I mean, making fuel is one thing. A future where we can manufacture electronics and spaceflight tech off Earth is far, far away. Like so far a lot of other technologies are going to scramble the economics anyway.
Actually i was more thinking of crude metallurgy and materials processing. You could quite easily get aluminium from lunar regolith, and also tons of silicates. This allows you to produce shielding, radiators and the structural elements of solar panels without having to kaboom-boom the tons of raw material from the Earth. And it’s not particularly high-tech stuff either, just some furnaces and basic extruding would go a long way. If you just have to ship the delicate electronics from Earth you’re already saving a lot.
I mean, making fuel is one thing. A future where we can manufacture electronics and spaceflight tech off Earth is far, far away. Like so far a lot of other technologies are going to scramble the economics anyway.
Actually i was more thinking of crude metallurgy and materials processing. You could quite easily get aluminium from lunar regolith, and also tons of silicates. This allows you to produce shielding, radiators and the structural elements of solar panels without having to kaboom-boom the tons of raw material from the Earth. And it’s not particularly high-tech stuff either, just some furnaces and basic extruding would go a long way. If you just have to ship the delicate electronics from Earth you’re already saving a lot.