I corresponded with Lunar Geologist Paul Spudis several years ago off and on about various things lunar both on his blog and by email. I asked him about tubes near ice and he told me there were no lava tubes near the polar craters with known ice. Nowhere even close. He would know. Maybe there is ice in places other than the poles but we won’t know until we explore. We have spent billions on Mars and very little on the Moon. Very little on robot exploration anyway. Something I have never understood. Something about Mars generates interest…and funding. In my opinion it is a dead end in almost every respect. Ceres is a far better exploration destination. It probably has an ocean. And I am a scuba diver. Even if Mars has some underground lakes Ceres is a low grav icy body and landing anything is far easier than the deep gravity well of Mars. The only real advantage Mars has is an atmosphere to aerobrake in but, again, in my opinion, we are not going anywhere Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit without nuclear propulsion. If you have an atomic spaceship you don’t need to aerobrake. Kind of like all you need to go to the Moon is an SHLV. You don’t need fuel depots. In my opinion.
“When operated by robots, little or no rad shielding would be needed.”
It is not that it is needed, if the thing is full of water it is just available for whatever. Why not use it.
“Artificially bored tunnels” are probably not a real good idea to start with. Small craters, or start with a small crater and deepen it with explosives, then cover the top with a load bearing structure and pile regolith on it- is really going to be how it is done. Digging tunnels I doubt is going to happen for a very long time because it is….very hard work with very heavy equipment to do that. If intact lava tubes exist they could be immense. It would be such a wonderful incredible gift to humankind to be able to move into one and set up factories. Seems too good to be true but it is not impossible.
Nuclear weapons in space on human crewed “space boomers” would be my plan. It would realize the decades old dream of removing nuclear weapons from Earth and end the launch on warning in minutes situation that has threatened civilization for so long. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion seems almost designed for this mission as the pulse units are not only the highest thrust and Isp system available, they can push ice and rock just as effectively as a spaceship.
The screaming bloody murder from the NewSpace fans is always deafening over this and it is infuriating to me. They know that only governments can do this which is blasphemy to their cult of entrepreneurship.
“We don’t know about the quantity or nature of the ice in permanently shadowed craters. We only suspect that ice is there in large quantities.”
Evidence for massive ice deposits was collected with a lunar satellite probe radar in 2008 and the data released in 2010. Other missions have backed that data up. Unfortunately, a certain “entrepreneur” with his new toy, which could not go to the Moon, used his influence to make any talk of a lunar return verboten. His fan club went right along with that and there are libraries of comments to that effect. Perhaps Shotwell saying “we are not Moon people” will jog some memories. When fanboys say things like “we don’t know” it is an echo of those years when they screamed derision at anything that took the spotlight off their hero and his Mars fantasy. We seem to have now regained some collective sanity but this set space exploration back at least a decade.
My problems with the SpaceX Falcon 9 are the number of engines (too many of course) and the abort system on the Crew Dragon.
Perhaps they could replace those 9 engines with 3 Raptors. And strip that hypergolic system out of the Dragon and mount an escape tower. And partner with Blue Origin to power that upper stage with hydrogen. If Starlink and Starship fail this might keep the company in business.
My problems with the SpaceX Falcon 9 are the number of engines (too many of course) and the abort system on the Crew Dragon.
Perhaps they could replace those 9 engines with 3 Raptors. And strip that hypergolic system out of the Dragon and mount an escape tower. And partner with Blue Origin to power that upper stage with hydrogen. If Starlink and Starship fail this might keep the company in business.
If SpaceX goes bankrupt, which is very likely, considering the “high-risk” projects they have undertaken, their best path to consolidating after bankruptcy might be with what I described.
Considering how far they have set space exploration back, they deserve whatever they get. In my opinion we would have been better off without them.
Ice on the Moon 