“To build a bridge is much more than connecting points A and B.
It’s laying the foundations of a whole new economy”
The development and growth of the Greater Earth Lunar Power Station (GE⊕-LPS) system will build upon several “flywheel effects”, which accelerate each other, build greater momentum, and maintain growth over a long time. (1) The flywheel effect has often been used to describe the growth dynamics of companies that grow rapidly to large-scale, such as Amazon Inc, which began selling books online, became profitable 7 years after being founded in 1994 and now ranks as one of the world’s top companies by market value. As of January 27, 2023, Amazon had a market capitalization of $1 trillion (2).
For the GE⊕-LPS system, it is very clear that the initial infrastructure and implementation investment needed will be large – perhaps €100 billion or more. However, the benefits of establishing an industrial base on the Moon will be commensurately large, and may well grow to have significant benefits for future generations which have not yet been anticipated. As shown in in the image above, the initial driver is the need for a green baseload energy source supplying the global multi-trillion terrestrial electricity market, which can be realized by developing Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP). However, a bottleneck is created by the large number of heavy-lift launches needed to transport the massive, GW-scale Solar Power Satellites (SPS) units from Earth to GEO.
This raises the question: What if the systems to be located in space were actually built in space and not on Earth? In this context the Moon offers unique possibilities which have been discussed theoretically for decades. Mining the Moon to build SPSs for Earth will lead to the production of photovoltaic systems and propellants on the lunar surface, which in turn will supply more and cheaper energy to Earth, which will lead to increasing space investment, new space businesses, and other opportunities, in a virtuous circle of economic growth. Also, most importantly, the initial driver is not a specific, small and uncertain market like that for Helium-3, but the whole world’s electricity market, which is growing even faster than the overall energy market as electrification spreads – as well as contributing to the growing need for energy security. In this way, many new markets will be not only expanded, but created from scratch. These include a cislunar transportation and logistics market, a lunar mining and beneficiation market, a propellant market in cislunar space, a market in GEO for numerous SPS components and related services, an energy market on the Moon, tourism and entertainment markets in cislunar space, and others.
Cooperation Among Nations
Another important driver is the geopolitical aspect. Cooperation among nations is turning into competition for scarce resources and economic advantages. In short, the world needs to become more united in order to address the many issues humanity currently faces. The International Space Station has been a remarkable example of peaceful cooperation in space and is the most politically and legally complex space exploration programme in history involving five space programmes and fifteen countries. In 1998 the Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement set forth the primary framework for international cooperation among the parties. A series of subsequent agreements govern other aspects of the station, ranging from jurisdictional issues to a code of conduct among visiting astronauts which continues today even after the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
Cooperation in a multi-national “macro-engineering” project such as GE⊕-LPS could contribute even more to improving global security and de-escalating already dangerous tensions which would benefit all nations in numerous ways. A dedicated independent multi-national Private-Public Partnership comprised of nation stakeholders such as the Greater Earth Energy Organisation (GEEO) would have many advantages beyond providing and guaranteeing the initial financial investment. These include: enabling a just return on the investment to all stakeholders, fair distribution of geographically weighted industrial return contracts, establishing necessary laws and regulations, and ensuring compliance in adherence to the provisions of the Outer Space Treaty. Such an organisation would de-risk the initial investment and de-risk future geopolitical conflicts over energy resources.
Creating a Lunar Industrial Base
It is of particular importance that development of the ability to construct much of the mass of the GE⊕-LPS from components produced on the lunar surface will create the ability to make components that could be used in SPS units supplying electrical power to the Earth. As such, GE⊕-LPS can be considered as a prototype for developing and maturing the systems needed to eventually make SPS units for operation in GEO, providing environmentally benign, clean electric power to Earth. Evaluation of additional potential benefits arising from other uses of the lunar-surface manufacturing capabilities developed for GE⊕-LPS will depend on scenarios for the development of other commercial uses of the lunar surface, as discussed below.
