One Small Step

Hydrogen can be reacted with lunar materials, at high temperature,
to derive iron, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, silicon and water. The
water can be electrolized back into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen
can be recycled, with the oxygen becomming the primary economic
incentive for the whole process. This could be the primary propelent
for extensive robotic missions to Mars, the asteroids and the moons of
Jupiter and Saturn.
In the space colonization literature of the seventies, a mass
driver would launch twenty or so kilograms at a time to be collected by
a 'catcher' that would intercept it prior to perigee, otherwise it
would crash back into the moon. Perhaps a much smaller system could be
built to launch 'cannisters' that would have not only the coils for
acceleration, but a pressurized oxygen tank with a nozzel in front,
along with valves on the sides for attitude control. At apogee a jet
of oxygen would raise the perigee so that the cannisters could be
collected at leasure.
It is conceivable that the cannisters could have a mass of less
than a kilogram and with the lunar material packed inside have a total
weight of around two kg. This would put the mass of the accelerator at
under fifty tons, with a solar collector of nearly the same mass that
could provide the electricity to launch one or two cannisters a minute
during the lunar day. Well over a hundred tons of moon soil and rock
could be put into orbit per year. The cannisters could be recycled,
the landers using the same oxygen in the material that was delivered
into space.
It is even possible that a market for lunar rocks could develope,
being easily identified by micrometeorite impacts on the surface.

Surely you need electolosis. Al, Ti, Mg are all more electronegative
than hydrogen. On Earth Al2O3 is dissolved in cryolyte and Al produced
in a cell. Similarly Ti is produced by reduction of the chloride by
Sodium. A purely electrolytic process might be possible. Sodium is
produced by electroysis either of NaCl or NaOH.

I do not dispute the spirit of what is being said, merely it will have
to be engineered on different principles.

Fortunately, our 'once upon a time' icy proto-moon is seriously loaded
with the remains of sodium, so much so that it sustains a 14,000 km
worth as it's most optically visible atmospheric element, that which
also sheds a rather substantial 900,000 km comet like trail of sodium
to boot.

Fortunately again, there's absolutely no shortage of easily accessible
clean energy for processing upon all sorts of elements, including
basalt that's worth a serious bunch of GPa in fibers and
micro-balloons.
-
Brad Guth

wrote:
Surely you need electolosis. Al, Ti, Mg are all more electronegative
than hydrogen. On Earth Al2O3 is dissolved in cryolyte and Al produced
in a cell. Similarly Ti is produced by reduction of the chloride by
Sodium. A purely electrolytic process might be possible. Sodium is
produced by electroysis either of NaCl or NaOH.

I do not dispute the spirit of what is being said, merely it will have
to be engineered on different principles.

Thank you for the correction. The use of hydrogen for refining
silicates is something that I read years ago from what I thought was a
reliable reference.
I should have googled the subject first. Direct electrolysis or the
use of fused salts may offer the best prospects but are extremely
challenging. It is estimated that the best candidate, ilminite, would
require a thousand to ten thousand pounds of raw material for every
pound of oxygen produced.
I still think the concept of launching the 'bucket' with the lunar
payload would be a good first step as it reduces the front end cost of
the mass driver by eliminating the decelleration portion.
If the aim of the space program were ultimatly to put a manned
laboratory in orbit around Mars, with geological samples being
collected by teleoperated machines on the surface, or a mission to the
asteroids, the cannisters could be used intact as reaction mass for a
solar powered electric drive.
Then there is the possibility that moon rocks could be bought for under
a hundred dollars a gram. They could have a pedigree of over four
billion years and be collected from the most exotic locations on the
moon. It has been said that to fake a moon rock would cost more than
the Apollo program, another way of saying it would be virtually
impossible.
Holding something of exterrestrial origin may not be nearly a appealing
as going into space, but it could be a lot less expensive.

The first requirement is for a robot which can do autonomous
manipulation. In short something which can take a CAD drawing and
produce the article, whether it is an elotrolytic cell or something
else.

wrote:
The first requirement is for a robot which can do autonomous
manipulation. In short something which can take a CAD drawing and
produce the article, whether it is an elotrolytic cell or something
else.

Something like this is a clanking replicator (maybe not totally
universal though).

It would probably be best to break the problem up into blocks/parts.
The idea is that all the parts working together can make any of the
individual parts. Ideally, it should be able to work anywhere, however
as a first attempt, something which only works in a certain enviroment
would be good. I think somewhere that has sand and water would be the
easiest.

The problems a

resource collection: This should be reasonably easy if the enviroment
is consistant. An empty desert like region with a water supply would
be easy as a start. Also, loose soil or sand would be easiest to
collect. Obviously, soil of a consistant nature would be a big help.

Refining raw materials. This should take raw materials and convert
them into a form usable by the manufacturing stage

Manufacturing: The should convert refined materials from the refinary
stage into parts usable by the assembly stage. I think something like
"lego" would be a good target here. In any case, it should be easy to
assemble and many different devices should be makable from a small set
of blocks.

Assembly: This puts parts together to make all the other devices.

Transport: This moves components from the different stages

Power: Some form of power is needed. Solar would probably be easiest,
but is pretty low power density.

