com’on man. This is not a movie. How many trips and resources will it take to get all that equipment to the moon for mining? How many reentry windows are available per day to handle all the continuous mining?
Driverless cars, tunnels under cities, humans controlling things with their brains were all movie concepts not long ago.
To answer your questions: a few hundred flights is the current estimate, that number is shrinking as the years go by. Re-entry windows aren't the same as earth/rocket launches though they have their own challenges/limitations at the moment. The last sentence sums up your thinking, but also shows why as an investment SpaceX and the others make sense.
"- With modern heavy-lift vehicles like Starship (projected 100+ tons payload to lunar surface per flight, reusable), the mass driver hardware could require roughly **3–5 dedicated flights** (or fewer with optimized packing/assembly on-site). Older estimates using Ares V-class rockets (~75 tons) needed ~24 launches spread over ~3 years.
- Full mining + processing + power + support infrastructure: Far more. One analysis estimated an additional ~3,300 tons for mining equipment, ore refinery, power, and habitats—pushing total surface mass to ~6,600 tons. That equates to **~44–66 Starship-class flights** (assuming ~100–150 tons delivered per landing).
**Total trips/resources summary (realistic range for a viable starter industrial setup):**
- **Dozens to low hundreds of Earth-to-Moon launches** over several years (e.g., 50–100+ flights). This assumes Starship-scale reusability; current rockets would require far more.
- **Resources delivered:** Thousands of tons of hardware (solar arrays ~37,000 m² for ~8.7 MW driver power in one design; batteries; modular track sections; autonomous miners; refiners). Power is solar (abundant at lunar poles with near-constant sunlight), but initial delivery and assembly are Earth-sourced. Upfront costs are enormous (tens to hundreds of billions), but once running, ongoing "shipping" back to Earth is near-zero energy (electricity from solar for acceleration).
Reentry Windows per Day for Continuous Mining/Export
Friedberg’s description assumes mass drivers launch packages that precisely hit a chosen Earth spot, reenter the atmosphere, and parachute down—like a space FedEx. This is conceptually possible but faces major engineering hurdles not present in most lunar mass driver studies (which target orbit/L2 for catchers, not direct atmospheric reentry).
No fixed "reentry windows" like Earth rocket launches (which are constrained by rotation and site geography).** Here's why and what limits apply:
- **Trajectories and timing:** From the Moon (tidally locked, Earth direction is nearly fixed in the sky), you can launch toward Earth anytime the driver is powered. Transit time to Earth is ~2–5 days depending on exact velocity/vector (e.g., one design reaches LEO vicinity in ~2.1 days). Launches can be frequent (designs show every 10–11 seconds or minutes for small payloads; scaled up to tons every 10–15 minutes in some optimistic clips). Multiple payloads are in flight simultaneously.
This is all pre-operational engineering (1970s O’Neill concepts updated with modern power/rockets). Real deployment would iterate with demos (e.g., small payloads first). Friedberg’s vision is inspiring but glosses over the massive upfront Earth launches and reentry precision challenges. For context, even optimistic Starship-era estimates put full lunar industrialization decades away."