It will require considerable initial investment to develop manufacturing and launch facilities on the lunar surface. However, the demand for electrical power on Earth is going to grow continually for decades to come, enabling energy-related lunar operations to reach very large scale, sufficient to repay even large investments – on the condition that the cost of lunar-produced components and sub-systems delivered to GEO, including environmental costs, will become lower than Earth-produced sub-systems in GEO. Part of the revenue stream paid by electricity companies for microwave power supplies delivered from SPS satellites in GEO to rectennas on Earth, will pay for the costs of the lunar-produced components of the satellites. How far they may also repay the initial investment required to develop the needed manufacturing and launch facilities remains to be seen, but initial estimates seem positive. A multi-national consortium of countries working together would de-risk this initial investment. Once the technology and systems developed reach a sufficient level of maturity for companies, including insurance companies and banks, to have confidence in them, lunar-based production of SPS parts for power supply to Earth and other uses should become a largely commercial activity.
Creating a Cislunar Economy
The process of implementing a Cislunar Transportation System (CTS) will develop a range of technologies for operation on the lunar surface and at EM-L1. This will thereby “de-risk” a range of activities that are not feasible today. Among others, the technology and know-how to construct buildings on the lunar surface needed for GE⊕-LPS will create particularly valuable technology and know-how of vital importance for all companies planning lunar surface activities. In this way the GE⊕-LPS operations will become both the anchor customer and the economic driver for future lunar activities.
There is a range of companies with no experience of space engineering which may choose to participate in lunar activities once they are possible for people other than professional astronauts. This will notably include companies already involved in orbital tourism services. This creates a potentially exponential business opportunity for the initial operators of the GE⊕-LPS mining, processing, manufacturing, and construction activities as other players become customers for these products and services.
Flywheel Effects of Cislunar Activities
Implementing the Cislunar Transportation System leads to the possibility of upscaling the lunar operations to serve different economic sectors that would benefit from an Earth-Moon cislunar economic development scenario.
- Energy for Earth
Once the GE⊕-LPS becomes operational as a ‘proof-of-concept’ it is foreseen that the installed lunar operations will be upscaled to begin production of SPSs for the multi-trillion terrestrial energy market. This will be a gradual process, but eventually energy from space might even become one of the main sources of energy for powering civilization on Earth and beyond.
- Propellant Production
One of the first industrial processes on the lunar surface will be the production of propellants to serve lunar and cislunar transportation and Earth-bound return vehicles. Regolith is rich in oxygen which has many obvious uses from life-support to industrial production. Oxygen will be a by-product of many lunar material utilization processes. Hydrogen may be obtained from the water ice that is claimed to be present in the shadowed craters in the polar regions. The apparent discovery of water-ice at the lunar poles reinforces the possibility that in-situ production of rocket propellant could realistically enhance rocket traffic to and from the lunar surface, as assumed in almost all scenarios of lunar settlement. Thus, the production of rocket propellant will be one of the first objectives of the initial GE⊕-LPS operations, with or without using hydrogen from water-ice, since oxygen is plentiful in the lunar regolith. This is probably one of the first business cases for lunar industrial development not only for transportation on the lunar surface but also for exporting propellants to LEO as, once the necessary infrastructure is developed, this could become less expensive than launching them from Earth, as estimated in the recent study Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture: A Collaborative Study of Lunar Propellant Production (3).
- Helium-3
Helium-3 (He-3) is very rare in the terrestrial environment but found in significant concentrations in the lunar regolith. The Helium-3 isotope has a wide range of applications on Earth, including quantum computing and modern cryogenics research to achieve extremely low temperatures. As a medical isotope, He-3 is used as a non-toxic inhalant to scan for lung function. He-3 is used in neutron research in colliders to study the “shadow world” of anti-matter, helping to uncover some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Helium-3 has also been identified as a promising fuel for realising nuclear fusion as an energy source
- Transportation
The implementation of the GE⊕-LPS will require from its early phase, the development of reusable launch systems, a reusable Earth-to-LEO human transport system and a LEO cargo transit station. The next phase will develop the Greater Earth Lunar Space Elevator (GE⊕-LSE) to enable lunar-sourced SPS components to be sent to the EM-L1 assembly location. As the GE⊕-LSE becomes more robust to handle greater cargo loads from the Moon, it will also extend Earthwards as its capacity increases. This will result in an Earth-Moon transportation system with an economic hub located at or adjacent to the EM-L1 hub of the GE⊕-LSE. Due to their uniqueness, EM-L1 and EM-L2 will become important pieces of a cislunar space infrastructure, used by many countries, similar to the Suez and Panama canals. Orbital assembly operations in or near GEO may develop as the cislunar transportation system matures and a demand for lunar-sourced components develops – not only for GE⊕-SPS – but for other SPS designs as well.
