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January 21, 2005
Moon Power
President Bush has laid out an agenda for NASA that includes returning humans to the Moon and constructing a permanent base there as a jumping off point for further exploration of our Solar System and the greater cosmos.
Building a permanent lunar colony is probably one of the most daunting tasks that humanity will ever undertake. The prospect on estabilishing a permanent settlement requires whole new streams of thought and engineering theory in order to bring the project to fruition. Bringing all the materials necessary to build a base from Earth to the Moon is currently just not a feasible option. We will have to get back up to our celestial sibling and build a colony with materials available there.
Science Fiction writers have long theorized that we'll be tunneling into the rocky crust of the moon, hollowing out areas to live in that protect us from the harmful cosmic rays that bathe Earth's satellite, and others have suggested large domes under which we'll grow new crops to create oxygen to breath, food to eat and develop biomass projects for waste conversion and heat. All of these theorized plans for creating a habit in the hostile environment of the Moon will require massive amounts of material for construction.
It's well known that we can, in fact, find all the materials necessary to build and sustain a colony by extracting them directly from the Moon itself. Sure, we'll have to send up alot of material in advance with unmanned landers, we'll have to set up obiting "transit points" or a moon orbit space station where local landers can shuttle colonists and fabricated modules down to the surface, and we'll certainly have to ship vast initial quantities of water and oxygen to the Moon before we can generate and refine our own on the surface. The most important issue however, is POWER, electricity is the key to the moon. We must develop a way to generate electricity on the moon in large quantities and maintain a steady flow of energy from a local source. A nuclear reactor simply isn't politically viable and the dangers and infrastructure necessary for such a powerplant is just not doable in the beginning. After the "power problem" is solved, everything else is just a matter of time. With enough power, we can mine the moon, extract the raw materials necessary and construct the physical plant necessary for us to travel to the moon and stay.
The "power problem" is one step closer to being solved as researchers from the University of Houston (originally presenting their case in 2002) have come up with a plan are are currently testing robotic rover technology that will be able to journey to the moons surface, then create new solar panels with materials easily scooped up from the layer of fine "moon dust" or regolith covering the Moon.
Picture a little rover, the wayward cousin of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers currently running around the surface of Mars, a little mechanical crawler that will scoop up the fine regolith, cook the material in it's own small oven and then leave behind a trail of linked solar panels that will immediately begin converting solar rays into usable electricity. The process will be slow at first, but as the little rover begins to lay out the panels, it will be increasing it's own available power supply, speeding up the process considerably. With each foot of travel, the rover becomes more and more efficient, eventually creating a vast solar array just waiting for astronauts to arrive and link up living and work space modules to this pre-configured power grid and get straight to work building a permanent presence.
The concept works because the Moon's regolith is almost one half silicon dioxide, the remainder being made of various compounds and elements including aluminum, magnesium and iron. These metals can be extracted and used in the construction of the panels themselves while the remaining excess materials can be simply deposited on the surface awaiting collection from a second rover, or the astronaut/colonists themselves following behind the rover "picking up the crumbs".
This material will be refined to a state where it can then be easily used by the astronaut/colonists when they arrrive to construct other necessary items.
Currently the technology for the rover is being tested in vacuum chambers at the U of H TcSAM (Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials) and NASA is watching with keen interest the progress of the "next little rover that could".
For more information, you'll have to wait for an article to be released tomorrow in the New Scientist. I'll make sure to post the updated link tomorrow when the story is published.
UPDATE: I'd hope that this article wouldn't be limited to subscribers, but the dice rolled against us, dear readers. Check the link to the article anyway, it may go to the general public any day now.
--Jason
Posted by JasonColeman at January 21, 2005 2:44 PM
