The Moon

Void · 2025-04-03 11:14:57

Working from the materials of this post elsewhere, I have some notions about heat shields to be made from Moon materials: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 04#p230804

I am wondering if a craft coming from the Moon to air brake to Earth orbit, could consist of a braking surface on one side, and an Oxygen wicking surface on the other side. So, it might use both ablative and active cooling.

And the heat shield would be recycled in orbit to supply bulk materials.

This is what I have in mind:

So, a craft like the Stoke Space NOVA might use a one-time heat shield created in mass on the Moon, to assist and protect it to achieve a lower Earth orbit than the Moons, when coming from the Moon.

The heatshield would then be repurposed to be raw materials to convert into orbital resources.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-03 11:25:56)

Void · 2025-04-03 15:13:14

It is probably good to have a challenge from (th): https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 13#p230813

In part, quote:

In thinking about the interesting scenario you have painted, it occurred to me that the people of Earth cannot tolerate this idea.
We do not currently have a traffic regulation system. Everything people do (from all Nations) is done by taking a calculated risk they will not collide with the property of someone else.
This is literally like a road system on Earth. where people drive across intersections at 60+ miles and hour, without regard to whether the intersection is occupied.
For that reason, I expect that at some point, after some serious collisions no doubt, humans will muster the will power to cooperate with each other, instead of just doing whatever they feel like in orbit.
At that time, I would expect that use of heat shields to slow down would be discouraged.
Your vision appears to be of vessels arriving from the Moon with 12 km/s velocity, having to dip deep into the atmosphere to slow down, and necessarily crossing all regions inhabited by satellites, including ones inhabited by humans.
An alternative is to develop a space tug system similar to the marine tug systems in use in all maritime nations on Earth today.
(th)

I think you are excessively absolute in your assessment. It is possible that a choice as you have portrayed, might be the nature of the future, but not a mandate, yet.

Space Junk being the greater threat, any resource to clean it may justify, arrivals from the Moon.
Of course propellants to use in cleaning craft, might come from Earth, but also could come from the Moon. I think the question is how many flights would come from the Moon in a time period?

And what era are we then in?

In transition from now to early mastery of the Moon, I think a number of airbrakes could be tolerated. Similar to how we currently expect Starships to airbrake from Mars and maybe from the Moon to Earth. Air braking to orbit does include the extra skipping upward to orbit, which does increase the problem. But as I have said, if you can get propulsive mass to orbit at a good cost, then you can hunt down and eliminate significant space junk, the kind that is likely to shed multiple smaller impacts if the Kessler syndrome begins to occur.

But I will agree, that if something like fusion propulsion develops, air braking might not be as much of a permitted option for reasons that it will not be as needed.

A thing I do not like about your commentary is that it is a binary absolute, seeking to shut the idea down. In so doing it gets in the way of evaluating evaporative cooling on the leeward side of the heat shield, using Oxygen, and also the potential melt process options that may exist. These would be phase change methods similar to the idea of active cooling with Hydrogen, Methane, and water, but would involve materials that are harder to handle, but are available in bulk from stony objects like the Moon.

While this may or may not be permitted for use in the Earth's atmosphere at an undetermined frequency, they may very well be adopted to do similar maneuvers in other atmospheres.

Without too much anger I point out that your comments were awkward in effect for encumbering discussion of the factors I have now pointed out.

Such is the way words work though, you did not make it impossible for me to make these points.

So, it is OK. Your points have value also.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-03 15:29:54)

Void · 2025-04-04 04:40:00

In the hopes of going back to sleep prior to sunrise............

In post #226:

Can we name this as an "Overshield" scheme?

Something like wearing overshoes, in nasty conditions.

There is a concern, that aerobraking to orbit may be an excessive collision/crash hazard. Fair enough. We have something like the FAA to evaluate risk/rewards for things like this.

We also have the emerging "Doomster Goblin" idea that things burning in the atmosphere from orbit may cause harm to the atmosphere.

However, it is natural for there to be material infalls from space. Unnatural infalls are potentially a hazard, and a method of manipulation. If we construct an "Overshield" of Lunar materials, it may be that we can degrade or enhance the character of the atmosphere, as per judgements of utility or harm.

There may be many cooling methods with the "Overshield" Schemes.

