“There are no resources right now that we really can conceive of on Mars that would be profitable for humans to go get and bring back to Earth. So then the question is: How do you pay for it?”
If lunar water is mineable, you are not going bring the lunar water to Earth. You could bring lunar dirt to Earth to sell. You can’t make lunar dirt on Earth.
The surface is billions of years old and holds the history of our solar system.
Currently a Mars rock or dirt, is valuable on Earth, but probably not going to sell Mars dirt on Earth- Mars fossils might have a market on Earth.
But what you sell on Mars, is real estate. So, all Mars real estate is “free”, but Mars estate with power and water easily available, will be worth more, the Mars land not within 100 km of grid electrical power, and indoor plumbing, will not be worth as much as land that is closer to it.
The goal is to make land cheaper than Earth land which has property, sewer, power, water, garbage pick up, and other stuff.
If anyone is mining a lot of Mars water and water is cheap enough [such as less than 1000 times the cost of Earth water, less than $1000 per ton, people will want and will pay for property near it. But would probably prefer if the water was less than $500 per ton, and within a decade, could expect water will less than 1/2 of that price.
Property with a future of cheaper and cheaper Mars water, is a lot better than a limited amount of water, and shortage of water in the future.
And having a lot of water and cheap enough water will allow selling Mars water in Mars orbit and in Venus orbit. And with all the sunlight in Venus orbit, water is pretty close to rocket fuel.
And Mars with cheap water can grow food, and export food to Earth orbit, lunar surface, Venus orbit.
And with lots of water, you could solve all the toxic issues one could be worried about on Mars.
And saltwater, brine, or any toxic water, is a valuable resources on Mars- if it’s cheap enough.
Another market, is Earth, sent us all your Nuclear waste- the really dangerous stuff.
“Another market, is Earth, sent us all your Nuclear waste- the really dangerous stuff.”
If Mars ends up not signing up for the “no-reprocessing” laws that the US has, then they could use the waste for power.
I’m assuming they wouldn’t need to worry about nuclear weapons proliferation on Mars, which is the ostensible reason for not reprocessing.
A better place than Mars for nuclear waste, is the Moon, but it seems Mars could out bid the Moon for the nuclear waste.
With Moon, it’s mainly storing the nuclear waste, and maybe getting around to using the nuclear waste at some distant point in time, and with Mars, it seems their would be more of a need to reuse the nuclear waste, sooner.
Nuclear bombs are not very effective above lunar surface or Mars surface. Whereas they work well on Earth at say 1 km about above the surface.
So nuclear bombs would useful mining/or digging deep holes- if buried and then exploded. But using space rocks as impactors is probably easier and cheaper.
Let’s look at getting Earth’s Nuclear waste, 90%
of way there. Rather then the step before this of getting nuclear waste to a Earth launch site.
And a 90% there, could be a lunar orbit.
So from lunar orbit you could get rid to lunar orbit velocity, and let nuclear waste to a crater on the Moon, where you going to store nuclear waste.
As compared to lunar orbit to Mars surface, and not hard land it like you do with sending to the Moon- having it crash in some 10 km diameter crater, where you crash all nuclear waste stored on the Moon.
And you don’t have to first put it in lunar orbit- you can get it cheaper to this lunar surface.
Though if at point in time, where one was mining lunar water and making rocket fuel, and you have lunar rocket fuel in this orbit, sending nuclear waste to where one have cheaper fuel rocket, could be a cheaper way to crash it on the Moon.
But if going to send it to Mars, the idea is Mars needs to use it,- you not just storing it somewhere.
So with Mars, you have ship to Mars, and land it on the surface of Mars, though it could be fairly “hard” landing.
But say, we explore the Moon, and the Moon does not have mineable water. So, now, it’s just the Musk’s only go to Mars idea- thousands of Starships heading to Mars, and we just have cost of getting nuclear waste to ocean rocket launch site, in which it will be cargo flight to Mars.
And say the nuclear waste is limited to spent nuclear fuel rods.
Say we comparing solar panels vs spent nuclear fuel rods, or also I guess, compared to freshly bought new nuclear fuel rods. Or say, nuclear yellow cake or just the solar cells?
Solar cells require a lot energy to make, yellow cake requires a lot of energy to make into nuclear fuel.
Solar cell from Earth is similar/roughly speaking to sending charged reusable batteries from Earth. And yellow cake only small portion of radioactive uranium- mostly sending non radioactive uranium, which requires energy to separate.
So what easier, it just sending nuclear reactor, which can “just turn on” at Mars.
