In “Human orbital spaceflight: the ultralight approach,”, Richard Speck looks at a cheap, light, low tech escape system and fleshes out the new rocket adage, “Be the escape system”.
In “The challenges of Mars Exploration,” Donald Rapp assesses the not-too-bright prospects of various technologies on the necessary timelines for Mars exploration.
There’s one I disagree with him on: in-situ lunar oxygen. In-situ oxygen extraction on the Moon need not be a major industrial process. The basic needs are a heat source and vapor recovery. Suppose you have an Earth imported high efficiency pump. Add a lunar glass bell jar and an Earth imported parabolic mirror (later, lunar made). If you make the bell jar big enough, the mirror can sit inside the bell jar. Set the whole thing on a flat piece of lunar glass to make a low efficiency seal.
Operation would be as follows:
- Dump some ore on a flat piece of lunar glass.
- Point your parabolic mirror at the ore.
- Put the bell jar on top.
- Turn on the pump.
- Dump it out before the slag sticks to the glass bottom.
- Repeat.
Some kind of airlock conveyor belt thing where the top layer of the ore is fried might be a more advanced version. It’s ore efficiency would be quite low, but there’s plenty of ore up there.