The Value of the Moon by Stephen L. Gillett From L5 News, August
1983 No gravity well, lots of surface area, easy to move, rich
in volatiles (bound water and organic compounds), and rich in
certain metals, such as cobalt and nickel: Sure, asteroids have
lots of advantages for extraterrestrial resources, as Eric
Drexler reviewed last February. Why should we bother with mining
the Moon at all? Because the Moon (and any planet-sized body,
for that matter) offers advantages of its own. First, don't
underestimate the value of the Moon's proximity, at least for
the nearterm. Launch windows are frequent; telemetry is easy
(you can almost operate a robot on the Moon from the Earth's
surface); and short travel times mean that breakdowns (a la
Apollo 13) are potentially less catastrophic. But much more
fundamentally, large bodies like the Moon are chemically
fractionated, or "differentiated". Mother Nature has done
chemical separation for you on a planetary scale. Why not take
advantage of it? (Many asteroids — to judg