- Tourism
The initial GE⊕-LPS design incorporates a central habitat that is intended for human management of the satellite and as a way station for crew transport operations. The system design also includes a lunar base station for managing surface operations. Both aspects require the development of secure Closed-Loop Life Support Systems (CLLSS) suitable for sustaining and protecting the human crew during the performance of their missions. Developing a lunar industrial complex will require the construction of extensive buildings, including manufacturing facilities from lunar materials. These are core capabilities for future tourism activities, and so once they are in place and functioning reliably and safely, there will be an immense motivation for companies in several countries to develop lunar tourism destinations. New forms of tourism and entertainment, such as sport and dance in low gravity will also become possible and attractive for broadcasting to worldwide audiences as well as to visitors from Earth seeking a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience.
- Security
Global insecurity has accelerated in recent years. Extreme weather abnormalities affecting food production point to an acceleration in the changing climate. Geopolitical conflicts, including the destruction of massive energy infrastructure, have already impacted the reliable delivery of energy resources which are forcing countries to rethink their energy policies and their future energy security. For the security of humanity’s future well-being on Earth, it seems that the time has come to extend human civilization beyond the home planet and establish it on its closest celestial neighbour. The GE⊕-LPS concept is a visionary opportunity to refocus humanity’s popular perception of its place and purpose in the cosmos. If successful, eventually providing clean and plentiful energy from space not only to Europe, but also to countries throughout the world, it will lead to solving both the climate and the energy crises confronting humanity. To be successful, this will require a united global cooperative effort which may be manifested and facilitated in the creation of an intergovernmental space energy industrial organization.
Possible Synergies
Implementing the GE⊕-LPS will have a catalytic pull-effect on other cislunar technological and industrial developments and will thereby create new business opportunities which will become economically self-sustaining.
- Reusable Launcher Development
There is obvious synergy between this transportation system, which will be valuable for many other projects, and implementing GE⊕-LPS. €10 billion for the development of a reusable heavy-lift launcher has been included in the GE⊕-LPS initial infrastructure budget which is considerably more than the cost of Europe’s Ariane 6 development which has been estimated at €4 billion.
- Cislunar Space Elevator
€11 billion for the development of a Lunar Space Elevator (LSE) has also been included in the initial GE⊕-LPS infrastructure investment sum. This is several times the cost estimate of $2 billion for a prototype LSE proposed by Charles Radley and Marshall Eubanks (4, 5). There will be many advantages from creating such a transformative Earth-Moon transportation infrastructure beyond the implementation of GE⊕-LPS, including those for many countries beyond Europe. Earlier concepts of large-scale Moon production systems (mainly from the 1970s) relied on the “mass driver” technological concept to launch material to the Earth-Moon Lagrange point 2 (EM-L2) to be captured by a “mass catcher” and then processed into useful elements in zero-g conditions. However, alone the strong weight and volume restriction of such payloads makes a mass driver a very inflexible device, in addition to many other unsolved problems. The presence of lunar gravity simplifies many production techniques compared to microgravity in orbit. By comparison, the LSE offers much more flexibility and a higher potential for a future cislunar economy. However, research and engineering studies are scarce and should be intensified as the LSE has the potential to become a key infrastructure element in cislunar space.
- Mining Industry
The terrestrial mining industry is very experienced in resource extraction using autonomous robotic equipment. This industry is also dependent on finding new sources of resources to mine and process. Cislunar resource utilization could become a major new market for this industry, both in terms of engineering and in access to valuable resources.
- Construction Industry
Establishing a lunar base will require in-situ mining and processing of lunar regolith into construction elements for buildings, roads, factories, and storage facilities. The main priority will be obtaining the specific materials necessary to construct the GE⊕-LPS, but once developed these construction processes will be available to be applied to other lunar surface projects requiring such infrastructure. The spin-offs from the development of automation and robotics will be beneficial for the terrestrial construction industry as well as for future solar system industrial activities.
