we've got we get up to I figure okay. So 2024, they start flying. Yep. Assume the tourism starts in 2026. Okay. Yep. By 2030, the flight rate should be starting to get pretty reasonable Yeah. Which drives the cost down to where where we want it for for mining. Okay?

It's gonna take, you know, my guess is 8 to 10 years to to to to build the equipment, get everything together, get all the approvals, and get to the moon. Okay. So now what are we talking about? 2035? 20 30 let's say 2038 to 20 let's say 2038 we're at now. Okay. Yep. Sounds good. Okay. That would be then we'd we we would start minding the moon, and and we we start bringing back the the Helium 3 and the the platinum group metals. And incidentally, and and one of the other, Seadrill files is gold.

So you might wanna bring some of that back too. Yep. But whatever. And and when you're including in there is in that time frame, from 2021 to 2038, we're going to be able to then also be able to return from the moon using the resources on the moon, including the hydrogen and the oxygen that comes out of, the separation of water or whatever it may be so that we can return. So by 2038, and I'm not holding it's you're not gonna dive by making this estimation.

But by 2038, you believe that we can start to address this challenge of earth based challenges of, the long haul truckers, the ocean chipping, the aircraft, and everything else. Yeah. No. Actually, I don't think we need the the, the hydrogen on the moon to come back. You're aware of, David and Goliath. Right? What you can do with a sling? My my my name is David. So in my lifetime, I've heard that multiple times.

Okay. Well, it turns out you can mount a sling on the surface of the moon and throw capsules back to earth and put them in the South Pacific Ocean or South Indian Ocean where there is no traffic, and periodically stop throwing them when the, when, you know, that part of the Moon is in shadow, so there's no solar power, and pick them all up, and then when the Sun rises again on the Earth facing side, you start throwing more of them. So the all that takes is a little electrical power.

Okay. So okay. Yeah. I've this is the first time you've got me. My my my my ears went up. I'm I'm a dog. My ears went up. I've never heard I I know about the the ability to throw and and the gravity allows you to escape the, the moon's gravitational pull, But I no one has ever said in all these 6 years I've been involved, 7 years in space, no one's ever talked about throwing these capsules.

So what's the catapult look like and what size would these capsules be, and anything else that we know about this? Okay. The catapult is, the arms are, I would say, a 100 to 200 meters long. They're not it's not rope. It's it's probably metallic or carbon fiber, and the capsules would weigh, half a ton to a ton, and they're built from, remember we mined the, we mined nickel iron, to get to the platinum.

Yep. So we used the nickel iron to build the shell, and part of the part of the the facilities is making oxygen for rockets, and the byproduct is rutile, which is a titanium oxide, which is extra excellent insulator. So these capsules are built on the moon, and thrown to earth and then they're they're they're designed so they float.

And there's a little little tracker on them and, so then you recover them and, and recycle, you know, you have you get some nickel iron along with all the platinum and gold. Right. Yes. There's a there's a tremendous amount of iron ore on the moon. There's all sorts and one of the thing, we could have every building, we can have every bridge on earth made of stainless steel if we wanted to with all the things that we could bring back. You got it. So so we we shoot these capsules.

How are we sure that they're safe going through lower earth atmosphere with all of the satellites and the traffic that might be established by this time frame of 2030 with all these floating tourist hotels and everything else? Will we have boosters on them? Will we have wings on them? Will will they be yes to all of them or no? No. They're they're they're statically stable. They're thrown into the South Indian Ocean where there is absolutely no traffic. No. There's no traffic even in space?

Well, Because you have you have asteroid, you have you have satellites going around the earth, you have these hotels going around the earth. There is traffic, but if you run the if you run the numbers, they're they're at the altitude where the traffic is for such a short time that the chances of collision are are very small. Okay. So so hauling something at earth is an okay thing, and we we shoot these capsules.

I I guess I guess the part of it in my head is I see a lot of them, but you might be thinking we send 1 a day or 2 a day or one every week, or is are you thinking when you see 2038 and it's starting, are we shooting 10 capsules per year per day at the Earth? Well, it depends. Okay. We we wanna return the platinum doesn't do us any good on the moon. Right. Okay. And and we're talking, in the time frame we're talking around, we're probably talking 4,000 tons a year.

We want to return to Earth at the platinum. Mhmm. So we're probably talking, 20,000 capsules a year. And and the the the that's not a problem. We can easily do that. Okay. So I okay. No. I can I could see that we could do it? I just had not thought of I was, again, being naive.

I was thinking that we'd have some type of space logistics where the there would be a vessel or vehicle, a rocket, or something that would launch off, it would bring it to low Earth orbit and then brought down in some way, but you're just saying, heave ho and and let these babies fly. Well, this is a company. We wanna make money. No. I understand that. I just never had thought. I mean, I've I've heard of a lot of ideas. I this is an interesting if there is It's it's in the book, David.