The leeward side of the overshield will naturally radiate heat as heat from the windward side will conduct through the overshield to the leeward side.
The overshield may have thermal inertia due to existence of mass which may provide heat sinking.
You might ablate materials from the overshield. Heat sinking might also involve phase change from solid to liquid inside of the overshield, of some selected substances.
You might pump LOX or gas Oxygen to the front of the overshield, through ports.
You might do active reflective cooling using rocket engines. This is also an opportunity to alter path with a thrust that reflects from the leeward side of the overshield.

If you could run something like a Oxidizer preburner through the rocket engine(s), but not a full burn, you might squirt a fluid mix from those engine(s), against the leeward side of the overshield. This may also produce cooling.

So, quite a lot of options.

And of course, my preferred end of process is that the shield ends up in a suitable Earth orbit with the ship, where the shield materials become raw materials to construct resources in orbit of Earth.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-04 04:55:37)

Void · 2025-04-04 08:24:16

(th) with more regulatory concern: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 36#p230836

I think your regulatory concern has merit, and can run parallel to a technical concept development, but it is not at this time appropriate for you to take a posture of strong interference. The machine does not yet exist, and we have not established the frequency of such events, or the magnitude of size of the events.

Your posture reminds me of ivory tower persons who purposely organize vandalism of Tesla vehicles, by stirring the minds of mob oriented people with emotional motivation. Perhaps that is not what you are.

When I say objects, we have live objects and dead objects existing already. An input of resource may allow the removal of the excess of dead space junk. If you have propellants at a reasonable cost, then space junk might be collected by using materials from the Moon as propellants. The objects that tend to have decaying orbits and to shed materials are an unnatural infall already.

An air braking device may ablate and so put dust into the atmosphere, or might be designed to not ablate., but to use active cooling.

Inclusion of dust of some type may be a problem producer or a non-problem or even a helper to cool the climate. It would depend on the details.

I am not so sure how deep such a skipping event has to go into the atmosphere. That is also variable, depending on the surface area presented and the total mass of the object.

This concept would be in competition with the developed Starship as well, which could bring similar or different materials to orbit. That pathway could also clean up the space junk problem.

I think that concerns about social regulation do have importance so thanks for showing up with that, but I do not like intruders into the nursery of ideas who try to strangle the infants before they even have a chance to grow.

And as I have said before there are several other worlds in the solar system where such a technique might be considered. Venus is one such. Materials from stony asteroids might be fashioned into such ships as to give materials for building infrastructure in the orbits of Venus and in its clouds perhaps.

I will be unable to do too much more conversation today, except for later tonight.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-04 08:35:55)

Void · 2025-04-04 15:59:06

Here I alter the concept:

I anticipate that the rocket engine(s) can be used to emit a relatively cool or warm stream of mostly Oxygen, as a coolant.

I am hoping to in part convert the inertia of the craft into a vacuum to pull hard on gases emitted by rocket engines, to produce a relative cooling effect, in addition to the cooling effect of the gas emitted by the rocket engine.

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

The Oxidizer side of a raptor engine could put out a relatively cool stream of dominantly Oxygen gas, by partially burning a fuel, with just some of the Oxygen.

If similar were done with a Stoke Space NOVA engine, then the fuel would be Hydrogen.

In the case of a single engine the engine could be gimbled to help navigation, spilling the exhaust over one side more to achieve a desired change.

In the case of Stoke Space NOVA, then the multiple engines would be throttled, to produce a similar process.

While it might be too dangerous to use this system Moon>Earth Skip, in the long run, it might be a good way to do things in the shorter run.

Unlike conventional heat shields these could be very bulky as part of the plan is to deliver useful mass to a lower Earth orbit than the Moon.

I also want to consider this for other worlds that have atmospheres such as Mars and Venus.

Ending Pending

There is also the concern of ablated dust into the Earth's atmosphere. That particular dust could possibly be designed to cause a cooling effect, and hopefully not to be toxic, and to not damage things like the Ozone layer.

There are already plans to consider injecting substances into the atmosphere like Diamond Dust.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-diamond-a … lanet.html
Quote:

October 18, 2024 report
Editors' notes
Could injecting diamond dust into the atmosphere help cool the planet?
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

So, I wondered if you could make a diamond equivalent from Silicon from the Moon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cubic
Quote:

In crystallography, the diamond cubic crystal structure is a repeating pattern of 8 atoms that certain materials may adopt as they solidify. While the first known example was diamond, other elements in group 14 also adopt this structure, including α-tin, the semiconductors silicon and germanium, and silicon–germanium alloys in any proportion.

