The development of ACE reactor is clearly focused on supporting the needs of the NASA lunar exploration program. However, there are several commercial companies making significant progress towards spaceflight, including Bigelow Aerospace, Scaled Composites, and Space-X. There are significant cost/propulsive savings associated with obtaining oxygen from the Moon versus bringing it from Earth, and systems have been proposed to use lunar oxygen to resupply vehicles anywhere from LEO down to the lunar surface. As commercial flight systems mature, the ACE reactor could provide an economical source of oxygen. In addition, the innovative electric resistance heaters developed for the ACE reactor could have a significant commercial market as the first high-temperature heating elements that can operate in oxidizing, reducing, or vacuum environments.
The purpose of ISRU is to harness and utilize resources at the site of exploration to create products and services which can enable and significantly reduce the mass, cost, and risk of near-term andlong-term space exploration. In particular, the ability to make propellants, life support consumables, fuel cell reagents, and radiation shielding can significantly reduce the cost, mass, and risk of sustained human activities beyond Earth. The ACE reactor will support this need by efficiently producing oxygen from the lunar regolith. The ACE reactor would be capable of satisfying oxygen requirements for EVA and life support in Exploration Surface Systems, and can be used to provide LOX for propulsion requirements in both Lunar and potential Mars missions. The ACE reactor could also produce the oxygen used in future architectures involving Earth-Lunar shuttles and orbital propellant depots.
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