- Energy Industry
Energy powers civilization. Providing sufficient, reliable, secure and environmentally neutral sources of energy is necessary for the transition to a carbon neutral future for developed societies while ensuring access to plentiful sources of energy for developing countries. Scaling terrestrial energy sources to meet the growing energy needs of humanity on Earth would be extremely challenging due to various restraints. However, the region of “Greater Earth” has 13 million times the volume of the physical Earth and through it passes more than 55,000 times the amount of solar energy which is available to us on the surface of the planet. The amount of sunlight passing through the cislunar region alone is 6,400 times the amount that reaches the surface of Earth. This is a natural resource potentially available for supplying terrestrial energy use, which is already a multi-trillion-Euro market and is perpetually growing.
- Growing Industrial Activities in Earth Orbits
This will advance the development of micro-gravity engineering, such as the possibility of making large structures from metal foams which are uniquely possible in micro-gravity.
- Resources from Asteroids and Comets
The GEO market for SPS components and other materials will also stimulate the use of resources from asteroids and comets, which several companies are currently planning but need an in-space market to enable investors to join in.
Parallel Lunar Industrial Development
GE⊕-LPS represents a significant industrial development program that spans cislunar space. To date there have been mostly exploratory activities in this region and any major effort to initiate ISRU for commercial purposes will automatically attract industrial players to consider potentially commercial projects in line with their area of expertise. The GE⊕-LPS project would involve the development of a range of activities and infrastructure on the lunar surface. These include facilities for mining, materials processing, and manufacturing, as well as water and propellant production.
There is already a very considerable research literature on the subject of industrial processing on the lunar surface. Unfortunately, none of this work has yet been tested in the lunar environment, although a small number of possibilities has been tested on Earth with lunar regolith simulants. Although the GE⊕-LPS project is carefully planned to require as few different industrial processes as possible, its activities will create an initial industrial base on the lunar surface, making it increasingly easy for other entities to initiate other activities involving a wider range of new and even experimental processes.
The industrialisation of the lunar surface will thus involve incremental growth of successful capabilities such as solar panel production, as well as experimental development of new processes, using such techniques as a range of methods of thermal processing of materials, use of robot-clusters, electron-beams and others. In this way it can be anticipated that lunar industrialisation will create a “virtuous circle” of growth much as seen on Earth in the development and growth of industrial “clusters”. The initial publicly funded activities will play the same role of de-risking the later investments which will be predominantly from the private sector.
There will also be rocket landing and launching sites made from melted basalt, as well as sintered or melted basalt roadways between the different facilities and mining sites, and for access to the base of LSE-1. There will also be a range of buildings made largely from 3-D printed basalt, with both cast and sintered basalt parts, and using complex components delivered from Earth. These will include unpressurised and pressurised doorways, with attached equipment such as airlocks, dust-traps (using static electricity, air jets and/or other methods), and air-tight electric cabling pass-throughs. Some buildings may have windows (also delivered from Earth, at least initially). There will also be water supply and wastewater treatment facilities.
These will not comprise typical systems seen in terrestrial buildings, but will be more basic, based on systems developed for and used in airliners, ISS and elsewhere, such as in orbital hotel facilities currently being developed by companies such as Bigelow Aerospace Inc, Orion Span Inc, Orbital Assembly Inc, and Axiom Space Inc.
All of these systems will be progressively developed further over time to be as convenient as, though not identical to, terrestrial systems, through the normal processes of incremental improvement, which will be faster the more people use them. Consequently, these facilities, equipment and systems will become progressively available for additional users who plan activities on the Moon.
The Exploration Company in Germany and Ispace Inc. in Japan are due to deliver several small payloads to the lunar surface. If these projects succeed, the two companies may well have a series of customers who wish to test aspects of regolith processing at small scale. This could greatly help to advance knowledge in this field.
Common Utilization of In-situ Resources
Practically all lunar development scenarios consider the following operations essential to establishing a sustainable long-term presence on the Moon. In addition to supplying energy to Earth, the following ISRU activities will be mutually beneficial.
