More as a diversion then anything else I was wondering if any of you would be interested in exploring NASA’s Break the Ice lunar challenge. Initially just brainstorming, but possibly leading to a real DKos team.
One of the things that has always bothered me is that especially in the early stages of a project like this a broad enough chorus of voices and perspectives are not included. That can hardly be said for this community. Actually this huge community has a vast cross-section of experience, expertise, and interests. This could lead to some very unexpected solutions and worthwhile paths to explore. If nothing else some fun think and google time outside of the day to day life or death stuff we deal with.
My thought here is that I put up a couple of posts to see if there is any interest, then perhaps a group that would put out a post every so often to keep the community informed if it gets that far. Finally if it actually looks possible actually form a team and work towards a real submission. Throw some off the wall publicity KOS way and I’d like any award money to go to Uncle Hugo’s to help rebuild.
This more of a table top challenge. Actual hardware is not required so no garage time yet. The design of the hardware is at least at more then a robust concept level is not required and you can assume that the equipment is manually operated. NASA is providing a power station, a long cord and a plant to get the water out of the icy ore. Read section 3 of the rules to get a better idea. So land descend down into a crater dig a lot of ice ore get the water back to base. In a year. If you want to use the extraction plant get that to where you want it.
Anyway it can be a way to pass some interesting time. A lot of the work has been done already and assembling it into an actual plan could be well within our diverse abilities. I don’t want to skew this towards my ideas, But I thought I’d start off with some general thoughts and a hour of google level research.
Lunar Dust is the real problem that NASA has yet to get a real handle on. Just developing lunar simulants has posed a large problem. It is nasty stuff that gets into everything. I’d like to use it as much as possible.
While dust is a big problem it is also a great resource. Because I was familiar with Powdered Metal processes, I immediately thought along those lines as the partial size is similar and shape is important. This actually led me to Microwaves very quickly. Below is a short list of some links.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2009/09-083.html
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/eposter/1223.pdf
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.6309&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://youtu.be/BGDOE-zDVZc
http://trnmag.com/Stories/2002/103002/Microwave_drill_melts_concrete_103002.html
This opens a whole set of interesting possibilities for any sort of Moon Based construction.
I was going to include a poll, but I’ve decided that I’ll write one more post in the next day or so based on the comments instead.