No. No. No. But I it I'm not I probably won't finish the book. The the space is not it's I have a lot of other things that I like to read. I'm trying to the only one real book that I read years ago was, On Space gave me some of the orientation. It's it's a very technical book, and there are a lot of things, and I'm glad that I have a my background that I do because for me, it was a little challenging to grasp some of the as quickly as it's thrown at me, some of the concepts on it.

So this it's throwing the it's throwing it at how fast do these suckers go? I mean, they gotta be hauling. Yeah. They're about 2.2 kilometers a second. And do they slow down? Oh, yeah. The Earth's the the moon's gravity slows them down, but when they're when they get to Earth, okay, they're traveling about 7 and a half kilometers a second. And it'll send up a lot of water. No. No. No. No. They slow down to, you know, a 100 kilometers an hour or so when they when they splash.

Okay. In other words, they're designed to slow down. They're they're purposely blunt. Okay. So that's a 100 kilometers per hour, is a lot better.

Now for, for those of you listening in, if you're not if you're American or you're used to miles per hour, when you drive in Europe, you might be traveling at 90 kilometers per hour, which I don't know what the exact orientation is, but I know when I was driving in Europe, I'd be 80 to 90 kilometers per hour, and that's a reasonable speed, like a 60 to 70 miles per hour in the United States. Someone can look up the numbers. So it's not that high to say a 100 kilometers per hour.

It's not really that fast. Right. Okay. Yeah. We don't wanna break it when it hits the water. Yeah. I didn't didn't think of a breaking. I think of this solid rock being tossed at the at the Earth. Okay. So and the and the cost that you that the numbers came back was $15,000,000,000 or $18,000,000,000 to be able to build this infrastructure system. And you are you including by 20 38 humans participating in this for maintenance, or are you assuming at this point we still are robotic?

Okay. In the class, we assumed we were in 2012, we assumed we needed people to do maintenance. I I'm sure you're aware that Moondust is extremely abrasive. Yes. Okay. So you gotta expect things to break. And it's also it also gets into all the joints and all the mechanisms. It's a it's it's like a it's one of the challenges of the astronauts was not just being on the moon, but these particles would get into areas their lungs were one of them, but would get into the, I'm gonna say, outfit.

I can't think of it. The, spacesuit, And it would it would bind up the joints. Correct? Exactly. Now, okay, in 2019, when I wrote the book, okay, I revised the 2012 approach, assuming that we could teleoperate and have robotics available in 2020. So we didn't need to send the people. And we would we get Yeah. Further along the line here of 2038, probably even less. Probably, we need people. Absolutely.

Because the the robotic exponential curve is is in the works tied with artificial intelligence, machine learning, tied with 3 d printing, and its own ability to being able to make parts on the moon would all be able to facilitate creating or solving or fixing whatever happens up there. Exactly.

So by so we're we're we're also assuming that long haul trucking, ocean shipping, and aircraft, because I'm still kind of there playing down on the list that you gave, is that they will maintain or keep the need for platinum or the rare earth metals that are capable of being used in in a in a higher degree because we're going up to 4,000 tons a year as compared to 92 tons per year, we're assuming that there'll be an exponential growth need in the electronics and in any, and this tech or battery tech, energy tech that would need this type of growth curve?

As as far as we can predict now, yes. Is anybody actually building this? Yeah. There there you can go buy a hydrogen fuel cell truck right now. You might have a problem getting hydrogen. No. I meant our is anybody Project Moon Hut has its 4 phase development. It has all the pieces in it. We're talking to people about creating feasibility studies and and showing and putting together. You've got a feasibility study done by the students.

Is anybody today on Earth saying this is exactly what we're going to build? I don't think so, and I wouldn't condone it until, you know, until Starship flies. Right now at current prices, it makes no sense. You know, price the cost to to orbit. So until we have something cheap to orbit, it makes no sense to start making serious plans. Well, that's why we have project Moon Hut. Come on.

I mean, that's why I'm I've been trying to get I have been pushing low cost to orbit reusable rocket systems for 9 on 40 years, David, and I'm I'm not there yet. I understand. Hopefully, I won't have to wait so long because I I'd probably get tired of all this stuff. So, when we anything to add to the long haul trucking, the shipping, or any other in the your that line, that category there. Is there anything else you'd like to add that adds to this? I think okay.

Helium 3 from the moon really helps fusion. The reason is is if you look at the reactions, the current fusion fuel cycle is deuteriumtritinium. And that's that's that's essentially heavy hydrogen with heavier hydrogen. And the problem with that reaction is it releases a 14.1 Megavolt Neutron every time you get a a fusion. Okay. And and that is hard to stop. You have to have heavy shielding, and that shielding becomes radioactive.

Now if you use deuterium helium 3 as fuel, what you get is helium plus a proton, and the proton interacts with the magnetic field, never makes it to the you don't need a shield, shielding wall. Yep. Doesn't generate radioactivity, and makes the fact then you can make a much smaller cheaper reactor. And remember smaller cheaper is where we want to go. So What's a what's a reactor costing today, even the small the small micro reactors? Who knows? No one's built one. The one that they're testing.

