Moonbase of what sort

Here is an exerpt from the book "Welcome To Moonbase" by Ben Bova, 1987, "Base
Layout

Moonbase consists of the main habitation and administrative center at
Alphonsus, research facilities at various locations, and several outlying
mining and industrial operations, mainly grouped near Alphonsus. The main
landing and launch center for transportation to and from the Ll space station
and/or Earth vicinity, popularly called the spaceport, is on the. floor of
Alphonsus just outside the Main Plaza. The electrical mass-driver facility for
launching cargo payloads-mainly ores-is situated at the prime mining center on
the eastern shore of Mare Nubium. A cable car system connects the Main Plaza
and the spaceport with the operations on Mare Nubium, across Alphonsus's
ringwall."

So is this a good description of the Moonbase we'd want to build?

Tom

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, TKalbfus wrote:

Moonbase consists of the main habitation and administrative center at
Alphonsus, research facilities at various locations, and several outlying
mining and industrial operations, mainly grouped near Alphonsus. The main
landing and launch center for transportation to and from the Ll space station
and/or Earth vicinity, popularly called the spaceport, is on the. floor of
Alphonsus just outside the Main Plaza. The electrical mass-driver facility for
launching cargo payloads-mainly ores-is situated at the prime mining center on
the eastern shore of Mare Nubium. A cable car system connects the Main Plaza
and the spaceport with the operations on Mare Nubium, across Alphonsus's
ringwall."

So is this a good description of the Moonbase we'd want to build?

No, but it is a good description of a Moonbase useful for wasting money
with expensive artists' renditions and lengthy visionary science fiction
stories.

You first might want to find a lava tunnel for ease of construction,
protection from radiation, etc..

Settle the issue about signs of water at the south pole which is now know
not to be water ice by radar survey and do some serious digging about the
moon to find what is available and where. Once knowing that, consider
locating where the most resources are and design ways making useful
materials in a simple way that can be easily done with the limited
capabilities of a lunar base. Of interest is Bush Bull about grinding
rocks into breathable O_2. So lets see real science before relying upon
the natives to supply our lunar needs.

Consider locating near the mountain that's always in sunlight for
continual solar power and don't believe Bush's promise of free fusion
fuel on the moon. So far all Earth side energy fusion projects have
fizzled.

Finally, before anything else have a way of getting there
which nobody now has except for orbiters and small landers
nor has anybody any budget for man in the moon missions.

You'll also need to do research on survival in a super dusty environment
with super fine dust. Like how the keep the stuff out of a base and
equipment. Recall, this was problem with lunar landers, but small as
nobody stayed long.

Riddle of the day: what are residents of Luna city called?

William Elliot wrote:

Settle the issue about signs of water at the south pole which is now know
not to be water ice by radar survey

This is false. It is known to not be large solid sheets of ice. It may
be ice mixed with regolith.

Paul

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 10:14:19 -0800, William Elliot
wrote:

Riddle of the day: what are residents of Luna city called?

Lunarians... what else? ;-)

Of interest is Bush Bull about grinding
rocks into breathable O_2. So lets see real science before relying upon
the natives to supply our lunar needs.

Remember Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct? There is also a Moon Direct. What we need
to do is set down an Earth Return Vehicle, like the one proposed for Mars,
before any humans arrive. The Moon has to CO2 atmosphere to process for making
methane out of hydrogen feedstock, instead the Earth Return vehicle must come
with all the hydrogen it needs to burn to return to Earth minus the Oxygen. The
Oxygen would have to be processed from Lunar soil, stored and liquified using
remote robots to scoop it up and a nuclear reactor to power the process. While
it is harder that processing Martian gasses, it is easier to operate remote
robots from Earth than at Mars, this fact compensates for that fact.

Consider locating near the mountain that's always in sunlight for
continual solar power and don't believe Bush's promise of free fusion
fuel on the moon. So far all Earth side energy fusion projects have
fizzled.