So a question is how much nuclear energy are going to use in Mars, and if use nuclear energy, over time it’s spent, and have nuclear waste on Mars. Or sending nuclear reactor which turns on at Mars, is another type, roughly speaking, of rechargeable battery to Mars.
I think solar works better at Mars, as compared to Earth surface- you get 12 hours of 600 watts vs Earth’s peak solar hours which at best is 6 hours per day. But on Mars you can do better than average of 12 hours, and get shorter period to the next time zone, at least half Earth distance, and 1/10th of Earth distance feasiable, due to Mars polar region working with solar energy, and Earth’s polar region is the worst place on Earth for solar power.
On Moon’s polar region is way better than anywhere on Earth, and also better than Mars.
Moon has “at least” 1/2 of Mars distance to next time zone.
One could make argument that our Moon is a solution to any Mars energy problem, it might have.
On Earth we are not recycling solar cells. We say we are recycling plastic bottles {and we aren’t} but no one is saying we recycling solar cell.
So, our moon might solve Mars energy problems- if the Moon has mineable water, otherwise, at some later date, the Moon might solve Mars energy problem.
First Mars to be first and only, Mars energy problem would also to related to whether Mars has mineable water.
And simple answer about Mars having mineable water, is can a Mars settler, buy Mars water for
$1000 per cubic meter of Mars water and in a decade of time, be paying far less than $1 per kg of water. And Mars far future, require water to be as cheap or cheaper than Earth’s water.
So, $1000 per cubic meter on Mars is Mars water which is drinkable by humans and other life. Snow/ice and/or polluted water might need to be about $500 per cubic meter.
I would make a Mars settlement area have snow falling on the real estate of settlement- in a sense, free snow for the land owner- though it’s a limited time, deal- and nothing actually free. But it’s a one time “special deal” or one does not want to pay money to cover the created Mars lake which would naturally freeze and evaporate. And might want to put a nuclear power plant, in the lake. And have in term future plans of making more mars lakes.
And maybe Mars doesn’t need the Moon’s energy, but whether you like it or not, having a mars settlements, will lower cost of doing something on the Moon, and it seems eventually the Moon will sell Mars, energy.
Though Venus orbit might sell far more energy than the Moon could.
For a long time I had no clue, based on his journalism, just what Berger’s politics were or even if he really had any. Perhaps he has simply been marinating too long in the woke cesspit that most of the non-space parts of Ars Technica obviously is by casual inspection, but, in both book promotion appearances and in Reentry itself, Berger has taken public exception to Elon’s “behavior” and the “consequences” that might have for SpaceX.
Musk’s “behavior,” of course, is his recent full-throated exercise of his free speech rights in opposition to the proto-totalitarianism of the Democratic Party that hit a rolling boil starting in 2020 with the Covid Reich, the George Floyd riots and the stolen election that elevated Joe Biden.
Berger, lamentably, seems to find it natural that one should tug the forelock to progressive petty tyrants and that any “consequences” they chose to impose on dissenters are expectable and unremarkable. Not in my country buddy.
One hopes the bracing fresh zephyrs of a Trump Restoration will induce Mr. Berger to adjust his worldview. We shall see.
I remain, in any case, an unalloyed admirer of his journalistic gifts and will continue to read him avidly – including any future books he sees fit to write.
Assuming humans can survive long term in space and that’s a long way from settled. The question then becomes: Are there any resources extant on bodies with significant gravity unavailable smaller bodies?
Especially if it turns out that humans can’t survive and reproduce under a gravity significantly less than 1g, nearly every other planetary surface becomes a huge obstacle. It’s much easier to imagine simulating 1g in orbit than on the Moon.
Turning mud into rocket fuel is a non trivial problem, both in terms of the necessary plant and the necessary energy.
The equilibrium temperature out of sunlight is around 4°K. Unconsolidated gravel in vacuum makes an amazingly effective insulator. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a lot of water in some asteroids that comes from the same place that any water on the moon comes from.
My previous question of just how much machinery will have to transported to the Moon before the first ton of water is produced still stands. That water would still need to be converted to fuel, stored and one way or another, lifted into orbit which would consume most of the fuel produced. As with every other mineral, existence doesn’t mean anything unless it can be mined, refined and marketed at a profit. And the cost of mass in space from Earth seems to headed down, precipitously.
For extra credit, how long and how much transport to produce the first ton of stainless steel to build tanks to hold that LH2?
