Asri-unix.1004 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC Sat Mar 13 07:00:56 1982 Source of carbon Greg Yob suggests that carbonaceous meteors might have falled on the moon and remained near enough the surface to be profitable to mine. We might survey this from orbit, perhaps on the same mission as the polar orbiter (looking for water ice near poles). Once we locate the carbonaceous meteorites, I'm not sure how best to collect them. Maybe take a large survey and try to find the largest concentration in a local area, and send a lander there with a rover to go around and collect them all. In any case, it might be faster to pick the meteorites off the moon than try to divert an asteroid or comet to Earth vicinity. (Recall, orbital mechanics would cause asteroid or comet capture to take many years, whereas objects can be picked off the moon in just a couple weeks once we know where to land.) Thus during initial bootstrapping when we need a moderate amoung of Carbon *FAST* we might be better getting it from the Moon. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.