Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 18:37:50

The Moon is full of natural resourses. Any material can be ionized. Solid, liquid or gas.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 18:39:53

True, but they aren't easy to make a plasma out of in any quantity. Hydrogen and the lighter elements are better for this, and they aren't plentiful on the Moon.

You cannot simply scoop a shovel full of dirt and put it into the beam generator.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 18:47:24

If you can make concrete on the moon them you can make hydrogen fuel on the moon. I agree it would take a lot of energy to make a plasma from dirt.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 18:50:17

Concrete? You can't even make real concrete without liquid water, which would immediatly vaporize or freeze on unprotected on the Moon... We're not even sure there is any signifigant water on the Moon, and it is the only practical source of Hydrogen there too. Maybe you mean sinterd Lunar glass?

It would take too much energy to make it from dirt... you might as well put the plasma beam generator on the back of your rocket and fuel it with hydrogen. Hey, thats what a VASIMR engine is sorrta.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 18:53:44

They recently found a large reservoir of frozen water on the moon. It could be melted via solar energy and turned into water to mix with concrete.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 18:58:35

Nooo, they used a space probe with a device that wasn't really intended for the purpose, and detected spots that seemed to be hydrogen atoms near the south pole in places around some craters... maybe water, nobody knows.

Radio telescopes recently, that huge in-ground one in central america (Aricebo I think? the one from James Bond Goldeneye) have been unable to detect any reflection from water molecules there. Its still not proven.

And concrete is not what you need on the Moon, it would be a horrible waste of water and chemicals to make it even if you could somehow keep the water from freezing. No no, any Lunar base isn't going to be built from concrete.

Metals, polymers from Earth, microwave sinterd ceramics, glasses, and piled up Lunar soil are your building materials, there won't be any concrete.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 19:05:06

Mix aluminum with concrete and you get Hydrogen as a by product.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 19:08:36

Ummmm Errorist, where do you think that Hydrogen comes from? That Hydrogen is coming from water left in the concrete, most likly breaking down the aluminum with the basic (as in pH >7) salts. You still need to get the water from somewhere to make the concrete anyway, that is the only source of Hydrogen that might be on the Moon.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 19:13:53

Did they ever try drilling for water on the moon? Perhaps, it is below the surface.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 19:21:09

Why would there be any water deep below the surface? If there is any, it would be from comets or other sources, and the Clemintine probe or the radiotelescope would have detected it if it were buried underground shallowly.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 19:23:52

I am sure many comets have hit the moon in the past. How deep would it have detected it and did it look near the poles?

Commodore · 2004-10-21 19:26:03

They recently found a large reservoir of frozen water on the moon. It could be melted via solar energy and turned into water to mix with concrete.

Yeah the trouble is there isn't water in the quanitys that there are on Earth. The water on the moon is better used for human comsumption.

Why make concrete when we can melt the various metals into solid peices, or melt the silicates into huge hulks of solid, though dirty, glass.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 19:27:20

If a comet did hit the Moon, it wouldn't bury itself deeply in a neat little "bullet hole," signifigant portions would be kicked up and scatterd around the crater, which could be detected by particle detectors on probes or radio telescopes.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 19:32:37

They recently found a large reservoir of frozen water on the moon. It could be melted via solar energy and turned into water to mix with concrete.
Yeah the trouble is there isn't water in the quanitys that there are on Earth. The water on the moon is better used for human comsumption.
Why make concrete when we can melt the various metals into solid peices, or melt the silicates into huge hulks of solid, though dirty, glass.

...Or rocket fuel

Hey Errorist, did you know that if you blast Lunar regolith with microwaves, that it will turn into a hard ceramic solid? You could make roads just by dragging a microwave generator over the ground, or make slabs of the stuff along with glass and microwave-smelted metals, to build bases.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 19:35:44

Concrete makes a good shielding for radiation and when mixed with aluminum filings it produces Hydrogen.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 19:41:14

Hey Errorist, did you know that if you blast Lunar regolith with microwaves, that it will turn into a hard ceramic solid? You could make roads just by dragging a microwave generator over the ground, or make slabs of the stuff along with glass and microwave-smelted metals, to build bases.

Any by products created from this process?

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-21 19:46:16

*slaps his head...*

Concrete does make pretty good radiation shielding, BUT you must have a large supply of water to make it. You HAVE to have it. Chances are there is no frozen lake on the Moon where you could get this water from, and every drop that there is will be a precious commodity on the Moon, not to be wasted on base building materials. So much of the water used in making concrete would be lost that using it for that purpose is just a criminal waste of the second most precious substance on the Moon.

Nor could you easily extract Hydrogen from concrete laced with Aluminum, and the Aluminum might actually cause the concrete to fail too, so this is a pretty bad idea. Somthing else on the Moon also makes pretty good radiation shielding: dirt. Just piling up Lunar soil on top of your buildings will take care of the problem, without having to fool with concrete.

If you really must have a base building material other then metal, then you use slabs of sinterd Lunar ceramic/glass, which can be made without any water at all, you could even make them as a big cylinder to use as HABs, unpressurized storage tanks, and tunnels. You just take the Lunar dirt and blast it with microwaves... There are no byproducts, but its as simple a building process as you will find.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-21 20:03:37

The aluminum actually makes the concreate stronger and lighter. It is process they use here on Earth. The only danger is it may explode if left covered. Millions of gas hydrogen bubbles form as the mixture sets and the Hydrogen just seeps out the pores over time.The bubbles fill with air over time and this makes the concrete a good insulator,also. I think they will find a vast sub surface reservoir of water on the moon very soon.