“My previous question of just how much machinery will have to transported to the Moon before the first ton of water is produced still stands. ”
Well, Mars might have something one might call frozen mud, but it might quite hopeful to expect as much water at lunar polar surface, but then again it’s probably good idea to assume we don’t much about the surface of the polar lunar surface.
But if you going to mine lunar water, your plan of mining lunar water, is hundreds of ton of water per year and amount material processed is thousands of tons per year.
But in terms sample collection, if you can get 1 kg of water from that from tons of sample gotten, you could one assume the Moon doesn’t have mineable water. But merely managing to get 1 kg of lunar water from exploration and sample return, does not by itself prove lunar water is mineable. A few chunks frozen mud would have 1 kg, and as said probable not going to have that, like you are likely to have that on Mars.
If the Moon didn’t need to be explored to determine if the moon has mineable water, we would mining lunar water already, or know that the Moon doesn’t have any mineable water.
What I see we doing, testing orbital exploration of the Moon with exploration on lunar surface and become able to assess what is seen from orbit, with what found on lunar surface.
So, crewed lunar exploration will test and lead improvement orbit measurement, which could help with the next step, of exploring Mars- which very large surface compared to the tiny region of lunar polar region.
I should also note there could be significant amount frozen CO2 and other volatiles on the surface of lunar polar region. And if there is mineable lunar CO2, this makes mining lunar water more viable.
Mining lunar water can’t be as impossible as catching the first stage of the Starship, but it might be as impossible as a successful launch of the Falcon- 1 rocket.
The explorational pathway of first sending crew to the Moon, and then sending crew to Mars, has been smart, compared to decades of focusing, forget the Moon, let’s send crew to Mars, first.
Going to Moon first has “given us” Starship and New Glenn rocket, and other things.
But our delay of going to Moon, wasn’t good. Let’s get the moon done, and then go to Mars, there is no reason we need to start mining lunar water, before sending crew to Mars- it might take a decade after NASA lunar crew exploration, before someone is mining lunar water. OR lunar exploration of Moon, might indicate it will be decades before any lunar mining seems likely. Of course, one can do other stuff on the Moon, which isn’t mining.
With LEO refueling, it would lead to lunar orbit refueling, and that also allows reusable lunar landers- or cheaper access to the lunar surface.
So with reusable lunar landers, getting to lunar surface is not much harder to going to ISS- so rather than space stations in LEO, world’s space agencies can sent crew to a lunar base, and it’s possible the lunar base is not in lunar poles.
Though I should also include non-governmental parties having bases on the Moon.
Hmm, I was going to say, no one mines one thing, though you do get water from a water well and maybe sort of applies with gold and diamonds. It’s doesn’t apply to mining Earth air- you getting nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and maybe other rarer stuff.
So with lunar water mining, unless wandering around picking up frozen chunks, you are going sort the material. One thing could be removing anything which attracted to a magnet, so mostly lunar iron ore. And lunar iron ore has some oxygen in it, so one make LOX from it with lower energy cost. But you could want separate the iron, as one of first steps, mainly because it could be easy to separate.
And before this probably going to sort to get less less chunks of rock, so sorting with grates and put them different pile/bin, leaving you with stuff, easier to process [in whatever way you going to do that].
Heating to remove most volatiles, and sorting them, probably next. But the left over non volatile material could also be further sorted.
Now, you could just, start, by just focusing getting say 90% of volatiles, leaving piles of somewhat sorted material.
With a future plan is to process the mostly iron pile, once made enough piles of it, or sell it to another party which we do it- and that might apply to any of the piles.
Or by focusing only getting out volatiles out, you create more piles and the larger amount piles the more “market” there could be for them.
But as I said, you could just “keep them” until such time as you want focus on further processing of a larger quality of them.
Another thing is what is below 1 or more meter below the lunar surface- or exploration from orbit, was in regards to less than 2 meter depth.
With crew exploration, one should also looking at what is below 1 meter depth.
No one mine anything without exploration, and generally you mining more than one thing- and you might end up mining mostly frozen Methane and frozen CO2 as compare to just Water- H20 could be less than half of the volatiles.
And also possible there a lot H2 and helium.
Which were known to be at a very rare amount- since Apollo- and this H2 and Helium were long claimed to be mineable {though such claims could have assumed there was low launch cost from Earth- Space Shuttle was promised at one time to fly at $25 per lb to LEO}- anyhow, it’s possible they are less rare in polar region- say 3 or 4 times more than what Apollo program indicated was the case.
