New Mars Forums

It is already understood that certain elevated points on the Moon near the polar areas may have favorable solar power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light
Image Quote:
Quote:

Quote:

At first a Cocooned area might resort to energy storage and nuclear energy to have energy during the short dark periods.
But perhaps it will be possible to beam energy from one location to another, or burry power lines to conduct electricity.

So, these Cocooned areas might be active all the time, eventually.

Ending Pending

As an amendment to the previous post:

A roman henge stone circle of arches could be pulled down, by the tensile forces of the tent.

But if tensile bands were wrapped around it, then that problem can be addressed, I feel.

Ending Pending

I think what annoys me the most is "Close but no Cigar".

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08 … mplicated/
Quote:

OK, I am not sure that the Dragon Heat Shield could hack it or not.  I know that the radiation protection is considered insufficient, and that the consumables may well be insufficient. 

But you are sending an Orion, with its propulsion systems, and a Lunar Starship already.

Versions of Dragon are being used wo boost the international space station and also a much bigger one to de-orbit it.

The major loss of crew has been in fire because of rushing, a long time ago, and two shuttle crews, both traveling though the atmosphere.

If you use a Dragon to get the crew up to orbit and then transfer the crew to the Orion, you may avoid much of the risk of crew as up-mass.

You could add a cargo dragon to the Lunar Starship when it was in LEO, and make that one with expanded propulsion.  You might need to add more propellant to the Starship to get in orbit of the Moon.  But this is "Close, but no Cigar".  Why not put a crew dragon with expanded propulsion abilities onto the Starship?

This might give some added options.  For Instance, the Starship with enhanced Dragon, is loitering in Moon orbit with an enhanced Dragon.

The Orion launches to LEO, and another Dragon brings the crew up to it to deploy the crew to it.

The Orion then proceeds to the Moon.  If you run into an Apollo 13 situation on the way to the Moon, the Orion might be able to swing around the Moon, and the stack of the Lunar Starship and Enhanced Dragon might leave the Moon to intercept it.  Since the Starship had not landed, it should still have some significant propellants.

Then either the three components can reach each other in deep space on the way to the Earth, or the Starship is expended and the enhanced Dragon it would be hoped, could meet with the Orion and one of the two ships might be used to get the crew through the atmosphere.  And the Dragon would bring consumables and propulsion to the situation which might save the crew.

In the case of being in orbit of the Moon, in a malfunction, crew could transfer to the Dragon. And the Stack might attempt a return to Earth with them.

Even after the Lunar Starship might have landed on the Moon and ascended back to the two capsules, it might still have resources for survival of the crew in orbit of the Moon.  If a rescue mission were sent, then they would not have to land on the Moon but only orbit and return from the Moon.

As far as landing on the Moon, it only makes sense to send fully automated missions to the Moon before landing humans.
Such a mission(s) might include various robot types both cart and humanoid.  It might include water for future emergencies.  Solar Panels for emergency power.  Long storage food resources.

If a human lander, then got stranded on the surface water could be cracked using solar energy to supply the stranded people Oxygen.

This might buy enough time that a rescue could be sent within, I might guess 3 months.

As for the Halo orbit, I guess, why not make that a future want?

Yes, more expense, but to produce more safety and more chances of success instead of failure.

Ending Pending

Sending Robots and extra supplies first allows you to evaluate the landing site, test the Lunar Starship, and provide enhanced safety.

Robots might even be able to build a landing pad(s), which would increase safety.  Yes you might have to make an emergency rough landing without a pad, but better still to have the landing pad.

This structure established, it would not be proper for other nations to move in, without permissions given by the owners of the equipment.

Ending Pending

Looking a this again: https://www.humanmars.net/2019/08/cutaw … rship.html
The upper part of a possible type of Starship:

It is my thinking that the upper part of a Starship might be retained to LEO+, in the case where the ship is not to return to Earth.

Using two Starship upper parts, you might create a LEO+ Space Station capable of synthetic gravity on occasions:

Or you might treat the upper part as scrap materials to be turned into something else.

Then that would leave you with two lower parts.

You could refill the lower parts and use them as In-Orbit boosters or land them on the Moon: Image Quote:

They may or may not carry cargo clipped onto their outer surfaces.

Without Cargo, then the "Locomotives" would have less dry mass than an empty Starship, 60 to 70 Tons????

Dedicated landing pads which will tolerate Raptor engines and with shorter catch towers may receive them.

Keep in mind that if these did weigh 60 to 70 tons in the Lunar gravity their weight without cargo might be: 10 to 11.67 tons of Dry Mass plus residual propellants.  Much less of a task than for a landing tower on Earth.

The towers could be shorter as well as the upper parts of the Starship would not be included.

Now modify the tower so that it can tip the landed devices horizontal to a very large wheeled cart.

Then the cart takes them to a location to become part of an industrial robotic complex.

There will be no refilling structures at the landing pad, so a crash will not have a cascade effect.  Repairs to damage would then be less a problem.

