What equipment would be needed to out a Moonbase?

Great Debates
1

It’s not too early for NASA and its contractors to be thinking about what equipment would be needed to support a permanent human presence on the Moon. I’m sure that space station modules will be used as templates for habitat and laboratory modules, but for purposes of this discussion, I want to concentrate on support vehicles.

The Apollo Lunar rover would be a good basis for a lunar “Jeep”. It would need to have a replacable/rechargeable power supply, and have modular components so that field repairs could be made.

For expeditions further afield, a pressurized rover would be needed. This would enable scientist-explorers to spend many days or weeks away from home base.

As an adjunct to human field explorers, small robotic rovers would be deployed, teleoperated from main base or the piloted rovers.

I have more ideas, but I’d like to see what others have to say.

2

The most important item, IMO, would be an interplanetary shuttle, possibly with a nuclear engine that could transit back and forth easily between Earth orbit and Lunar orbit. Once built it would remain in space, and we’d simply lift supplies to it, then it would make the transit to the moon. This ship would be the model for when ever we get arround to going to Mars btw…we’d ALREADY have the ship, and all we’d need to do is stock it with more reaction mass and suplies.

ON the moon we’d need a stable nuclear reactor of some kind to provide energy. Habitats would most likely be buried, and from what I understand we could make concret out of local materials. There is the possibility that water exists on the moon, but most likely we’d need to ship in water, raw materials and such initially at least…and most likely for the duration.

The coolest thing we could do, even with our present technology, is probably a space elevator on the moon itself. The other thing I can see us doing is setting up some really powerful telescopes on the surface.

-XT

3

That word in the title should be “outfit”. The sexual preferences of a Moonbase is its own business.

4

Communications.

With the Moon’s curvature, radio signals can only travel a few miles before being cut off by the horizon, so a communications network needs to be set up. A synchronous satellite is impossible (its orbit would intersect the Earth!), and another alternative is to set up a network of comsats in lunar orbit.

This might not be practical to do in the early stages of Moonbase construction, but another alternative is to set up a network of solar powered signal repeater stations (“cell towers”) spaced so that each repeater is on the horizon from each other and the base. Since each repeater is cut off from the sun for two weeks at a time, a battery would be needed to power the station and keep its circuits warm. One task of a teleoperated rover would be to service malfunctioning stations; I can envision a rover trundling off on a service run, pulling a cart of batteries and spare components behind it. Each station would also have a Global Positioning transmitter built in to aid in surveying, positioning experiments, and assisting lost explorers.

5

Cheese knives!

(Somebody had to say it.)

6

and

Wouldn’t you have to have geosynchronous (or lunasynchronous) satellites to set up a GPS system on the moon?

7

Opps sorry AtomicDog

I just reread your post and realized that you ment a signal comming from each communication tower kind of like a radio Benchmark.

8

Landing a nuclear reactor is required but initially I’d say you need a small set of solar panels to prime the system. I.e. power local beacons to help land the expensive and political dangerous reactor in the first place. That and seed lander (once buried) would form the initial core.

Anyway, after that a 2 rovers. 1 to go out and 1 to stay home to rescue the first one if it dies.

After that, communication satellites. Let’s do it cheap and use old Echo I balloon types. If the NASA can launch a $60 million probe that examines the surface they should be able to throw 3-6 reflective balloons around the moon for passive satellite coverage. The original lasted 8 years. That would be long enough to place better ones in orbit or simply replace the old one.

9

Balloons? Floating above the Moon?

As this thread goes on, it will become evident to everyone why a Moon base ain’t ever gonna happen, at least not in the next couple hundred years.

10

You think not? Why not? Is there anything wrong with the science and engineering being discussed so far?

11

I think a permanent moonbase is going to be tough to mantain without some Lunar water, the existence of which (in significant quantities) has not been confirmed.

If they can’t find a good supply of water at the bottom of polar craters like some hope they will, then we’re going to need some mega-boss-big rockets and landers to fly up the gagillions of liters of H2O they’ll need on the Moon.

