Powering the Lunar Base

This might be the best blog post I've seen in a few years.

I have been doing modelling on the "moon" vs "asteroid" routes to space industrialization and he wrote down a lot of what is my head under the power problem of the "moon" route including the "large tower solar collectors" for a polar base and microwave power beaming. (it may make more sense than it does for Earth)

The one bit of earthwormishness is that he doesn't take solar concentrators seriously.

For instance on an asteroid you will find elemental carbon which is not so chemically reactive so you will probably make oxygen from metal ores and stones, burn the carbon, use the carbon monoxide to do chemistry with, and wind up with carbon dioxide as a waste product.

Now carbon dioxide is more chemically reactive than carbon but short of feeding it to plants if you want to make plastics you will probably use something like this

https://dimensionalenergy.com/

to bust CO2 into CO+O with sunlight that will not operate 24-7 in deep space but will not keep your expensive C1 chemistry reactors running on Earth or La Luna except at high noon. (Particularly expensive for those folks who are making jet fuel.)