There is still fission, that can be used on the Moon, also there is a limited
number of locations on the Moons surface where sunlight is contiuously
available. Helium-3 can still be stock piled for when fusion reactors are
available. Most of the Helium-3 on the Moon would be used for rocket ships. a
starship would use an enourmous amount of that stuff, so its never too soon to
begin mining it.
A Daedalus Starship would require 30,000 tons of Helium-3 and 20,000 tons of
Deuterium once the fusion process is perfected. A lot of lunar regolith would
have to be sifted to aquire that much, by the time all 30,000 tones of helium-3
is collected, nuclear fusion might very well be a viable option.

Tom

"TKalbfus" wrote in message
...
Here is an exerpt from the book "Welcome To Moonbase" by Ben Bova, 1987,
"Base
Layout

Moonbase consists of the main habitation and administrative center at
Alphonsus, research facilities at various locations, and several outlying
mining and industrial operations, mainly grouped near Alphonsus. The main
landing and launch center for transportation to and from the Ll space
station
and/or Earth vicinity, popularly called the spaceport, is on the. floor of
Alphonsus just outside the Main Plaza. The electrical mass-driver facility
for
launching cargo payloads-mainly ores-is situated at the prime mining
center on
the eastern shore of Mare Nubium. A cable car system connects the Main
Plaza
and the spaceport with the operations on Mare Nubium, across Alphonsus's
ringwall."

There are two scenarios
1. SPS is funded and we want mass drivers on the moon.
2. No SPS. In that case, we don't have any use for the mass drivers or the
L1 space station. I think that building the lunar base will take all your
money and you won't have anything left over for L1. It takes less fuel to
land at the equator, but I don't think it's a good place for a moon base.
It's too hot and you don't get good shadows.

I would probably move to the south end of Mare Nubium, say at Pitatus or
Gauricus crater. This would put you closer to the south pole. You could
land at the equator and drive south to the base. Driving would use
electricity as opposed to rocket fuel and electricity should be plentiful.
We would need to manufacture solar cells.

Scientific and mining outposts may be manned during construction and then
left unmanned. This would imply a mobile home. Once the mobile home
reaches its destination, it can drive into a ditch and get buried under
regolith for radiation shielding. This implies that digging and
construction equipment is traveling with the mobile home (convoy).

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 18:25:24 GMT, Len Lekx
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 10:14:19 -0800, William Elliot
wrote:

Riddle of the day: what are residents of Luna city called?

Lunarians... what else? ;-)

You could also go with lunies. ;-]

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

"William Elliot" wrote in message ...

Of interest is Bush Bull about grinding
rocks into breathable O_2. So lets see real science before relying upon
the natives to supply our lunar needs.

46% of the Moon's mass is oxygen. They say the ilmenite is the best
mineral to bake it out of.

http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/o...xtraction.html

How realistic is this??


Riddle of the day: what are residents of Luna city called?

Selenites? I don't know what the book says, but that's the consensus
on what we'll call Moon dwellers one day.

Am I right? What did I win?



--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiii :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

In article ,
Ool wrote:
46% of the Moon's mass is oxygen. They say the ilmenite is the best
mineral to bake it out of.

Except that you can't "bake it out". Getting oxygen out of ilmenite, or
other lunar rock, is actually fairly difficult. The reason why so much of
the mass is oxygen is that oxygen compounds are so stable -- so difficult
to pry apart.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

"Mike Rhino" wrote in message
...

There are two scenarios
1. SPS is funded and we want mass drivers on the moon.
2. No SPS. In that case, we don't have any use for the mass
drivers or the L1 space station. I think that building the lunar
base will take all your money and you won't have anything left
over for L1. It takes less fuel to land at the equator, but I don't
think it's a good place for a moon base. It's too hot and you
don't get good shadows.


Large space stations and space infrastructure in earth orbit will likely
require Lunar resources and hence the mass drivers you speak of, at
least in the short term this will be quicker and cheaper than using
NEO's. These space stations will be the precursors of the likes of
O'Neill colonies, where we actually learn how to live in and off space,
where we embark upon this long and arduous learning curve.

I expect this space industrialization and settlement is best done in
earth orbit, not on the moon, as it is closer and easier to get to.
However, the first step in this process is to develop ways of
transporting lunar resources to earth orbit, this will likely require a
moon base and the mass drivers, (of some description), that you speak
of. Independent of SPS, we need those mass drivers.

Pete.