| MODULAR MOON BASES David A. Dietzler, 2007 |
| At first we will live in landers and inflated torus bases. Then we will get industry going and build modular rectangular iron plate bases from in situ materials like iron from melted and cast iron fines, cast basalt, glass, glass-glass composites and iron from magma electrolysis along with silicon & magnesium. |
| Eventually we will go beyond modular Moon bases made of iron and steel and seal off and pressurize lava tubes and do conventional construction within lava tubes with brick (cast basalt and glass), cement, mortar, concrete, plaster, glass, and metals. These will not be prisons as we will grace them with colored lights, plants, animals, sculptures and some paint etc. We will not stop building metal modular Moon bases when we inhabit lava tubes because modular bases can be built just about anywhere while lava tubes might not offer the best locations. Lava tube habitations will also have periscope windows to let views and light in and heliostats to let light in. |
| INTERNAL RUSTING OF MODULAR IRON MOON BASES Is it going to be a problem? Or will we find chromium for stainless steel? Or do we ship up some primer and paint. Those could be worth their weight in gold and will give us color rather than battleship gray to look at. It will by quite some time before we have enough farm modules to raise livestock and turn the entrails and scrap into oil with thermal depolymerization to make oil based paint with white titanium dioxide pigment extracted by the CARBOTEK process from ilmenite. Or can we make polyethylene from scavenged carbon and hydrogen to coat the walls? Or spray vaporized glass or magnesium on the inner walls? Or even high silicon iron plates fused by heat to pure iron plates?? I support the imported paint option for modules inhabited by humans with other strategies for work and farm modules that can be dull grey inside. |
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| simple CADs by Dave Dietzler, inspired by fellow Moon Society member David H. As he says,"Why does everything in space always have to be round or made of aluminum? It doesn't. |
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| See: Blister Steel and Casting Chambers |