Results 1 to 4 of 4  Thread: Lunar Launching to LEO    1. #1
Join Date     Jan 2006      Question Lunar Launching to LEO
This may be way off the wall, but I was thinking about future
lunar economies, and what advantages the Moon might have, and an
obvious one is that it has 1/6 the gravity of Earth. So a
simple, and no doubt incorrect back-of-the-envelope calulation
suggests that if you have a rocket that can lift 25 tons on the
Earth, an identical rocket should be able lift 150 tons on the
Moon. So I could see how it might actually take less rocket fuel
to place a satellite into LEO when launched from the Moon than
when launched from Earth, even taking into account the extra
distance. (Maybe aerobraking could be used to slow down the
satellites, thus reducing the need for a big orbital insertion
burn.)      So I can envision a day, far in the future, when
Lockheed-Martin will have facilities to build satellites and
rockets on the Moon using local materials. The Moon might even
become a net exporter