- Life Support Systems
The apparent discovery of water on the Moon is also obviously important for future life-support systems. Water and oxygen are essential for maintaining human crews and for future agricultural installations which will be important for recycling and food production. Long-term crews will rely on such systems in later phases of GE⊕-LPS operations. As lunar development progresses, such bio-science capabilities will be another potentially lucrative business case, for which accumulating early experience will be valuable. As commodities, both water and hydrogen will become a source of trade between lunar bases.
- In-Situ Energy Production
Before a power producing system such as GE⊕-LPS becomes operational, energy production on the lunar surface will be necessary for all mining and industrial operations. Photovoltaic (PV) panels made from in-situ resources could be used for energy production on the lunar surface and can be expected to be scaled up later to supply PV systems for SPS production in GEO. Many previous studies citing future PV production from ISRU assume silicon would be the obvious material of choice due to the large presence of silicon in lunar materials.
However, the industrial processes required to manufacture clean silicon wafers on an industrial scale are considerable and require much use of liquids. Conventional vacuum processes and vapour-phase deposition—for the fabrication of electronic devices are also not practical on the Moon. Therefore, research on alternatives like the proposed pyrite based Monograin Layer (MGL) technology should be intensified (6). MGL lightweight solar panel technology combines the advantages of high-efficient single-crystalline material and low-cost roll-to-roll panel production, enabling the manufacture of flexible, lightweight, and cost-efficient solar panels from powders of crystalline semiconductor absorber material without involving the complicated silicon wafer production technique. In addition, these solar cells are readily recyclable, in contrast to silicon-based cells. As more entrepreneurs come to the Moon, solar panels produced from lunar materials will become a valuable product in the local lunar economy.
- In-Situ Energy Storage
Given the long lunar night, in-situ energy storage technologies need to be developed to extend the time of production. Initially the GE⊕-LPS system will only provide energy storage for the habitat and will cease production during lunar night. This situation will persist until enough power is beamed from the LPS to continue production during the night. However, with given energy storage capabilities the lunar energy grid can be kept in balance with good safety and redundancy and this could become a commercially viable service.
The Flywheel Effect as a Business Case
All of the above describes what is essentially a viable business case for going to the Moon. Most space programs are evaluated in terms of cost. However, by enabling cost-effective Space-Based Solar Power on a large scale, the impact of developing a GE⊕-SPS system for the terrestrial electricity market needs to also be considered in terms of economic opportunity.
Due to the high-costs and logistical launch bottleneck confronting any future Earth-launched Solar Power Satellite system, a business case has been established for a GE⊕-SPS – the lunar approach to SPS procurement once the infrastructure on the Moon has been installed and is operational. The available resources, the know-how, the new technologies, which have all accelerated in the last 25 years, have never been in a better constellation than today to fulfil human energy needs on Earth while pursuing space development and exploration objectives and creating an unparalleled business case by making such a bold and innovative step to utilise the Moon.
ASTROSTROM is seeking strategic partners and investors to set up the Greater Earth Energy Organisation (GEEO) to implement SBSP.
To find out how you can participate in this unprecedented opportunity that will transform the Fossil Fuel Age into the Space Energy Age, please send us an inquiry.
References:
- Greater Earth Lunar Power Station (GE⊕-LPS) : ESA Nebula Archive: https://nebula.esa.int/content/ge%E2%8A%95-lunar-power-station
- Matthew Johnston, (2023) How Amazon Makes Money, Investopia: https://www.investopedia.com/how-amazon-makes-money-4587523
- Kornuta, et al, (2019) Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture: A Collaborative Study of Lunar Propellant Production:
https://isruinfo.com/public/docs/Commercial%20Lunar%20Propellant%20Architecture.pdf - Charles F. Radley. (2017) The Lunar Space Elevator, a Near Term Means to Reduce Cost of Lunar Access, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics:
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.2017-537i - T.M. Eubanks, C.F. Radley. (2016) Scientific Return of a Lunar Elevator, Space Policy
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.00709.pdf - ESA (2021) Tiny Crystal of Power,
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/12/Tiny_crystal_of_power
