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| Standardized Multi-Purpose Designs Perhaps a standard chassis, leaf springs, motors and wheels can be made on the Moon and pressurized bodies for personel, cargo hauling beds, or digging machinery can be mounted on them to produce a variety of vehicles or mobile machines. Dirt roads will be made on the Moon by scrapers that get rid of the rocks for a smoother ride and so that vehicles don't take much of a beating. The first vehicles will be landed on the Moon and have more sophisticated construction. As lunar industry evolves, vehicles much more complex and robust than the Lunar Model T will be possible to build. |
| LUNAR MODEL T David A. Dietzler, 2008 |
| Production Models These days we have continuous production, batch production, just in time production, lean manufacturing etc. Mass production means factories, and it will be years even decades before we can build large factories on the Moon. I think we will go all the way back to the 19th century craft production model where skilled workers make things from scratch in pressurized habitat and even in pressurized lava tubes. We will make the iron, steel and other metals, glass and ceramics on the Moon. About that I have written extensively. But I always seem to pose the question, "What will we make on the Moon?" So what if we have ingots of iron and steel, CB interlocking blocks and solar panels made on the Moon? We have to turn them into something useful. The first mining tractors and exploration vehicles will be upported. Later we will make them on the Moon because we will need thousands of them to mine significant qty.s of helium 3 and other volatiles. We will need personel carrying vehicles too. WE WILL HAVE TO KEEP DESIGNS AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE....what? no power windows or automatic transmission ??? Simple designs will be easier to build by craftsman on the Moon. Skilled workers will do all the foundry work, machining, screw and gear cutting, welding and assembly. They will have robots to help them move heavy things around and CNC machines, etc. Eventually vehicle factories will be built on the Moon. |
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| About Spring Steel We will need spring steel for leaf springs and wheels. From Wikipedia article titled Spring Steel we find (quote): Spring steel is a low alloy, medium carbon steel with a very high yield strength. This allows objects made of spring steel to return to their original shape despite significant bending or twisting. Silicon is the key component to most spring steel alloys. An example of a spring steel used for cars would be AISI 9255 (DIN and UNI: 55Si7, AFNOR 55S7), containing 1.50%-1.80% silicon, 0.70%-1.00% manganese and 0.52%-0.60% carbon. Silicon, carbon and mangaese are available on the Moon. Thus, spring steel is "Moon makeable." |
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| An electromagnetic disk brake system should be superior to braking by reversing voltage and current to motors because that could cause motors to get real hot as they dissipate the energy of the vehicle's motion. |
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| NASA |
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| 4 wheel independent suspension. 4 electric motors, one for each wheel |
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