/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10251218
>use as little power as possible cause more power means more shit you gotta land
Actually no, given the other option is shipping the entire colony with no ISRU, I can use almost all the power generation of a complete colony and still represent a huge net saving. After all you're shipping that amount of power generation in either model
>steel plant has to fit in a rocket
Again the alternative is shipping an entire colony. Compared to the amount of structural material otherwise needed, the mill is nothing
>extra concerns must be taken so that any waste gases produced by the process
We already do this to varying extents depending on your process
>Oh and that's after you have presumably seperated iron oxide from martian dirt, which you presumably have moved around.
With the mass savings I could send 115 haul trucks. And drivers. And food to feed those drivers for 5 years. Every year.
>we have mined less than a ton of material on other bodies
But we have mined a bit more here. Its not an arcane process. The planets are not that geologically dissimilar
>The most 'construction' work we have ever done on another body consist of putting out boxes with light assembly work.
Again this is in comparison to shipping an entire colony in. Both are going to require construction.
>better ways to do it than an electric arc furnace. Molten oxide electrolysis
EAFs were the example because they're already mature, they can be used with a variety of materials, they're scalable and most importantly I had stats on hand and experience with how they scale. MOE is definitely promising but the point is we don't have to wait for it. We have technology to do the job now.
MOE has its own problems - like being way more energy expensive than other methods, but advantages in its relative simplicity, mass efficiency and feedstock requirements. If MOE delivers on everything and we have enough power, great, it just proves my point that you don't need big populations for ISRU all the better