I dunno, maybe they can extract O2 from the lunar soil (composed of SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, etc.) electrolytically and combine it with liquid H2 (meaning you would have to fly up only 1/8 of the mass of the water, and isolate the rest at the base…I can think of no good source of H2 on the moon). Maybe the hugely exothermic reaction this would cause could be used to generate power as well as create water, thus recycling some of the energy needed to get the O2. On top of that, you’d get lots of useful stuff like Si Al out of it. But you’d still need a humongous power source to make the O2-extraction process practically feasible (as the power input needed would greatly exceed the power output of the O2+H2 rxn), and that would mean, in all likelyhood, a big-ass nuclear reactor. This involves putting large quantities of fissionable material on a rocket and shooting it into the sky…not an easy plan to sell to some folks on the ground. Either that or you’ve got to fly up many hectares of solar panels. Or build them on site…plenty of Si around…but for that you need the big-ass nukes again, so you’re back to that issue. Good luck selling it to the Greens.

People simply need lots of water, every day, to even stay healthy. Sure you can recycle H2O from bodily excretions, but that takes power and equipment, and a good portion of the water that goes into the body cannot be recovered (they do call breakdown of nutrient molecules hydrolysis, after all). So the equipment issue really hinges pretty enormously on the lunar water issue. If there’s a lot of H2O on the Moon, things get so much easier and less bulky. But if the place is essentially dry, you’re talking a monstrously large and power-hungry operation to keep even a handful of Lunar colonists alive, and the idea of an autonomous colony becomes well-nigh untenable. Woe to those colonists if one of the supply ships blows up, or the reactor fails. It ain’t Jet Blue getting big payloads to the Moon. Look at the Saturn V, and then look at the dinky projectiles only that massive booster could shoot to Luna. Imagine sending up boosters with an order-of-magnitude more power on a regular basis, just to keep the place going, much less build it. That’s what we can count on if there’s no water on the Moon.

12

D’Oh! H2 is 1/9 the mass of H2O. Sorry.

13

No. GPS satellites are not in geostationary orbit. They are in low orbit, a couple of hundred miles up. That’s one reason why you need a constellation of something like 21 satellites. Putting them in geostationary orbit would make the system too inaccurate. The angles involved in measurements out to 24,000 miles are just too small.

So yes, a GPS system for the moon would be easy enough. The expensive part would be flying all those satellites there in the first place. You could probably get by with a smaller constellation of satellites, and launch costs should be lower by the time we’re ready to try this, so the cost should be close to the same or maybe quite a bit less than the cost of putting up a GPS system around Earth.

14

No, the problem with GS orbit would be power levels. It would take a lot more transmit power for them to send signals 50 to 100 times farther (2500 to 10000 times more). GPS doesn’t measure angles anyway, just the distance to the satellites. (I know - must be all that gold rolling through your veins.)

Yes, it’s completely unfeasible. Loopydude explained it pretty well, but was addressing only the water part of the problem. Here’s a factoid that I figured out for myself about the shuttle program: if an astronaut on the shuttle wants to drink a glass of water, that glass of water cost $6000 to get there. That’s based on a $13000 per payload pound that the shuttle cost. And that’s just to get it 250 miles up. The Moon is 250,000 miles up. There is just no fuel source that we have to get all the supplies and equipment up there. (Note: I know it’s not 1000 times harder to get something to the Moon than LEO)

I guess if they ever got the space elevator working, it could be more attainable. But if that gets working in my lifetime, I’ll eat my hat. I want to live to be 100 - that’s 57 years to go.

15

Of course, that assumes there isn’t any water on the moon…something that hasn’t been proved one way or the other so far. Personally, and at a complete guess, I think there IS water there, though how much and how accessable it is, who knows? Someone once told me in college you could make water and rocket fuel from materials on the moon if you had sufficient power…not sure how true this is, as I’m no chemist (the person I was talking too was, but not sure if she knew what she was talking about or not).