Saw this on Substack. Glad you linked. If I have anything to add after I read it, I will…
“There are no resources right now that we really can conceive of on Mars that would be profitable for humans to go get and bring back to Earth. So then the question is: How do you pay for it?”
If lunar water is mineable, you are not going bring the lunar water to Earth. You could bring lunar dirt to Earth to sell. You can’t make lunar dirt on Earth.
The surface is billions of years old and holds the history of our solar system.
Currently a Mars rock or dirt, is valuable on Earth, but probably not going to sell Mars dirt on Earth- Mars fossils might have a market on Earth.
But what you sell on Mars, is real estate. So, all Mars real estate is “free”, but Mars estate with power and water easily available, will be worth more, the Mars land not within 100 km of grid electrical power, and indoor plumbing, will not be worth as much as land that is closer to it.
The goal is to make land cheaper than Earth land which has property, sewer, power, water, garbage pick up, and other stuff.
If anyone is mining a lot of Mars water and water is cheap enough [such as less than 1000 times the cost of Earth water, less than $1000 per ton, people will want and will pay for property near it. But would probably prefer if the water was less than $500 per ton, and within a decade, could expect water will less than 1/2 of that price.
Property with a future of cheaper and cheaper Mars water, is a lot better than a limited amount of water, and shortage of water in the future.
And having a lot of water and cheap enough water will allow selling Mars water in Mars orbit and in Venus orbit. And with all the sunlight in Venus orbit, water is pretty close to rocket fuel.
And Mars with cheap water can grow food, and export food to Earth orbit, lunar surface, Venus orbit.
And with lots of water, you could solve all the toxic issues one could be worried about on Mars.
And saltwater, brine, or any toxic water, is a valuable resources on Mars- if it’s cheap enough.
Another market, is Earth, sent us all your Nuclear waste- the really dangerous stuff.
“Another market, is Earth, sent us all your Nuclear waste- the really dangerous stuff.”
If Mars ends up not signing up for the “no-reprocessing” laws that the US has, then they could use the waste for power.
I’m assuming they wouldn’t need to worry about nuclear weapons proliferation on Mars, which is the ostensible reason for not reprocessing.
A better place than Mars for nuclear waste, is the Moon, but it seems Mars could out bid the Moon for the nuclear waste.
With Moon, it’s mainly storing the nuclear waste, and maybe getting around to using the nuclear waste at some distant point in time, and with Mars, it seems their would be more of a need to reuse the nuclear waste, sooner.
Nuclear bombs are not very effective above lunar surface or Mars surface. Whereas they work well on Earth at say 1 km about above the surface.
So nuclear bombs would useful mining/or digging deep holes- if buried and then exploded. But using space rocks as impactors is probably easier and cheaper.
Let’s look at getting Earth’s Nuclear waste, 90%
of way there. Rather then the step before this of getting nuclear waste to a Earth launch site.
And a 90% there, could be a lunar orbit.
So from lunar orbit you could get rid to lunar orbit velocity, and let nuclear waste to a crater on the Moon, where you going to store nuclear waste.
As compared to lunar orbit to Mars surface, and not hard land it like you do with sending to the Moon- having it crash in some 10 km diameter crater, where you crash all nuclear waste stored on the Moon.
And you don’t have to first put it in lunar orbit- you can get it cheaper to this lunar surface.
Though if at point in time, where one was mining lunar water and making rocket fuel, and you have lunar rocket fuel in this orbit, sending nuclear waste to where one have cheaper fuel rocket, could be a cheaper way to crash it on the Moon.
But if going to send it to Mars, the idea is Mars needs to use it,- you not just storing it somewhere.
So with Mars, you have ship to Mars, and land it on the surface of Mars, though it could be fairly “hard” landing.
But say, we explore the Moon, and the Moon does not have mineable water. So, now, it’s just the Musk’s only go to Mars idea- thousands of Starships heading to Mars, and we just have cost of getting nuclear waste to ocean rocket launch site, in which it will be cargo flight to Mars.
And say the nuclear waste is limited to spent nuclear fuel rods.
Say we comparing solar panels vs spent nuclear fuel rods, or also I guess, compared to freshly bought new nuclear fuel rods. Or say, nuclear yellow cake or just the solar cells?
Solar cells require a lot energy to make, yellow cake requires a lot of energy to make into nuclear fuel.
Solar cell from Earth is similar/roughly speaking to sending charged reusable batteries from Earth. And yellow cake only small portion of radioactive uranium- mostly sending non radioactive uranium, which requires energy to separate.
So what easier, it just sending nuclear reactor, which can “just turn on” at Mars.
