PS. I’ve said repeatedly that the design from the Russian Lunik spacecraft was stolen by the Americans, and haven’t been believed by the forum.
I was right, it happened in 1967. Here’s the story. https://hackaday.com/2017/10/19/spy-tech-stealing-a-moon-probe/
My claim is that without the theft of Russian technology, the American moon program would have been much less successful.
—-
I saw a TV program on “going back to the moon” yesterday.
I figure they missed at least three important things.
1. Lunar regolith, the soil under the top layer, is strong. Much stronger than concrete or any bulk rock on Earth. It consists of sharp angular grains that are vacuum welded together. So the first thing they’ve missed is the possibility of building lunar housing and structures from regolith. Not quite like how we build igloos of ice because it’s much stronger than that. More like buildings of sandstone, basalt, limestone and granite on Earth. This has the added advantage of protection of inhabitants from from all the weaker cosmic rays, those from the Sun. We can ignore the stronger cosmic rays from pulsars and supernovae because they are much rarer and because nothing will stop them.
2. Vacuum welding. Air on Earth acts as a lubricant, this is usually overlooked because its all around us. But this lubrication is essential to nearly everything we do here. On satellites, vacuum welding is a pain. It stops mechanical equipment from deploying, such as the antenna on the Galileo spacecraft and the inner clamshell on the Beagle lander. On the Moon, vacuum welding would be extremely useful because it requires no glue and no heat. Just place parts together, apply a tiny amount of pressure such as that from a hand-held hammer, and the result is as strong as if it had been MIG welded on Earth. Excellent for 3-D printing on the Moon.
3. Hydrogen. Everyone talks about the problems of taking water to the Moon vs mining water on the Moon. AAAAGH! Water is 7/8 oxygen by weight and there is oodles of oxygen on the Moon, it’s in every rock and grain of sand. Do not export water to the Moon! Export hydrogen. On the Moon, hydrogen + soil + solar heating → water + metal. The resulting metal is ready to be shaped by forging. The resulting water may or may not be drinkable depending on the chemical composition of the soil, but it’s very easy to distil on the Moon, just evaporate using the ever-present vacuum and then condense. So, send hydrogen to the Moon, How? Three possibilities immediately come to mind.
3a. Send hydrogen chemically combined. Not water but methane, which has 1/4 hydrogen by weight and has that other useful element carbon which is needed for food. This solves both the food and water problem at a single stroke. The Moon has some carbon that could be used for food, but very very little. It’d be easier to import it as liquid methane (ie. LPG).
3b. Import it as liquid hydrogen. Liquid fuel rockets on the launch pad contain much more hydrogen by volume than any other element. So getting it into space is no problem. Landing canisters of it on the Moon is a little tricky, but much less tricky than landing and equivalent weight of humans on the Moon.
3c. Launch it as liquid hydrogen, but allow it to expand as a balloon in space. Then land it as a bouncing balloon on the surface of the Moon. This makes the landing easier in the sense that it requires less retro-rocket power. The image below shows the balloon that was used for the landing of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars. Something similar (ie. using the same envelope material) could be used for cheaply landing hydrogen on the Moon.
This all makes more sense than even mining water on the Moon. Why? Because the location of the ice to be mined on the Moon is arguably the coldest place in the whole solar system. “The lunar south pole is among the coldest parts of the solar system and may be in fact colder than what we expect from places like Pluto,” NASA scientist Richard Vondrak said at a press conference on Thursday. From https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17810-moon-is-coldest-known-place-in-the-solar-system/