What are they Oh, good question. I wish I could answer it. Okay. An old fashioned nuclear reactor cost? Reactors are currently running, 4 to $5,000 a kilowatt electric. That's to build a plant. So a total cost if you were to take a wild range? Okay. If you were if you were doing a, say, a 10 megawatt system, you're talking what? 10000 times, 4000? Yep. Still what? About 40,000,000,000?

Yeah. So so what you're the way I'm kind of visualizing this because I as you know, I take notes and I draw, is that what you're saying is we get to this 2038 timeline. And at 2038, we actually see multiple things happening. We have the we have our first shipments coming back, which allows us to be able to expand the use of platinum in multiple areas.

So not only are we talking the ability to do long haul trucking, we do ocean shipping, we do aircraft, but we also have the capacity to modify other electronics because now the cost of platinum has dropped significantly, and and availability is there. The age of infinite, infinite possibilities, infinite resources. So we now have the ability like aluminum, which was $800 an ounce back when it was first created and now or $900, and now it's in our mobile phone or in our laptop.

So we have other implications from having it, not only the transportation side of it, but we have other electronics. And what you're also saying is at the same time, because we're doing the separation tech the separation, we're getting some other spin offs. So there's value added in multiple areas, and another one is the Helium 3. Correct? Correct.

And that allows us to be able to create a low cost reactor, fusion reactor, that is no longer radioactive and as dangerous as the existing technology we have today, which is okay. That's just what it is. What spin offs That means we we can replace I'm sorry. No. You're right. That means that means we can replace the the natural gas we've been burning all this time. Okay. So we can replace natural gas, and then we don't have any coal being used. And okay.

What else comes out of this 2038 date of the materials coming back. That's about it. I mean, that's the the the the purpose of the this exercise I've been working on that I'm telling you about Yeah. Was to try to not visit the Cretaceous again. Okay. To to drop it does still leave the carbon emissions in the air, and there will be a a drag of by the time it gets implemented, let's say 2038. So we're going 2038 to 202068, giving 30 years for the world to catch up with this.

Is there any technology, that you see in terms of cleaning the air or that come out of this? Well, this the whole purpose of this was to get rid of the fossil fuels, and and the first step is to replace all the coal and coal and oil with natural gas Yeah. Which burns much much cheaper, much cleaner. It's both cheaper and cleaner, which is why no one is building coal plants anymore except in the 3rd world in China.

And China if China had natural gas resources, they would be They would definitely be. Person in it too. Yeah. If such I I worked with the in the coal somewhat industry and not in the industry, but I spoke to them about certain types of technologies and work with them some. And the in the United States, we have sulfur, high sulfur coal. We have cleaner coal, and we're actually shipping we're still mining the sulfur coal, but we used to in past decade.

We used to ship our high sulfur coal to China. China would burn it, and it flows back over to the United States.

Yep. So the high sulfur the the good coal, which was created in the north of the United States, but the high sulfur coal, which was down in the Tennessee Valley, is the Tennessee Valley shipped it, and then you have to transport all of this coal from the northern part of the United States down to Tennessee Valley for them to be able to burn it, which is kind of a, if you think about it, a really odd way of trying to maintain coal.

The reason I I asked that question so let me give you a feeder to do you see anything else, is when I started to talk about, you have air oh, I would say in the beginning of Project Moon, I haven't said this in a long time, is that a lot of the technology we're creating for doing what you did bring up in the very beginning, which was the removing the c o two from the atmosphere, one of the challenges is the cost.

So now you can use the energy created by these this cheaper energy source, whether it be solar power, ready back to earth or platinum that's now on earth to be able to reduce costs or these nuclear facilities. Now it's cheaper to run air cleaning systems and water filtration systems, which are highly desalination plants. And that actually will help to drive down other environmental challenges and clean the air at the same time. Does that make sense?

Yes. So that's why I was asking have since you've come up with this, did you think did you add this equation? Mine biggest one was we have technology to clean the air or to take out the c o two, one of the challenges. It's costly. It's energy intensive. But if we can drop the cost of energy, we could then turn them on. The problem I have with that is we can build the nuclear power plants because people will buy the electricity. Yep. Okay. Who's buying the c02 we're removing from the air?

I don't know. Maybe at that point, there'll be credits for it. Maybe there'll be a, or even countries in and of themselves because there it's 20 We're 2040 already. We've already seen some more climate activity. Maybe countries themselves put in place. I'm gonna call it a c o two scrubber, whatever the name may be. But maybe the society as a whole on an impact level sees the threat.

And around the world, there are countries who are willing to put in these just for the purposes of making sure that there is a a better tomorrow. Yeah. The the problem is is that 80% of the fossil you know, the the carbon put in the atmosphere is put in not by the, you know, the US and Europe. The people who can afford to buy the scrubbers, we're not the problem. Okay. The it doesn't matter if we're the problem, we're impacted by it.

