[ajuc]

On Earth you need to compete against other people doing the same. So you design on the edge of performance to extract the last few percents of efficiency to compete on price against all the other people doing the same thing. Which means the machines are complicated, use rare materials and require a lot of maintenance.

On the Moon you can do the simplest thing that works and if it works at 10% efficiency and breaks after 1 year - so be it, if it's enough time to get resources to make a new one.

Basically space exploration will have a lot more in common with industrial revolution than with overengineered spacematerial NASA stuff.

If we have to make the tractors 10x bigger to have the same power and output, and to use disposable steel cables instead of hydraulics, and to make them disposable after 2 years instead of lubricating them to last 20 years - that's all fine if it means it can work with lunar materials only.

[mglz]

> On the Moon you can do the simplest thing that works and if it works at 10% efficiency and breaks after 1 year - so be it, if it's enough time to get resources to make a new one.

The opposite it true: You can throw away things on Earth and have local industry produce replacements. You cannot cost-effectively bring equipment to the moon since you have significant launch costs. Optimizing for light-weight and reliable machines is inherently costly. There is no escape from gravity here.

> That's all fine if it means it can work with lunar materials only.

There is no manufacturing capability on the moon and you need to price in the cost of setting up such an industry through the bottleneck of lauches.