The trick is to come up with a minimal number of types of things that
each stage must be able to handle. For example, the refinary stage
might just be required to produce a molten metal of any alloy rather
than being required to produce a high quality ore. It would also
probably be required to make a heat resistant, probably silicate
material.

The system must also be capable of handling some basic computation. I
remember reading something suggesting using fluidic logic for this
purpose. This has the advantage that it is alot less material
dependant than electronics.

One thing that electricity would probably be useful for is
electrolysis. This cannot really be handled with air pressure. I
wonder if using hydrogen (from water) to reduce rock and then melting
any metal produced would give you a reasonable amount of metal no
matter what the soil type. Also, presumably that alloy would conduct
electricity reasonably well.

Also, you could probably build a solar power system that is based on
air pressure rather than electronic energy collection.

One other thing, even if different types of design are required for
handling different enviroments, as long as you can build a reasonable
system that can handle any enviroment, it can be used to build the
modified designs to handle the new enviroment. If the design is
separating out from a start point, then the modified designs can be
constructed in the old enviroment.

It seems to me that the hard part is the refinary step, the rest is
pretty much applying current knowledge. However, that is probably
because I am not a chemist .

something like this is a clanking replicator (maybe not totally
universal though).

It would probably be best to break the problem up into blocks/parts.
The idea is that all the parts working together can make any of the
individual parts. Ideally, it should be able to work anywhere, however
as a first attempt, something which only works in a certain enviroment
would be good. I think somewhere that has sand and water would be the
easiest.

I am approacing this problem from a slightly different direction.Let us
for the moment take a step back and put ourselves firmly on Earth. You
go to IKEA and buy a flatpack. Now everything you buy at IKEA, Walmart
etc. will have a CAD specification. You have a robot and you tell it to
assemble your flatpack according to CAD. If it can do this on a step by
step basis it is a VN machine, at least potentially. A necessary and
sufficient (almost) condition for VN status is the ability to
understand CAD and manufacture according to the specification.

A moments reflection will convince us that CAD and its understanding is
essential if a robot is to do anything more than smile and look cuddly.
Even ironong can be descibed in CAD terms.

The system must also be capable of handling some basic computation. I
remember reading something suggesting using fluidic logic for this
purpose. This has the advantage that it is alot less material
dependant than electronics.

Possible theoretically, silicon is however a major constituent of the
Moon. Fluidics is probably the best way of getting a robot to walk
around. Its locomotive parts can be pistons, I do not believe that it
is appropriate for prime computation.

One other thing, even if different types of design are required for
handling different enviroments, as long as you can build a reasonable
system that can handle any enviroment, it can be used to build the
modified designs to handle the new enviroment. If the design is
separating out from a start point, then the modified designs can be
constructed in the old enviroment.

Different designs. If our processors are CAD specifed they can be
built.

It seems to me that the hard part is the refinary step, the rest is
pretty much applying current knowledge. However, that is probably
because I am not a chemist .

Mostly, but the Moon does not contain too much water. What do we employ
engineers for?! However a little bit of research is required.

wrote in message
ups.com...

I still think the concept of launching the 'bucket' with the lunar
payload would be a good first step as it reduces the front end cost of
the mass driver by eliminating the decelleration portion.

In exchange for the additional expense of having to somehow transport the
launched buckets back down to the launch site for re-use. (But I think
you're assuming no re-use. Continuous re-use of the buckets was the only
thing which made the experts conclude mass-driver operations could be made
economically viable.)

I don't think the savings in eliminating the decelleration section are going
to pay for the transport costs of returning the buckets for the simple
reason that the mass-driver is not really all that high-mass an item on the
overall inventory. I remember O'Neill commenting that the driver components
themselves would fit into a single Space Shuttle cargo bay (although the PV
panels to power it would be several more loads).

the cannisters could be used intact as reaction mass for a
solar powered electric drive.

Solar power mass-driver reaction tugs make all kinds of sense, but I
seriously doubt you would want to fire off the buckets (or cannisters as you
have it) as reaction mass.


--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

I looked in to some of the chemistry, and tried to "design" a lunar
chemical works, which you can see he

http://fp.alexterrell.plus.com/web/C...stellation.pdf
(under Phase 3, Expansion of Lunar Equator Base)

This uses hydrogen reduction as a first step, followed by a number of
other processes. An alternative is to:
- React everything with Fluorine to liberate the oxygen
- React the fluorides with potassium to liberate the elements, and give
KF
- Electrolyse the KF to recycle the K and F.

Alex Terrell wrote:
I looked in to some of the chemistry, and tried to "design" a lunar
chemical works, which you can see he

http://fp.alexterrell.plus.com/web/C...stellation.pdf
(under Phase 3, Expansion of Lunar Equator Base)

This uses hydrogen reduction as a first step, followed by a number of
other processes. An alternative is to:
- React everything with Fluorine to liberate the oxygen
- React the fluorides with potassium to liberate the elements, and give
KF
- Electrolyse the KF to recycle the K and F.

I wasn't able to call up your site. Do you have any cost estimates?
What would be the mass of the equipment for a given mass of output?