So a question is how much nuclear energy are going to use in Mars, and if use nuclear energy, over time it’s spent, and have nuclear waste on Mars. Or sending nuclear reactor which turns on at Mars, is another type, roughly speaking, of rechargeable battery to Mars.
I think solar works better at Mars, as compared to Earth surface- you get 12 hours of 600 watts vs Earth’s peak solar hours which at best is 6 hours per day. But on Mars you can do better than average of 12 hours, and get shorter period to the next time zone, at least half Earth distance, and 1/10th of Earth distance feasiable, due to Mars polar region working with solar energy, and Earth’s polar region is the worst place on Earth for solar power.
On Moon’s polar region is way better than anywhere on Earth, and also better than Mars.
Moon has “at least” 1/2 of Mars distance to next time zone.
One could make argument that our Moon is a solution to any Mars energy problem, it might have.
On Earth we are not recycling solar cells. We say we are recycling plastic bottles {and we aren’t} but no one is saying we recycling solar cell.
So, our moon might solve Mars energy problems- if the Moon has mineable water, otherwise, at some later date, the Moon might solve Mars energy problem.
First Mars to be first and only, Mars energy problem would also to related to whether Mars has mineable water.
And simple answer about Mars having mineable water, is can a Mars settler, buy Mars water for
$1000 per cubic meter of Mars water and in a decade of time, be paying far less than $1 per kg of water. And Mars far future, require water to be as cheap or cheaper than Earth’s water.
So, $1000 per cubic meter on Mars is Mars water which is drinkable by humans and other life. Snow/ice and/or polluted water might need to be about $500 per cubic meter.
I would make a Mars settlement area have snow falling on the real estate of settlement- in a sense, free snow for the land owner- though it’s a limited time, deal- and nothing actually free. But it’s a one time “special deal” or one does not want to pay money to cover the created Mars lake which would naturally freeze and evaporate. And might want to put a nuclear power plant, in the lake. And have in term future plans of making more mars lakes.
And maybe Mars doesn’t need the Moon’s energy, but whether you like it or not, having a mars settlements, will lower cost of doing something on the Moon, and it seems eventually the Moon will sell Mars, energy.
Though Venus orbit might sell far more energy than the Moon could.
For a long time I had no clue, based on his journalism, just what Berger’s politics were or even if he really had any. Perhaps he has simply been marinating too long in the woke cesspit that most of the non-space parts of Ars Technica obviously is by casual inspection, but, in both book promotion appearances and in Reentry itself, Berger has taken public exception to Elon’s “behavior” and the “consequences” that might have for SpaceX.
Musk’s “behavior,” of course, is his recent full-throated exercise of his free speech rights in opposition to the proto-totalitarianism of the Democratic Party that hit a rolling boil starting in 2020 with the Covid Reich, the George Floyd riots and the stolen election that elevated Joe Biden.
Berger, lamentably, seems to find it natural that one should tug the forelock to progressive petty tyrants and that any “consequences” they chose to impose on dissenters are expectable and unremarkable. Not in my country buddy.
One hopes the bracing fresh zephyrs of a Trump Restoration will induce Mr. Berger to adjust his worldview. We shall see.
I remain, in any case, an unalloyed admirer of his journalistic gifts and will continue to read him avidly – including any future books he sees fit to write.
Assuming humans can survive long term in space and that’s a long way from settled. The question then becomes: Are there any resources extant on bodies with significant gravity unavailable smaller bodies?
Especially if it turns out that humans can’t survive and reproduce under a gravity significantly less than 1g, nearly every other planetary surface becomes a huge obstacle. It’s much easier to imagine simulating 1g in orbit than on the Moon.
Turning mud into rocket fuel is a non trivial problem, both in terms of the necessary plant and the necessary energy.
Mud or frozen mud, evaporates quickly in a vacuum if warmer than -10 C
The equilibrium temperature out of sunlight is around 4°K. Unconsolidated gravel in vacuum makes an amazingly effective insulator. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a lot of water in some asteroids that comes from the same place that any water on the moon comes from.
My previous question of just how much machinery will have to transported to the Moon before the first ton of water is produced still stands. That water would still need to be converted to fuel, stored and one way or another, lifted into orbit which would consume most of the fuel produced. As with every other mineral, existence doesn’t mean anything unless it can be mined, refined and marketed at a profit. And the cost of mass in space from Earth seems to headed down, precipitously.
For extra credit, how long and how much transport to produce the first ton of stainless steel to build tanks to hold that LH2?