And to it's for for the people listening today, I'm just bringing it up because no one knows when these interviews are done. I never say the date, and I it's not intentional. I just never thought of setting the date. It is it is right after the insurrection in the United States historically.

We, having lived in Asia for the past 10 years, in Hong Kong and Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and all these countries and seeing what's happening, what will happen in the next 30 years within the Asia Pacific region and Asia, in my opinion, will be unbelievable compared to what we have seen in the past. Korea has absolutely become a phenomenal environment as compared to 30 years ago. Bangladesh might be on the same tracks and many other countries in the region. So in 30 years Mhmm.

The world may be a very different place even including China if we were to use that as the one scapegoat for the world. I I think that we could see a more unified approach to solving this. So that's why in my in my formulaic component is that maybe the world knows that they need to do this and there's enough. Maybe it's put into maybe just throwing this up. Maybe the cars that people use have built into it little tiny carbon filtration systems. So as you drive your car, you are cleaning.

As you do certain functionality, you're cleaning. Might just just be plants. It might be because of this platinum that we've brought back, we've got this. Does does that make sense? It's possible. I'm not again, I'm I think it's more likely that we will add something to jet fuel and drop the temperature by increasing the cloud layer. Okay. Makes sense. So It's cheaper. It it yes. And the the number of flights in the air, would be able to facilitate that.

So I hadn't thought about it from that angle. So we've got the the long haul, the trucking ocean. Is there anything else to add to that line of trucking ocean shipping aircraft? Well, there there are 2 other large contributors to CO 2 in the atmosphere. Okay. One is iron making, and the other is concrete. Yeah. I was gonna say cement. Cement. Yep. And the there is a a process being tested that removes the oxygen from iron ore, electrically, like, using electrolysis.

In that, I think and these are 2 major contributors. I mean, we're talking, you know, millions of tons a year Yeah. I of carbon dioxide. I don't know what the number is, but it's huge. Yes. Yeah. So and and there's also a a a process, I believe using it's a process to to remove the CO2 from the concrete before it, hardens. And and I I've read about it, but I'm blanking out on it right now. So there's a there's potential there. There is work being done testing that looks pretty interesting.

And even the replacement, of some of the materials within cement, has being is being looked at. But I just looked at the number. 8% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from, it's estimated, from cement. Yeah. So it's it's obviously you know, we're you know, the US does about 10% of the of the world's emissions. So if it's 8% versus 10%, it's huge. Mhmm. And these numbers, when you take them to the size of the planet are huge, huge numbers. Okay?

So the making of, iron or in cements in the applications or even the new materials that might come about in the next 20 years or 30 years could do some replacement. Anything else to the long haul to that one category? Well, okay. I don't no. I don't think so. Automobiles, obviously, were going batteries. I drive an I drive an electric car, so I'm I'm very familiar with the ins and outs of batteries. Batteries are getting cheaper.

They will continue to get cheaper, and that's all, you know my electric car requires no maintenance, I mean, ZIP. It's much cheaper to operate than you know, my wife has a hybrid. Okay? And and, you know, she's she's looking at, you know, 7, 8¢ a mile. I'm looking at at 1.3¢ a mile. Okay? Tremendous difference. So once batteries become a little cheaper, so you can buy an electric car cheaper than you can buy a gas car, I would assume that that, you know, gas cars are gonna disappear.

All the the other data point, and this is not gonna be accurate. It's just to give a reference that a car has 5,000 moving parts where a battery vehicle has something like the main parts are, like, 25. And, again, don't hold me on these exact figures. I'm throwing it out. And that one of the things that you have to do is change the batteries. I mean, change the brakes ever at a 100000 miles as compared to all of the maintenance that has to go on with a typical vehicle.

The the challenge that the one thing I do and like your opinion on it when it comes to the batteries, and hopefully, we'll come up with something that's far superior, is that the batteries will do leak, and they leach into water systems and creeks and all of that. How, when it comes to using space, as the topic is, the resources and space, do you see of anything that would be able to mitigate the challenges that we have with battery technology today? 2 things.

First of all, obviously, we need to recycle batteries, and and I'm surprised that technology is not here already. Mhmm. The second thing is there is something better than a battery. It's called a flywheel. And the technology for flywheels, you could build a flywheel powered airplane. In other words, you get that order of magnitude, kilowatt hours per kilogram with a high technology flywheel. Can you explain the flywheel, please? Because I I know about it, but I don't know about it.

Well, it's essentially you take a a mass and you spin it. Mhmm. And it's you it's in a vacuum and it's have magnetic bearings, so there's almost no drag. And the electric there's an electric motor part of the flywheel, so you can spin it up and also pull power out of it. Okay. And with modern technology materials, okay, you could get an order of magnitude better and and, you know, kilograms per kilowatt than you can with a battery. And flywheels don't wear out. They don't age.

They're good forever. The problem is that that technology that that technology is laying dormant. I mean, it's just not there. It's an No one's pursuing it.

