| Stringing Power Cables on the Moon by Dave Dietzler 2008 1) At the base on the slopes of Mons Malpert, large numbers of upported nanosolar panels are set up. The DC output is inverted to AC and transformed to high voltage, 165,00 V or higher, for long distance transmission with invertors from Earth and heavy transformers made on the Moon with FeSi from magma electrolysis and aluminum coils from scavenged ETs and aluminum smelted on the Moon. It is also possible that we will use calcium cable clad in vacuum vapor deposited aluminum for the transformer coils. Calcium is a better conductor than copper by mass. 2) The convoy of trucks will carry a large number of tubular steel poles about 40 feet long. Every 200 feet they will erect a pole. We won't waste time with a robot with a "clam shell" post hole digger on the end of its mechanical arm to dig a hole and another robot with a gripper to insert the pole and then fill in any space in the hole with regolith. The pole will have a screw on the end and the robot will actually drill the pole into the ground; deep enough to sink it into the compacted regolith about eight feet down.. About 26 poles will be needed per mile. 3) The convoy of trucks with reels of cable, trucks with transformers on them and trucks carrying robots, in addition to the pressurized motor homes with humans aboard and a cherry picker for workers to ride up on and afix the lines to the poles, will proceed slowly. If they can make one mile an hour they will cover 24 miles, with crews working 12 hour shifts and sharing bunks to save space, every Earth day. In 25 days they will cover 600 miles. This means about 16,000 poles are needed. What an order! One hundred trucks carrying 160 poles each would be called for. They will have power in the line by request for six months during lunar summer and the Sun will only set at Mt. Malapert five times a year for about five days at a time during lunar winter, so the best time to do the work is during lunar summer. The only way to make this work is to start with several trucks with 160 poles each. That's enough for six miles. A 40 ft long truck bed would have a stack of poles about 12.5' x 12.5' x 40' on it for 160 poles if each pole takes up 1' x1' x 40' of rack space. The poles would be 20 cm wide, 1 cm thick and about 12 meters tall. Progress will be slow, one mph, because poles must be erected, cables attached to insulators atop the poles, and of course the cable must be reeled out slowly. Perhaps trucks will travel at 10-20 mpn between poles. Erecting poles and fastening cables will be that which consumes time. When the trucks are out of poles they will roll back to base at top speed to get more poles. Meanwhile another set of trucks will be heading out with loads of poles. Large numbers of trucks will circulate in a loop that get's longer and longer as the cable is strung out. Trucks will recharge at way stations. Setting up way stations consisting of transformers and rechargers spliced off the main cables will also consume time. Batteries allow limited range. When batteries run low workers will radio back to base and someone back at the base will throw a circuit breaker switch to charge the line and send power to the trucks. As long as there is cable the trucks will have range. Transformers and rechargers will be spliced into the main line every 20 or 30 miles, perhaps more. |
 |
 |
 |
| Each pole will be about 12 meters tall and 20 cm wide (8 inches) and one cm thick and amass about 600 kg but weigh only 100 kg on the Moon. Alternatively, the poles could be solid and square instead of cylindrical; about 8 cm or 3.1 inches on a side. These will take up less volume in trucks and be easier for robot grips to screw into the ground. They could be extruded from billets of hot steel. see: Lunar Manufacturing 1 Sixteen thousand poles will amass 9600 metric tons but weigh only 1600 tons on the Moon. One load of 160 poles will amass 96 tons but weigh only 16 tons on the Moon. The trucks should be able to handle that. The trucks, or tractor-trailers will have tractors with 4 wheel independent suspension and 4 wheel drive with an electric motor for each wheel and a nickel-metal hydride battery back amassing several thousand kg. but only wieghing one sixth of that on the Moon. The trailers might also have motors for some of the wheels and battery packs located on the underside of the trailer bed loaded with racks of tubular steel poles. How do we get all that steel? See: Blister Steel What's the point of this cable? We will string the cable to a place that is in sunlight when Mt. Malpert is in darkness and deploy nanosolar panels upported from Earth, invertors and transformers, to supply power for the four or five days the base is in darkness. We will also splice off the line and send branches to outposts and mining sites to supply then with 24/7 power all month long. With the recharger truck, pictured above, it will be possible to recharge at any place along the line. Dirt roads will form along the power lines. It would be wise to install some reflectors on the poles and maybe some signs along the dirt roads. Mt. Malapert is highlighted in image above. Utility infrastructure for energy, communication and transportation. Images from: MALAPERT MOUNTAIN: GATEWAY TO THE MOON Burton L. Sharpe1 and David G. Schrunk 2 1 Formerly Head, Lunar Surface Experiment Operations Section 2 Quality of Laws Institute, The slopes of the Mountain to the Northwest and Southeast are approximately 6 deg. and 15 deg. , respectively (Margot, et al., 1999), Those are slight grades and tractor trailers with motors in alll four wheels of the tractor and in all eight wheels of the trailer and a muli-ton NiMH battery pack could climb the slopes. One cubic meter of NiMh batteries would amss about four metric tons, wiegh 670 kg. on the Moon and store 280,000 watt hours. That's enough to generate 375 hp for an hour not considering inefficency of electric motors or 37.5 hp for ten hours. Sic hundred miles is the average limit AC power can be transmitted over aluminum cables. With oversize cables in the low gravity of the Moon and calcium cables it might be possible to transmit power farther. It's only about 120 km to Shackelton and 300 km to a point at the opposite longitude and same latitude (86 deg.) of Mt. Maalpert and Newton Base. Since power can go 600 miles, if we branch off the main cable at a distance of 100 miles from the solar power plant, the branch can go another 500 miles. Thus, power can be supplied to many locations in the southern hemisphere of the Moon. Microwave power towers could also feed off the main lines and beam power to rectennas over great distances. For instance from the top of Mt. Malapert to the rim of Shacelkton crater and across the rim of Shackelton and other large craters to a station on the opposite rim. This would avoid descending into the cold shadowed craters with miles of cable, poles and convoys of trucks since that might be unecessarily dangerous. Only specially designed ice mining robots powered by microwave beams from the crater rim above will descend into the dark supercold craters. See: Energy For and From the Moon Lunar Model T Wireless Spiral Mining System |
| http://www.nanosolar.com/about.htm http://www.celsias.com/article/nanosolars-breakthrough-technology-solar- now-cheap/ |
 |
 |
 |
 |