Would have appreciated some pictures of what these bricks would look like. Or the mechanism that would create them. Is this a rolling vehicle that creates a lunar brick road as it slowly drives across the landscape?
mitthrowaway2 · 2h ago
It's probably something similar in concept to Markus Kayser's solar sinterer[1], but with the light being focused onto an optical fiber bundle whose endpoint is moved around in X and Y, rather than moving a basket of regolith.
While the tech here obviously has not been tested on the Moon yet, some of the described bricks were already been flown to the Tianzhou space station last year for a three-year testing regime:
Yet another sign that the Chinese are completely serious about setting up a Moon base.
apt-apt-apt-apt · 1h ago
This should help with the problem of randomly being squashed by asteroids.
stevage · 2h ago
That seems incredible that it only took 2 years to come up with the method?
ungreased0675 · 4h ago
It would be awesome if we could land some construction robots onto the moon and Mars. Let’s get going with construction of underground settlements and research stations.
PaulHoule · 3h ago
Starship can only land a tiny payload if you expect to reuse it, but if you don't you can likely land 100 tons and reuse the the vehicle for habitat, storage tanks and such. The first thing you land is a lunarized D9 Cat [1]
which digs trenches that let you bury the upper stages under 2 meters of regolith which will give good radiation protection and thermal coupling to a reservoir at a constant and comfortable temperature just below the freezing point of water. I guess you want some kind of crane for handling the Starships but you probably want one anyway if you expect to send them back.
You're not going to be dropping an actual D9, you're going to design something inspired by the DO and others that's optimized for the moon. An actual D9 weighs far too much for the moon and has all kinds of surfaces that couldn't handle lunar dust.
stevage · 2h ago
For a relative definition of comfortable...
PaulHoule · 1h ago
Like upstate NY in the winter. If you can maintain shirtsleeves conditions inside an old farmhouse at that outdoor temperature, NASA can do it for astronauts. Contrast that to the surface temperatures which swing from 260°F to -280°F.
The corollary is that ice buried on the moon with a vapor barrier to prevent sublimation could be stable.
westurner · 1h ago
How long would it take how many humanoid robots to construct a flatpacked bulldozer, a tunneling machine, and airlocks?
tonetegeatinst · 3h ago
A YouTube called anthrofuturism has some videos if your interested.
The channel is mainly focused on the moon and how it can help humanity in our reaching to the stars.
johnyzee · 4h ago
Yeah, just drop a bunch of brick generation bots and let them run wild. Come back later and harvest bricks. Seems useful for stuff like landing sites.
smusamashah · 4h ago
How much lunar soil do we have on earth to research something like this and how did we get it?
they are leveraging the givens, lots of solar energy and pulverised rock heated to 1300°c in a vacume will sinter into bricks. I think that a more advanced version would also yield oxygen in significant amounts and other volitiles that could be captured.
The moons surface composition is well understood, and in any case,1300°C will sinter almost any random rock debrit into a brick, the harder part will be mortar, or perhaps making something with
mechanical joints, like stone henge, or lego.
Pyramids on dark side of the moon
Of course any moon base will be located next to one of the permanently shaded craters where water ice , hopefully other ice, can be found for
making fuel and other uses.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8&t=240
https://english.hust.edu.cn/info/1102/3973.htm
And Chang'e 8 (2028?) will likely test this out in situ on the lunar surface:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_8
Yet another sign that the Chinese are completely serious about setting up a Moon base.
which digs trenches that let you bury the upper stages under 2 meters of regolith which will give good radiation protection and thermal coupling to a reservoir at a constant and comfortable temperature just below the freezing point of water. I guess you want some kind of crane for handling the Starships but you probably want one anyway if you expect to send them back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_D9
The corollary is that ice buried on the moon with a vapor barrier to prevent sublimation could be stable.
The channel is mainly focused on the moon and how it can help humanity in our reaching to the stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_regolith_simulant#Heal...