Well, maybe someone will listen and and start to pursue it a little bit more because the challenge I have, and I wanna go back to the flywheel, but the challenge I have with batteries is no matter how many batteries you collect, there will always be somebody who will leave a car with batteries all underneath, and they will leave it to degrade in their backyard. It just happens to be the nature of human beings. There's barns that fall down, cars that rust on the side.

There will be somebody who get a cracked battery, and that cracked battery will leach into the aquifer that exists below them and damage it. And you don't need a lot to damage an aquifer. So when I think of batteries while they are improving, I do have a fear that this will happen, which is not unlike the fear that individuals have with solar power is that the solar cells will one day have to be replaced.

And today, we don't have the tech to be able to separate the, rare earth metals, the dangerous toxic metals that were then that or any chemicals, and they will be shipped off to, level 1 countries, countries that have less than a dollar per day as compared to level 2, 3, or 4, and we're in the 4 category. So they the challenge with batteries becomes how fast can we find something else in the flywheel I will have to look into. But no one in your that any thoughts as to why no one's working on it?

Because batteries are right now a lot easier to use. There was, about 10 years ago, a serious look at fall flywheel energy storage, you know, for stationary storage. Mhmm. And and no one, you know, batteries came on, born, were popular. I I do wanna make one comment on your your car out in the backyard thing. Sure. A busted automobile is worth nothing, literally. A battery, the chemicals in a battery are still valuable.

So the the the guy may haul may tow the the his his battery car into a place that'll give him money for the battery. Okay. Because he wouldn't do it for a busted automobile. Okay. That's a a good so we're hoping that the the impetus to be able to get the value just like copper or metals or scrap that this battery will have enough value. And the more batteries and easier and the cheaper they are to produce, the less valuable be become.

But we're hoping that there'll be enough value that they'll still bring it in for whatever currency they can get. Yeah. Nickel cobalt both nickel and cobalt are fairly valuable. So When I when I think of this, I I I've actually I have a diagram that I've drawn, and I have batteries on one side and flywheel on the other. And in my head, I go back to 1900. And I go back to the fact in 1900, there were more electric vehicles on the road than there were, the combustion engine.

But by the 1915, that number had completely reversed with the, the the automatic starter as compared to having to crank the shaft. And we have combustion engines because of that split in the road. Is gee, could the flywheel and the battery actually have been be our next mistake that we didn't pursue the one that was more value more environmentally friendly because we made choices for batteries.

Well, the back in 1900, the range on a battery automobile could not compete with an internal combustion engine system. Yes. But it's still we still took a path instead of continuing with electric. My point is today would be farther along. Could we be facing that same challenge here that the battery is where we focus, but the flywheel is probably the better option? It's possible. I wouldn't again, I I don't have enough data to make that projection. Okay. Just a question. So, let's see.

We the next one, how does space development, solve these challenges, which I think we've kind of is there anything else to add to that? No. I think we've pretty well covered it. And then the all the elements we need to harvest on the moon, where found on the moon. So if we take those other 2, we've taken the the the main elements you've given. Is there anything else on the moon besides the Helium 3 and the platinum or the the platinum group?

Is there anything else on the moon that you read about or say to yourself, here's a great opportunity also? Yes. Okay. This is a little further down the line, but there is a the the crater Copernicus seems to have a lot of uranium in its regolith. And, again, up in that, you know, up in the left upper part of the moon in Mare Iridium, there seems to be a lot of thorium.

So there's a lot of nuclear fuels on the moon that are in the in the crust, which makes them readily, you know, in the regolith, makes them readily available. And if Earth doesn't want nuclear power, the moon may love it. If anybody's living on the moon, there's advanced spaceships that use nuclear power. You know, they're pulse type like Project Orion.

And you could build and operate those ships on the moon and not worry about, you know, the reason that Project Orion never made it on Earth was the fallout. Well, the earth, the moon atmosphere, I mean, just the environment is radioactive. You need shelter. So, the lunarites or whatever we call them, your people in the lunar hut, they might develop nuclear powered spaceships and develop the rest of the solar system. So when we I'm assuming you know the name, Chas Diaz?

Yes. He his, what is it called? His the interview we had with his, what's the name of the engine? It's a, cash Casimir. Yeah. One of the things we talked about was the it couldn't get us out of atmosphere. But in space, it needs a tremendous amount of energy. And so what you're suggesting, and I'm tying 2 pieces together, excuse me if I'm wrong again, is that we could take the energy for this, this engine, and we can supply the fuel to be able to fly this engine into space?

Well, it probably still isn't enough thrust, but once you're away from the moon, it would do fabulously. But you'd you'd use some other system to get off the ground, so to speak. The VASIMR engine. That's what I was trying to get, the VASIMR. Yeah. So the so yeah. So you're saying yes, it would, or am I mixing 2 things? You you can't it doesn't develop enough thrust to lift off from the moon.

But once you're in orbit around the moon, you could use it to go to, you know, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, wherever. Okay. Quite well. So and plus, Vazimir probably can use water's propellant. And, you know, water is probably readily available on the moon. So so that once you once you have the lunar hut or whatever, you once you have people on the moon The moon hut. There's lots of resources, and they could they could move out and develop the rest of the solar system. They have everything they need.