Commodore · 2004-10-21 21:01:28

The aluminum actually makes the concreate stronger and lighter. It is process they use here on Earth. The only danger is it may explode if left covered. Millions of gas hydrogen bubbles form as the mixture sets and the Hydrogen just seeps out the pores over time.The bubbles fill with air over time and this makes the concrete a good insulator,also. I think they will find a vast sub surface reservoir of water on the moon very soon.

You sit have to have something to make the concrete.

On a side note, is it possible to take the Helium-3 thats on the moon and, and split that , into individual helium atoms, and split those into hydrogen without making it unlessly radioactive?

Euler · 2004-10-21 21:39:45

On a side note, is it possible to take the Helium-3 thats on the moon and, and split that , into individual helium atoms, and split those into hydrogen without making it unlessly radioactive?

When we talk about Helium-3 on the moon, we mean the isotope of Helium with 2 protons and a neutron(atomic weight is about 3), rather than the metastable triatomic Helium molecule.

No, it can not be used to make hydrogen. First of all, it is very rare, even on the moon. Secondly, we do not know any way to break it up, and even if we did it would take such extremely large amounts of energy that it would be completely impractical.

chat · 2004-10-22 04:25:36

Using electrons as the accelerant for the accelerator requires no other fuel, other than the nuclear materials for the reactor and the processing of the materials to build the equipment.

I'm 100% sure that uranium exists on the moon for refinement as nuclear fuel.

Using electrons though makes for a very complex machine to build, and a very expensive one since it would require so many electron guns to achieve a respectable thrust.
Electrons also can generate a much higher velocity than ions but at a much slower pace, ions about .14c -.21c as final speed, electrons .50c - .61c as final speed.

Creating such a beast on earth would probably be 1 trillion$, and on the moon 1.5 trillion since the entire base and materials plants must be build first.
The second one made on the moon would probably be 500b.
I expect you will find everything you need for materials on the moon.

Anyway you look at it, its an awfully big expense to send a probe to a star, but it does show that if we wanted to we could.

SpaceNut · 2004-10-22 06:30:11

Well ERRORIST here is an article you might like then, enjoy the reading.

Mining The Moon
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science … ning_moon/

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-22 07:07:57

Any way you cut it, concrete is a BAD building material to use on the Moon. Even if you did spike it with Al powder, capturing the hydrogen used in its manufacture will be extremely difficult... what will you do, wrap everything made of concrete with aluminized kapton and use a huge vacuum pump to suck up tiny amounts as it leaches out for years? And if you use concrete indoors, the hydrogen may well seep into the pressurized spaces, which could present a problem too. And finally I don't think you CAN trap all the hydrogen, a signifigant quantity will remain trapped in the concrete perminantly most likly. Oh, and if the pores will fill with air here on Earth, then the air will leak through them into the vacuum of space on the Moon, which might make pressurized aluminum/concrete structures "leaky."

But on top of all that, you have to have liquid water to make concrete. You can't have liquid water on or near the Lunar surface because it would freeze in the Lunar night solid and the concrete would never set, or it would boil away in the Sunlight and ruin the concrete that way, possibly causing steam bubbles to shatter the hot cement. And you are flat wrong that "huge supply of underground water" will be discoverd... there simply is no way that the Moon ever had water due to its geologic history, and so the only possible source is from comets or other space ice, which would not be deeply buried and probably detected by Aricibo.

ERRORIST · 2004-10-22 07:21:07

They will find vast quantities of water under ground just as Mars was once drenched in water.

GCNRevenger · 2004-10-22 08:23:04

We don't even know if Mars has signifigant underground water today, we do not know that for fact, all of it may simply have evaporated away in space or was chemically destroyed when Mars lost its atmosphere.

There definatly isn't any indigenous, original water on the Moon because of its origin: the Moon was formed of a chunk of anticent Earth, before it cooled enough from the birth of the solar system to permit the formation and condensation of water, so therefore there won't be any on the Moon. Even if there were, it wouldn't be trapped deep underground because of how the Moon was formed... originally just being a huge ball of lava... and it would have boiled away into space since the Moon has so little gravity.

If there is any water on the Moon, it will have been from comets or icey space dust, neither of which have been confirmed on the Moon, and in fact radar telescopes have been unable to find any of the comet-come-ice-lake variety.

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#26 2004-10-21 18:37:50

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#27 2004-10-21 18:39:53

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#28 2004-10-21 18:47:24

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#29 2004-10-21 18:50:17

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#30 2004-10-21 18:53:44

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#31 2004-10-21 18:58:35

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#32 2004-10-21 19:05:06

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#33 2004-10-21 19:08:36

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#34 2004-10-21 19:13:53

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#35 2004-10-21 19:21:09

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#36 2004-10-21 19:23:52

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#37 2004-10-21 19:26:03

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#38 2004-10-21 19:27:20

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#39 2004-10-21 19:32:37

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#40 2004-10-21 19:35:44

Re: Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion - 90 day Mars round trip?

#41 2004-10-21 19:41:14

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#42 2004-10-21 19:46:16

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#43 2004-10-21 20:03:37

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#44 2004-10-21 21:01:28

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#45 2004-10-21 21:39:45

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#46 2004-10-22 04:25:36

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#47 2004-10-22 06:30:11

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#48 2004-10-22 07:07:57

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#49 2004-10-22 07:21:07

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#50 2004-10-22 08:23:04

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