Water would surely be one of the major stumbling blocks though, true enough, though I think that with recycling, the requirements for a small station crew could be maintained with present technology (use Russian orbiters to get the water into LEO, then use the new interplanetary shutle to move it from earth to the moon…that transfer should be reasonable simple I would think).

Power I don’t see as a major problem…as I said earlier, simply drop in a nuclear reactor and there you go. Food would also be a major challenge, similar to the water situation, though probably less weight to maintain. You could grow it, but that would take a fairly massive initial deployment (hydoponics and such). You could ship it in, but again, you have the whole problem of getting it up to earth orbit. Another problem would be radiation shielding, though they could get around this by burying the habitats I suppose.

Still, while all these things are a challenge, I don’t think any of them are show stoppers. It COULD be done, if we wanted too.

-XT

16

Been a while since I looked at GPS, but I thought it used distances from the receiving station to 2, 3, or 4 satellites and then based on that did triangulation. It seems to me that the system’s accuracy would decrease as the angular distance between the satellites and the receiving station got smaller.

But yeah, power would be a big deal, wouldn’t it?

17

Would there be any benifits to a Mars station (in the not too distant future, under 50 years from now) that a lunar station wouldn’t have? If there are any (would it be easier to find or produce water on Mars?) would that or any other benifit outweigh the VAST distance to Mars?

Is it at all likely that a Moon mission would just be impossible while a Mars mission could be feasable?

18

Well, geologically Mars is more interesting. There is more gravity there also, as well as a thin atmosphere (more protection from radiation then the moon…though not a lot more). There is a larger possibility of accessable water on Mars, plus more chemical compounds we could work with to produce what we need to support a station. Mars also has the possibility of past or even present life. Over all, its just a more interesting place.

The drawbacks are what you said though…its a HELL of a lot further away. Just the transit to there would be very risky for the astronauts, as they’d be exposed to high levels of radiation and the possibility of sudden and painful death from solar flares and such. The moon is a lot safer a transit (only 3 days), and would be great experience for NASA for a venture to Mars. Its interesting in its own right and a lot closer, so its easier to resupply and to transfer personnel back and forth. There is a lot of good science we COULD do on the moon, if this thing was done correctly.

We’ll see I guess. Or maybe we won’t.

-XT

19

The moon has many other advantages. The lack of atmosphere probably means quite a bit less maintenance on surface structures. Put a big dish on the moon and aim it at earth, and it’s going to stay pretty much intact for as long as you want. On Mars it’s going to get sandblasted, covered in dust, possibly damaged by high winds, etc.

The lack of atmosphere means you can build things like telescopes and radio antennas out of much lighter materials, too. That, coupled with the lower gravity makes construction easier.

The closeness of the moon makes communications MUCH easier, and allows direct control of automated manufacturing facilities, robot rovers, etc. from Earth.

If there are significant amounts of ice, then we can easily make plenty of oxygen, rocket fuel, and we have water. That makes resupplying the station much less daunting.

The moon may have lava tubes that can be turned into habitats. That’s the really interesting thing to me - the ability to tunnel under the moon and open up some really large spaces. With lots of space and a large supply of water, you can do anything. Hydroponic farming, heavy-duty manufacturing, etc. Some of these tubes may be hundreds of miles long, and should provide plenty of protection from radiation.

Getting energy on the moon should be much easier than Mars. It’s closer to the sun, so solar power works better. And again, a lack of atmosphere means you can build some truly impressive solar arrays with lightweight structures, and they’ll last far longer than they would on Mars.

Finally, the moon could become a source of raw materials for space manufacturing. Put a mass driver on the moon, and you can build large spacecraft in orbit. Or if that’s too technically daunting, you can at least fire mass into space for use as radiation shielding. And you can fuel ships from the moon.

Most of this stuff is not on the horizon - we won’t be doing large-scale construction on the moon for decades, if ever. But at least there is potential there. It’s not just a useless rock.

20

CurtC, I figure you know, but just in case…

so the “balloons” you are dismissing worked. They were cheap and there were no active components to power, maintain or purchase. Sounds like a cheap, easy way to throw a small constellation of comsats around the moon to me.