The the the Mearth ecosystem, moon and earth ecosystem was I I kinda go back to how do we be able to facilitate doing what we do in space. So I could see the VASMIR engine helping to facilitate potentially just even going between the moon and Earth or no? Yes. Very definitely, but not all the way to the lunar surface. You can go from low Earth orbit to low lunar orbit using VASMIR. And that would be yeah. It would be like a cross stock.

You bring your you bring it up to low Earth orbit, you put it onto the VASMIR engine, onto a vehicle that ships it, goes to near the moon, it cross stocks and brings it down. You got it. Like a a long haul trucker would do. Is that And and the the the lunar lander that comes up and visits Vazimir in lunar orbit is based on the moon. And, again, the all the propellants you need are readily available with this mining system I talked about.

So you could support a a lunar lander at your mining facility. And it would go up and take, you know, supplies up and bring supplies back. So we've got how from what knowledge we have today, the far side of the moon, similar do we know the composition? We you were talking about here thorium and uranium and platinum. Obviously, there'll be platinum on the other side. There'll be these on the other side, on the far side.

Are there any, do we know the composition as well as we do know the the near side? Well, yes. As it turns out, that most of the valuable minerals are on the near side. Why is that? We have, no I suspect it'll be a very large meteor I mean, asteroid hit. We've had satellites in orbit around the moon for many years looking down, using, neutron scattering and and gamma rays to measure what's on the surface.

And it's been US, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians have put these observation satellites in in polar orbit around the moon. So we have a pretty good set of maps is where the minerals are, and interesting enough, the far richest deposits are on the near side. And you you've mentioned the north, northwest a lot. Well, looking from the earth. Yeah. I know I know. That's what the reference is, the northwest. Any anywhere else that there are higher concentrations or is if or other cut.

You know, I'm asking. Primarily there. I mean, yes. There are other deposits. There's a lot of Helium 3 on the the northeast side, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of deposits on the backside. So so what we're more or less saying that another asteroid hit the moon and gave us these resources. You got it.

So even even Earth, for human consumption, Earth and the moon having been hit and struck in the second one, second, becoming and forming on as the moon, we still are looking at the, the metallic and the organic meteors to be this next iteration of, energy or resources that we should are are looking at. It's still the same family of did the same thing for both Earth and moon. You got it.

Are the the resource these critical resources we're mining were deposited on both bodies by asteroid collisions. And and we've been we've been using up that supply on Earth, and it's about time maybe to tap the supply on the moon. Okay. And anything else with, where found on the moon? Which was your last No. That's, again, there are all kinds of maps out there, and, you can download them. And you'll see that the that that northwest corner seems to be extremely rich.

I will be looking at the northwest corner for the for for now on. I had not known that. So any other when you're thinking about acquiring the resources and spaces or any and saving Earth, is there anything else that Well, I have many friends in in in rocket science group and in NASA that wanna do a solar power satellite and essentially beam the power down from geosynchronous orbit and replace all the electrical power plants. Yep. And, physically, that works.

The problem is the economics don't work too well. Yeah. We had, Strickland. What's his name? Jim Strickland? Is it Jim? Okay. Yeah. You know do you know him? I think you would know you as I know his name. Yeah. He did one he did one of our podcasts on Space Solar Power. So you're saying the economics don't work. What's the numbers? The first well, the I was involved just back in 75. Okay? And we did an extensive study, and we came up with the first kilowatt was $200,000,000,000.

It's the capital cost, not the operating cost that gets you. In other words, no utility can afford $200,000,000,000. Right. So even though it works, and and plus the power the cost of power on earth has gone down in real dollars by couple orders of magnitude since we did that study. In other words, technology is getting better all the time. Mhmm. But not but not the but not the 200,000,000,000 reducing. Well, yeah. They're down to maybe 80 or a 100,000,000,000 now.

And and once again, it's the cost to get a kilogram to low Earth orbit has been the driver. Now once, you know, if star if Starship is successful, you can start running the numbers again for solar power satellites and see see how it comes out. I go to futuristic movies in my head, and I think of, okay. It's not it's not going to be one solution. There'll be multiple solutions. So maybe let's use the same timeline, 2038, because we're dropping the cost of energy as you've just described.

And for for localized supply demand, you could be using many, facilities and and much of what we've spoken about today. And at the same time, there could be space solar power delivering simultaneously, so it's not an it's not an and or it's not an a, an or and or, but it's a it's not an or. It's an and or so that you could be choosing between multiple forms of, tech to be able to service your community depending on where it is, rural versus urban, how much is needed.

And so the combination will probably by 2040, we'll have many more options. Yeah. And and part of this is that we did a study back in 93. All the all the major aerospace companies in the United States combined and did a study looking at commercial space transportation study, and we're looking to see we're looking at at at market pull instead of technology push. In other words, if we drop the price, who's gonna want to to use space? And and it turns out everybody did.

