Whenever I see a breakthrough in processing like this, I always wonder how applicable it will be to space resources.
When I was at Rockwell thirty years ago, one of the projects I managed, with Ed McCullough (who died a couple years ago–NSS needs to update the page) and the late Bob Waldron was in adapting processes they’d been working on for beneficiation of lunar regolith to recover high-quality silicon and other things from fly ash. I guess it ended up not going anywhere after I left in 1993.
Reusable rockets have significant economic advantages at scale against aircraft for long haul. It’s partly because they don’t have to fight drag through the atmosphere for the whole trip.
What I heard last night that was new to me (maybe he’s said this before) was that it was less than a million per flight on the margin, and it could deliver 150 tons to LEO (I had thought the number was a hundred tons). That’s a fifty percent increase, and a one-third reduction in cost per pound.
I’m glad that Webb is working, but I continue to believe it was a mistake.
[Update a while later]
To clarify, I think it was a mistake to do it in the way it was done, but now that it’s operational, obviously it would be a mistake to abandon it now.