It seems the answer is yes, but I do not know if it can cool the Earth the way they thought Diamond Dust (Carbon), can do.

Also, such dust would need to be sized so as not to produce silicosis in creatures that might breathe it.

Such dust applications would also possibly nucleate precipitation so that is something to consider.

It might be that dust ablated from a heat shield could produce climate cooling, so then we could get materials from the Moon and also cool the Earth if necessary.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-04 16:20:49)

Void · 2025-04-06 10:45:31

I am uncertain about how the return to the Moon will develop after HLS Starship becomes actual.

There are several new technologies that could show up. Fusion Rockets, Nuclear Fission Thermal, Jetson (Nuclear Electric), MagDrive, Neumann Drive, and perhaps others.

So, this is a great deal of speculation as we do not really know what the array of usable systems will be, and how functional they will be. Efficient systems could preposition materials at convenient locations to facilitate an increase in infrastructure.

It may sound like I want to dump Starship and go over to a Hydro Lox method similar to the NOVA of Stoke Space. But I think that the two of them together will be the best.

My interest in methods to have a heat shield from Lunar materials can be included. (th) could be correct, perhaps it will be decided that it is too much trouble to airbrake from the Moon to a low elliptical orbit. But the techniques for this maybe suitable in some manner for Venus, Mars, and Titan, I feel. So, this may not be a waste of time.

I think it becomes obvious that what is going to be wanted is a separation of Crew and other time sensitive payloads, and the transport of bulk materials that can keep in space. Fast vs. Efficient.

One thing that seems real to me is that robots in space will likely outnumber humans by 100 to 1, 1000 to 1, even 10,000 to 1. It would be in our interest though to put at least a few humans on the Moon long term, to study their physical and psychological reactions to that environment.

While some Hydrogen and only a little Carbon are expected to be available on the Moon, I anticipate methods to move such resources and other resources to locations of convenience.

I am going to anticipate that eventually relatively inert substances are what would be lifted to Low Earth orbit by ships like Starship. This would be to reduce the explosive dangers of launch and transfer.

Water could be one substance; Carbon would be another. As a dust though Carbon could be explosive, so i am guessing that it needs to be in grains that will not explode in the event of a exploding ship.

By various means then these two substances can be converted to Methane and Oxygen when convenient.

Robotic Ships that would move containers of Water and Carbon could move them to Lunar proximity of some kind. Then you would cook up the substances you needed.

The two substances should be relatively easy to store long term.

Consulting Isaac Arthur: https://isaacarthur.fandom.com/wiki/Moo … al_Complex
Quote:

Gravity wells are not your friend in space but they get far worse as we pile mass on. A rocket using a liquid hydrogen fuel to escape Earth might need 12 tons of fuel to get a given payload away. Whereas on the Moon it would only require .7 tons to to get it off the Moon. It would be even cheaper in terms of not needing anything like all the extra mass and equipment needed to get that spacecraft off Earth reliably and safely, like fairings, those protective nose cones on rockets for plowing through the air, which of course the Moon lacks.

Most people want to immediately go to something like a mass driver, or tether systems to get materials off of the Moon, but I think we need a humbler sort of Chicken, to lay our eggs to start with. Just Chemical Rockets if possible. Later if desired, perhaps the vast cost of infrastructure could be justified for investment into a greater SciFi concept.

One trick that I think could be helpful would a Substance Drop Carrier Ship.

In the case of Carbon, if you had a freighter that could fly down near the surface of the Moon, and drop a substance, that could be efficient. Something like a sky crane even. Carbon could perhaps be dropped from say 100 feet or 30 meters if you like. That way, the ship if it is so land, will not need as stout of landing legs and support structures to hole the Carbon, against the Lunar Gravity when thumping down onto the surface of the Moon. In a similar manner Frozen water might be dropped that way in a Lunar Night or a Shadowed Crater.

But we hope that the Moon can provide much water, and also that the regolith can give Oxygen and even metal fuels.

And of course I want to think of building very large heat shields, to aerobrake into an atmosphere of a planet.