Mhmm. But we couldn't get the price down. We kept trying, and and NASA well, I won't get into this. You know, read the book. I might not get to it, so tell me. You keep on saying that. Well, NASA kept we tried to justify the cost of a reusable single staged orbit. And we couldn't make the numbers work. In other words, we could if if we got the cost down to where everybody would use space, we couldn't make enough money operating the system.

And that was because it cost too much to build the reusable system, And that was an artifact of the tool we were estimating with, which was a NASA tool, and since it was a NASA study we were kinda we're gonna use their tool. Right. So and what happened was is Elon said, Elon said well, I'm not NASA. Yeah. I'm gonna cut some corners. I'm gonna do it the right way, and he did. And he got reusable space working. He got reusable launch systems working.

And and there and there was re there were re reusable there was a reusable return to Earth rocket in I think it was Pete Wharton spoke about this, and I might not have shared it on this program, but back in and, again, my dates might be off at 19 seventies, 19 eighties. There were rockets that would come up, go up, and they could come down, but not in the same scale and capability that we have today and not going all the way up into low Earth orbit.

Yeah. And and I know Pete very well, and he and I have we were involved in some of this. Okay. So, yes, you're correct. But they weren't they were they were studies. They got again, they were joint Air Force NASA studies, and and we were almost there. And then we won the Cold War and all the money dried up. Yeah. And that's where you and I came back to this conversation is that I'm reading the first few pages of your book.

And, as I shared with you in our pre interview is I don't wanna know anything before our call because then the listener cannot learn alongside of me so that we learn together. And I ask the questions that I would ask normally. There's no curse of knowledge. And when I saw that in the 9 the I don't know. It was the x something, x 15 or whatever was developed. Actually dinosaur. Dinosaur. Is that the name of it? Dinosaur?

Okay. Where a rocket was developed that was a a rocket plane, and it could take off and land, horizontal takeoff, horizontal landing, and it had gotten far enough. And then someone came in and canceled it, and every all the data, all this work, years of research was thrown into the trash. And I think you wrote physically thrown into the trash. Yeah. I I I worked with and carpooled with the people involved. In dumping the trash?

No. No. No. This was years later, but they were very bitter about the way that ended. Explain to me because I think this is the first time I'm asking this. Explain to me why data in 19 seventies or eighties or sixties, why this data is so valuable that it would save time today? Is that do you understand what I'm asking that question? Because it's it seems odd. I would say, no, no, start again. It's new. We need this, and we could do it faster and cheaper and better.

Can you give it to me from that perspective? Okay. You may not like the answer. I know. I wanna if there's no like, this is pragmatic to me. I we wanna get a box of the roof and a door on the moon. We wanna create the Mearth ecosystem, the Mearth economic system. You gotta here. We get you gotta here. Okay. Well, DINOSAUR was an air force program. Okay. And they were developing a metallic a high temperature metallic airplane with metallic heat shield. And they got, they were ready.

They had all the drawing released. They were ready to assemble the first vehicle. And the program got canceled by Robert McNamara for cost reasons because they were going after a mission that the corona satellite was already doing, and the corona just started operating correctly. What is the corona satellite? That was spying. They were spying on the Soviet Union and China.

They were taking pictures, and that was the original purpose of dinosaur was to fly over China and the Soviet Union and take photographs. So he said, well, we don't this is not cost effective. He canceled it. He wasn't even thinking of the technology. Well, now we now 10 years later, we're doing the Space Shuttle, and Eisenhower formed NASA as a civil organization, not a DOD organization. And he did that for a purpose.

He wanted to claim that we, you know, that we were not going to militarize space. Well, NASA and the Air Force were competing for some missions. So NASA developed they went and developed spacecraft, but they decided they wanted to use aluminum structure and a ceramic TPS system, which was dumber than dirt. Okay. And it ended in, you know, killing the crew on Columbia.

Okay. All the and and and the Air Force had flown their TPS system, they had launched it on a Thor and actually flown it and proven that it worked and it was lighter than what NASA was doing. But NASA was in competition with the Air Force at this time, and they were not about to use an Air Force solution to their problem, even though it was safer and lighter. So we got the shuttle, and the shuttle, the shuttle tile is, what is it, antihydromic?

It it absorbs water readily, So it has to be waterproofed or it would sit out in the floor to be add add weight on every second it sat. Yeah. It would essentially absorb 3 times its weight in water. And when you launched, the tile would get hot, the water would turn to steam and blow the tiles off. Mhmm. So they absolutely had to waterproof it. It took 18,000 man hours to waterproof the shuttle every time it returned, and the material they used was extremely toxic.

So they had to be in escape suits, which is essentially a spacesuit with with air being fed into it, from remote remote location so that they they wouldn't breathe any of the silane they were injecting into the tiles. So the shuttle originally was to fly every 160 hours turnaround and fly for $4,800,000 a flight.