Cleaning space junk from LEO and LEO+ are going to be necessary activities, and I have my eye on the 2nd Stage for Neutron by Rocket Labs.  The propellant tanks are Carbon Based, I believe.

https://rocketlabcorp.com/launch/neutron/
Image Quote:

The 2nd stage hangs in the reusable fairings attached to the 1st Stage and has one engine, not shown in the drawing.
I am very interested to see if this could be brought to the Moon so that the Carbon and Hydrogen in the tank walls can be used to make water and Carbon Steel from Lunar Regolith.

I even wonder if the engines of 6 could be swapped with 6 Raptors so that the Raptors could be brought back to Earth.  The Archimedes engines may be sufficient to take the Starship lower section to the Moon and to land it.

Of course to do these manipulations you will need platforms in LEO and LEO+.

But it would be very nice to recycle the raptors to attach to another such Starship, and to strap 6 Neutron 2nd Stages onto a Starship lower section to fly to the Moon, and then to make water and Carbon Steel using Lunar Regolith.

Ending Pending

The idea of tents on the Moon has emerged as a way to augment the possible use of Starships as habitats and factories on the Moon.  My view of it is that the fairings of such Starships might be left in LEO+ and that the "Locomotive" (Propulsion system) might be refilled and flown to the Moon to land on a special catcher that will lay it flat into a special cart to deploy it to a "Campus" for science and industry on the Moon.

I imagined it to be a sort of metal frame, including chicken wire perhaps, where mineral wool bundles might be place on it like straw in a thatch method.  Quote:

I want to try to adapt this concept to be further built from more native and available materials from the Moon.

So, I might start with a structure like a Roman Aqueduct as the center line of such a structure, the rigid "Pole".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct
Image Quote:

I have gone from resenting Roman heritage to some level of admiration.  Thay had some talents.

I that such structure might work well on the Moon, as the center "Pole" substitute for a tent-like structure.
Sintered blocks might do quite well, if you had a good foundation into the Lunar regolith.

Then you would only need metal to make something like Chicken Wire, which could be the foundation for the tent roof.
Then you might place Mineral Wool Bundles on top of that to make a sort of thatched roof.

Iron for such wire would be available on the Moon, but Carbon might have to be imported to make steel.  Minimizing Steel in a structure might be very desirable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tent
Image Quote:

So, such could be a environmental buffering device to protect fragile things from the harsh Lunar environment.

Substitutions for the "Chicken Wire" might be fabrics from Earth, or things make from Silicon Oxide or Silicon.

Fiberglass Cloth: https://www.fiberglasswarehouse.com/col … lass-cloth

https://www.amazon.com/fiberglass-cloth … lass+cloth
Woven:
Image Quote:
Fiberglass Chopped Strand Mat:
Image Quote:

These are likely things that could be made on the Moon from native raw materials.

Should technology for Carbon Nanotubes advance perhaps its cousin Silicon Nanotubes will become practical as well.  Again, a material from regolith perhaps on the Moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_nanotube

But that is probably a more distant possility.

So, like Lava Tubes these tents might provide some improvement for the Lunar Environment but not so much for radiation.  Radiation protection might be built into the center wall, where robots might hide from it under or behind the wall.

Most labor on the Moon will almost certainly be done by robots, and lften probably in a Lunar Vacuum, so these tents might have value.

Ending Pending

This morning I am thinking about "Moon-Tents".

Lets say you might create an "Industrial Campus" on the Moon to produce materials for construction on the Moon and we hope for export to things like orbital Data Centers. In the previous post I have suggested landing the propulsion section of One-Time Starships on the Moon.  They might land into a special catcher that could catch and tip them into a large cart that could take them to an "Industrial Campus", to be deployed.

I suggest that tenting could link some of these assemblies together.  It might be the best if the "Tenting" materials could be manufactured on the Moon, but to start with landing the materials might be best.  I suggest a method to Hard-land then tenting materials and yet to soft land the Starship propulsion system.

The substance Kevlar might be rolled up and perhaps a blast of a gas into the roll just before impact.  The "Cargo Balls" might include materials that could be extruded or 3D printed to make tent frames.

The base of the tents might be made of bricks sintered from Lunar Regolith: https://scitechdaily.com/turning-lunar- … sintering/  Quote:

So, the survival of equipment on the Moon is in part about excluding dust and in part about dealing with thermal variables.  Hot day and cold night.

Tenting could help with that.  You could exclude dust, with increased cleanness as you went further into a tented system.  Starting with a un-tented patio where robotic cleaning would occur, then moving robots and materials further in where periodic cleanings of the floor surfaces would also occur.  These tented tunnels could lead to Starship sections that might host certain activities.

So, that helps with the clean issues, I think.

But for thermal issues, the tents may offer shading in the daytime.  The floor bricks could absorb heat during the day and release it at night.
You may have nuclear fission power and solar electric power.

You could inject heat into the ground under the floors of the tents using microwaves during the day, as a thermal storage which would naturally release at night.