The shield lifted off of the Moon, along with selected regolith which may or may not have processing already.

Ceramics are the preferred substances, but at times metals would be needed for strength.

From post #230:

In this notion, exhaust from the rocket engine, may be very heavily full of Oxygen and only a little hot. I expect its temperature to drop quite a bit as it would expand to the shield, and then out of the leeward side of the Shield.

For the Shield itself, it might be possible to squirt a fluid in front of the shield by some method at the peak heating periods.

You might want to burn the minimum amount of fuel with the Maximum amount of Oxygen possible. Fuels could be Hydrogen, Methane, CO, Carbon, Aluminum.

Methods of heat sinking into the shield could involve phase changes of substances or just heat absorption into mass.

Of course some sort of an ablative coating would be on the leading side of the heat shield.

As far as the ship having its engines pointed at the heat shield, I expect the use of bearings that can pivot, so that the ship can point its engine(s) away from the heat shield when desired.

I have a desire of this concept also to deliver very large payloads to Venus orbits and atmosphere, were. While the source materials could be the Moon, it also could be from asteroids also, many which are stony as a primary nature, and which may have some small amounts of Hydrogen and Carbon perhaps.

In this case the heat shields could purposely be made bulky and broad, as they are not likely to bonk anyone on the head.

Ending Pending

Thank You for your comments elsewhere (th). The desire here is to get a use from a heat shield, and then the use it as a raw material to convert into resources.

This would be a bit like a pioneers riding wagons to a homestead and then using the wagons materials at the homestead.

So, the Heat Shield preforms a task for humans and their robots and then is of continuing service into the future.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-06 11:59:31)

Void · 2025-04-06 19:02:52

So, now I am considering a heat-shield sandwich.

Ablative+Stainless Steel+Ceramic Cloth+ Aluminum+Ceramic Cloth+Aluminum Foil.

Here is a notion:

So, my hope is to be able to use the heat shield as a mirror in flight for concentrating solar energy, so an aluminum foil layer, starting on the concave side.

Next Ceramic or Fiberglass Cloth

Next Thick Aluminum

Next Ceramic or Fiberglass cloth

Next Stainless Steel

On the outside convex side ablative materials.

In the air braking, with relatively cool dominantly Oxygen exhaust impinging on the convex side then it may be that the Aluminum foil layer will be destroyed.

But the hope is that only the thick Aluminum layer deeper inside will melt, but not the Ceramic cloth of the Stainless Steel. The Ablative will ablate.

But the melted Aluminum may be contained in the sandwich until is cools down and solidifies again.

This is just a try.

RGClark provided this today: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 27#p230927
Quote:

Video interview of Zubrin discussing his recent article in Unherd:
Robert Zubrin: How humans will live on Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCX9YPAZa5A

So, I guess I will call what I am doing here a "Moon Boat". It could be Hydro Lox or Metha Lox.
My feeling is that there should be many types of Moonboats or Starboats

With the version I am working on though I intend to begin Moon mining and using the materials from mining to construct a heat shield that could then be used for orbital infrastructure materials or propulsion materials.

As I have said I think there would be room for many versions.

Next though I am going to want to upsize this and seek to adapt it to Venus and the Asteroids.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-06 19:27:05)

Void · 2025-04-08 17:43:34

I feel like The Angry Astronaut has something of value in this video: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … ORM=VRDGAR Quote:

The Media doesn't want you to know about NASA's plans for cities in Space and on the Moon!
YouTube
The Angry Astronaut
290 views
5 hours ago

I think it is good to stretch the imagination.

Ending Pending

I wonder if you can make slabs of glass in concave shape with hexagonal sides, and then weld them together after they have slowly solidified?

It is not entirely an impossible thing: https://materialwelding.com/glass-weldi … lass%20art.
Quote:

Glass welding is a process used to join glass pieces together using heat and pressure.
It is commonly used in the construction of glass structures such as skylights, aquariums, and windows, as well as in the repair of glass objects such as mirrors and glass art.

Of course, thermal shifting will be a concern to deal with.

Ending Pending

I am going to speculate that if you made a glass shell in the form of arches, on the Moon, and left it unpressurized, it might give protection to a secondary glass structure inside of it that might be pressurized.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-04-08 17:53:05)

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#226 2025-04-03 11:14:57

Re: The Moon

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