In-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) is the practice of making what you need from local material instead of shipping it from Earth. On the Moon that means extracting oxygen and propellant, harvesting helium-3, and sintering regolith into building material using the power you have available. The Lunar ISRU Optimizer turns those trade-offs into concrete numbers.
Enter your available power and how fast you can process regolith, choose a sintering method, and the tool estimates hourly output for each product stream alongside the power each draws — so you can see whether your power budget actually supports the operation you have in mind.
Product yields scale with the processing rate: a fixed fraction of throughput becomes oxygen and propellant, and a much smaller fraction yields helium-3, reflecting its trace abundance in lunar regolith. Sintering output and its power cost depend on the method you choose.
Fresnel solar sintering concentrates raw sunlight, so it carries very low mass and power penalties but works best during the lunar day. Microwave sintering handles bulk feedstock and can run day or night at moderate power. Laser sintering gives the highest precision for final shaping at a higher energy cost. The tool sums the base processing load, the helium-3 module, and the sintering load, then shows how much of your power budget is actually consumed.
With 75 MW available and a 20 t/h processing rate using Fresnel sintering, you get a steady flow of oxygen and propellant plus a modest sintered-mass rate, while total draw stays well inside budget — leaving headroom for the helium-3 module. Switching to laser raises precision but pushes power draw up, illustrating why most bulk construction favours solar concentration.
Making propellant, oxygen, and building material from local resources so you launch far less mass from Earth.
Helium-3 exists only in trace concentrations in regolith, so even high processing rates yield tiny masses — the tool reflects that reality.
It depends: Fresnel solar wins on mass and free energy for daytime bulk work; microwave adds day-and-night flexibility; laser is best for precision parts.
No — they are transparent first-order estimates for planning and education, using adjustable public assumptions.
Yes, it links to the Fresnel Solar Sintering and Kalman tracking dashboards for the concentrator side of the system.
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