Application of Manufactured Products

Sankar Sastri and Michael B. Duke

As table 3 shows, a wide range of useful products can, in principle, be manufactured from the following materials:

1. Lunar regolith or basalt
2. Regolith or rock beneficiated to concentrate plagioclase or other minerals
3. Iron, extracted from lunar soil or rocks by various means
4. Naturally occurring or easily obtained materials that have cementitious properties
5. Byproducts of the above oroducts

In addition to oxygen, which can be obtained by several processes, either from un beneficiated regolith or by reduction of concentrated ilmenite, these materials make the simplest requirements of the lunar resource extraction system. A thorough analysis of the impact of these simplest products on the economics of space operations is not possible at this point. Research is necessary both to define optimum techniques and adapt them to space and to determine the probable market for the prod'ucts so that the priority of various processes can be assessed.

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