It is also possible that industrial activities would release heat that could be absorbed into the floors of the tents and released at a later time by simple natural radiation.

So, then you could have an industrial complex where the environments would be sufficiently buffered for fine machinery to survive.

In time it might be possible to make tenting materials our of mineral fibers, and tent frames from Lunar materials.

The Starship sections might be pressurized for some purpose in some cases or not pressurized at all in other cases.

I think you might put arches of sintered brick over the horizontal Starship sections.

Ending Pending

Here is another video about cementing sand with sea water and electricity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BBLH51XhTo
Quote:

My notion in this is to revive the seas of Mars as covered bodies of water, and to make Diving Bell type structures using the above technology.

So, to make pressurized space using native raw materials.

Pause (For some time)................

A video about power on the Moon: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE  Quote:

Nice to see that there are plans in the works.

Ending Pending

I don't strongly agree with this, but if the human race has the material wealth to do this, it could be done.  You would not be mandated to only make one type of structure in space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu4P4qioCG8
Quote:

The concept was very valuable in its time, to promote thinking.

But to make large swaths of farmland, is perhaps not necessary for human satisfaction.

Very few of us live in such a way.

But it might be nice to stay in something like this from time to time like a vacation event.

Things needed such as Nitrogen, water, and Carbon might be best obtained at a location like Ceres, but Venus, and Mars are possibiliti9es.

The authors of this article have promoted that notion: https://www.sciencealert.com/could-huma … anet-ceres  Quote:

But the review of the O'Neill concept is nice, if a bit outdated.

Ending Pending

In my mind, I followed a path outward to increasing amplification and increasing reach.

It has occurred to me that that path might eventually make the so-called civilization of our solar system able to jump onto an interstellar comet and inhabit it.  Granted others have though similar things.  Beyond sending spaceships out to extra-solar worlds, that could be a high achievement that could be attained.

So, that is a very far reach to "Take over" 3I/Atlas for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS  But perhaps a larger one.

From there, perhaps to grab solar system comets, and perhaps not so much to crash them into a world, but to convert them into structure and to conserve substances of value.  But for some of them, you could crash them into a world like Mars, or Venus, or Mercury.

And that would put you at a point where you might extract the volatiles and other substances captured into orbits of worlds like Mars or Venus or Mercury.

And falling back a bit more from that, could you make very large Spaceships in the Asteroid belt and fly them to orbit other worlds?

So, then end up at start on Earth and reverse order.

Data Centers and other platforms in orbit of Earth>Moon>Deimos/Phobos/Mars>(Materials to orbit)>Asteroid Belt>Supersized Spaceships>Callisto>(Supersized Spaceships)>Outward, even working with comets.

So, I think we are on the right path.

We just have to stop the Anti-Humanists from interfering.

Ending Pending

OK, this will be better than the "Urea" bricks.

https://www.earth.com/news/fighting-coa … lly-works/
Quote:

It has been my opinion that on Mars large ice masses such as the polar ice caps could be melted internally using lasers, and so yielding melt water to create lakes and seas in.

This also could likely be done nearer to the equator where sufficient ice exists.

Ancient salt deposits likely exist under the soils where once upon a time bodies of water existed.

So, using the electric process it might be possible to build things under the water.

And in the tunnels in the ice, robots could exist.

Ending Pending

Isaac Arthur only touches briefly on orbital solar.  Even so, this is an interesting video: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE
Quote:

He does talk about orbital solar thermal power.

Some members here will be more compatible with that than with solar panels.  And I have to agree that recycling Solar thermal Power Plants to new Solar Thermal Power Plants looks more doable than to recycle solar panels to new solar panels in orbit.  So, as far as an orbital junk industry would be concerned, that looks pretty good.  CO2 as the fluid used, I presume, but then you have to get the Carbon from somewhere.

Early on, I expect that solar panels will be used in singular Sun Synchronous, orbits.  But on becoming aged they might be recycled to make things like Solar Thermal Power Plants.

I have already mentioned elsewhere, why I think it would be nice to have One-Time Starships made in part of Aluminum.  The same may be true for Carbon.  If the build process for Neutron of Rocket Lab is as good as they claim, then it might also be used for that.  And Neutron 2nd stages might also be a source of Carbon in orbit.

So, that makes Earth an early source of Carbon.  The Moon is not likely to be a major source of Carbon for orbits. 

I would think maybe Bennu, Ryugu, Deimos, Phobos, and Mars could be considered.  But they are hard to access for those materials.

I have taken a look at Trojan Asteroids of Earth.  They are also hard to access because of the inclination of their orbits.  Of two, the larger on though is said to be Carbonaceous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_trojan
Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(614689)_2020_XL5

Obviously, it needs more study.  But its size and the potential that it is carbonaceous are interesting.

With Starship and Optimus, perhaps it could be mined, and industrial facilities could be set up where it could export things to the Earth/Moon.

Anyway, it is a possibility with future technology.

Ending Pending