By the time they rebuilt the engines, which was another mistake, and did the tile, it took 40 to 50 days to turn it around, and it was costing over 500,000,000 of light instead of 4.8. K. So that is why I say the loss of the dinosaur technology was a very okay. Had dinosaur flown, then it would have been very difficult for NASA not to use in that technology. So the dinosaur was the air force's technology.

NASA decided to take their own, but the country, the United States of America, decided to take the NASA route instead of the air force route. There was no sharing of the tech between them. If so that is if in fact it flew, but what about these pot this pile of data? Like, someone I I talked into one of our team members in Germany, and he said, oh, if we only had the data, I'm thinking it's 25 year old data, it's 40 year old data. What does data when it comes to rocketry?

How do you why is it so, so, so, so, so valuable? It's not the data per se as much as it is as the the the data results. In other words, had had you proven and and that data exists. In other words, they they flew I think it was called Prime. They they flew, some test vehicles, small test vehicles with the data, and that was Langley had had that data. So NASA Langley had it, but NASA Langley was not in the loop in picking the shuttle. This is all politics, David.

Yeah. Oh, I the first thing I learned when I started in this project Moon Hut and with NASA was the team that I sat with said to me, we've lost 1,000,000,000 because of politics, and they gave me one example that I remember. There are many others that I could share as he said, do you know how you get a raise or you move up in NASA? Now I might be stabbing myself as I say this. I'm not saying to be mean. It was what was shared with me, and it was a surprise. As they said, there's 2 things.

You either have more people or more budget. And what you would do or some people did, I don't know what true this is. This I've checked to talk to other people is you would delay a project and ask for more money so that you'd have more people and you had a higher position in NASA. That is correct. Okay. So no. I I I understand that it is a very political game, space flight. And that's where someone like Elon is being able to play a different game.

And he's able to and and I don't like to only speak about Elon because this needs to be an an economic system. It needs to be a Mearth economic system. We need to not have one entity that we're relying on. We need to be have a full system of rockets, life support, or whatever technology is being developed by multiple players so that this economic system can grow and develop. If it's only on one, it becomes challenging.

Now Jeff Bezos up here in Seattle, has Blue Origin, and a lot of the people that used to work for me are now working at Blue Origin. And they're doing good job, and they're not all that far behind, Elon. It's just that they're they're going they they do it quietly. They're not, sharing as much data with the put with the press as as SpaceX does. The, I think it's the CEO is Bob Smith or something, was Blue Origin? Just changed.

Yeah. I don't remember Well, the the only reason I'm gonna ask is that I'd like to get Bob or somebody at Blue Origin on our podcast. So that's where I was kinda going with it. So it's a it's a means to help other people like you've helped us today. So, anything else to add? No. I can probably help you with that. Okay. I would love that. I we've we've had some amazing people, including yourself on the program, and I highly, highly thank you for taking the time.

And for those of you listening, once again, we develop a title, a month or 2 ago, whatever the timeline was. And then Dana goes out and he does this thing. He decides the program, and every one of our guests does the same thing. I ask for no information, no outline, no no questions, no nothing. And I don't have any questions when I start. I'm in the moment. I'm learning. And alongside of me, you're learning too.

And so, I appreciate that you've Dana, that you've taken the time to delve into this, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain some of these, some people might say, basic concepts. However, I would argue that I've been around the world, and I talk to people who are space enthusiasts and people in the space industry, and they often don't know these things. So it's there it's not a ubiquitous industry. Everybody doesn't know everything.

And so I appreciate you taking the time to put all this together. So thank you very much, Dana. You're welcome. Is there one best way that sync people can get a hold of you? My website is probably and it's retired rocket doc, all lowercase.com. Retired rock rocket dot com. Doc. Yeah. Doc. Say it again? Yeah. Yeah. Retired Rocket Doc, d o c. I actually am a rocket scientist, and I do have a doctorate. So we have a retired rocket doc.com.

Yes. So, again, we wanna thank you for taking for all of you out there who have taken the time in out of your day to listen in. And I do, and I both of us do, Dana, myself, and everybody within Project Moon Hut. Hope that you've learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Now the Project Moon Hut Foundation is we are looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, through this accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem. What we're doing right now, talking about and and working on developing this ecosystem. And then to take those endeavors, that paradigm shifting, these innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

And if you're interested in participating in project Moon Hut, we are working on all sorts of technology from computer technology to biotech. We've got a whole plethora of different activities. We also we're a 501c3. We are looking for contributions, and we're looking for companies and organizations who could participate in what we're doing, whether it be from feasibility studies to helping us with with data access and individuals and and you name it. So please reach out to us.

You can reach me at, [email protected]. You can connect with us on Twitter at projectmoonhut. Mine is, at goldsmith if you want me. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. Even if you wanna get to know me a little bit more, it's Instagram at davidgoldsmith. So there are many ways to get a hold of us, and we would, almost every single day, we are talking with people around the world who are participating in Project Moon Hut. And I don't say almost every day.

Every day we are, and we would love to have your participation. So please reach out to us. So with that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.