This is about interest charges which is faily boring, but the book Critical Mass has some interesting comments on economics of materials in translunar space. Compared to materials on Earth, the value of materials (e.g. for construction) is entirely dependent on their position (and orbit). 100 tons of packed lunar regolith is worthless on the lunar surface, but would be highly valuable in a medium earth orbit where it could be used to construct quite a large hull via chemical vapor deposition.

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tenthirtyam 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not aware of the composition of lunar regolith - but if it can be turned into many solar panels and batteries and a few large railguns then wouldn't it effectively be very economical to get any amount of regolith to earth orbit?

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TMWNN 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes.

Thanks to the Earth's gravity well, it is significantly less energy-intensive to deliver 100kg of mass from the moon to low Earth orbit, than to launch the same amount from Earth.

This is the reason for SpaceX's recent pivot to the moon. Musk sees an opportunity to rapidly build AI data centers in orbit using lunar regolith without, say, community opposition.

	▲	jiggawatts 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Such genius! Everybody knows that what orbital compute really needs is heavy masonry made from rocks spayed with a gantry, not hyper expensive chips made only in Taiwan with two dozen machines that cost $200M each that require constant care by an army of professionals. Where do I buy shares in SpaceX?