How the Moon moved a million tonnes a year

Transcript

To build a colony in space, the design study leaned on a lunar mass driver and a mass catcher at L2. On the Moon, buckets were accelerated along a long track, using a linear electric motor, and released compacted lunar material at about lunar escape velocity, roughly 2400 meters per second. The material arrived at L2, where an active catcher gathered the stream and slowed it for storage. L2 was chosen because it was far enough from the colony to reduce navigation hazards, close enough to the Moon to make catching easier, and well placed for moving the ore onward. From there, a rotary pellet launcher helped push material on to L5 for processing. That mattered because the colony needed lunar rock for its shell, shielding, air, water, glass, and metals, and it also fed the production of satellite solar power stations.