“My previous question of just how much machinery will have to transported to the Moon before the first ton of water is produced still stands. ”
Well, Mars might have something one might call frozen mud, but it might quite hopeful to expect as much water at lunar polar surface, but then again it’s probably good idea to assume we don’t much about the surface of the polar lunar surface.
But if you going to mine lunar water, your plan of mining lunar water, is hundreds of ton of water per year and amount material processed is thousands of tons per year.
But in terms sample collection, if you can get 1 kg of water from that from tons of sample gotten, you could one assume the Moon doesn’t have mineable water. But merely managing to get 1 kg of lunar water from exploration and sample return, does not by itself prove lunar water is mineable. A few chunks frozen mud would have 1 kg, and as said probable not going to have that, like you are likely to have that on Mars.
If the Moon didn’t need to be explored to determine if the moon has mineable water, we would mining lunar water already, or know that the Moon doesn’t have any mineable water.
What I see we doing, testing orbital exploration of the Moon with exploration on lunar surface and become able to assess what is seen from orbit, with what found on lunar surface.
So, crewed lunar exploration will test and lead improvement orbit measurement, which could help with the next step, of exploring Mars- which very large surface compared to the tiny region of lunar polar region.
I should also note there could be significant amount frozen CO2 and other volatiles on the surface of lunar polar region. And if there is mineable lunar CO2, this makes mining lunar water more viable.
Mining lunar water can’t be as impossible as catching the first stage of the Starship, but it might be as impossible as a successful launch of the Falcon- 1 rocket.
The explorational pathway of first sending crew to the Moon, and then sending crew to Mars, has been smart, compared to decades of focusing, forget the Moon, let’s send crew to Mars, first.
Going to Moon first has “given us” Starship and New Glenn rocket, and other things.
But our delay of going to Moon, wasn’t good. Let’s get the moon done, and then go to Mars, there is no reason we need to start mining lunar water, before sending crew to Mars- it might take a decade after NASA lunar crew exploration, before someone is mining lunar water. OR lunar exploration of Moon, might indicate it will be decades before any lunar mining seems likely. Of course, one can do other stuff on the Moon, which isn’t mining.
With LEO refueling, it would lead to lunar orbit refueling, and that also allows reusable lunar landers- or cheaper access to the lunar surface.
So with reusable lunar landers, getting to lunar surface is not much harder to going to ISS- so rather than space stations in LEO, world’s space agencies can sent crew to a lunar base, and it’s possible the lunar base is not in lunar poles.
Though I should also include non-governmental parties having bases on the Moon.
Hmm, I was going to say, no one mines one thing, though you do get water from a water well and maybe sort of applies with gold and diamonds. It’s doesn’t apply to mining Earth air- you getting nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and maybe other rarer stuff.
So with lunar water mining, unless wandering around picking up frozen chunks, you are going sort the material. One thing could be removing anything which attracted to a magnet, so mostly lunar iron ore. And lunar iron ore has some oxygen in it, so one make LOX from it with lower energy cost. But you could want separate the iron, as one of first steps, mainly because it could be easy to separate.
And before this probably going to sort to get less less chunks of rock, so sorting with grates and put them different pile/bin, leaving you with stuff, easier to process [in whatever way you going to do that].
Heating to remove most volatiles, and sorting them, probably next. But the left over non volatile material could also be further sorted.
Now, you could just, start, by just focusing getting say 90% of volatiles, leaving piles of somewhat sorted material.
With a future plan is to process the mostly iron pile, once made enough piles of it, or sell it to another party which we do it- and that might apply to any of the piles.
Or by focusing only getting out volatiles out, you create more piles and the larger amount piles the more “market” there could be for them.
But as I said, you could just “keep them” until such time as you want focus on further processing of a larger quality of them.
Another thing is what is below 1 or more meter below the lunar surface- or exploration from orbit, was in regards to less than 2 meter depth.
With crew exploration, one should also looking at what is below 1 meter depth.
No one mine anything without exploration, and generally you mining more than one thing- and you might end up mining mostly frozen Methane and frozen CO2 as compare to just Water- H20 could be less than half of the volatiles.
And also possible there a lot H2 and helium.
Which were known to be at a very rare amount- since Apollo- and this H2 and Helium were long claimed to be mineable {though such claims could have assumed there was low launch cost from Earth- Space Shuttle was promised at one time to fly at $25 per lb to LEO}- anyhow, it’s possible they are less rare in polar region- say 3 or 4 times more than what Apollo program indicated was the case.