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If we estimate emissivity of iron at 0.5, and we pour out sand molds 3cm deep, 1m by 5m, at 1200 C., then 717,685 watts will be radiated.
Since this slab would be about 0.375m^3 it would amass about 2,890 kg. and have to lose 30,923 kcals to cool by 100 C. Q=2,890kg.*0.107 kcal/deg kg.*100 deg.
One kcal= 1.163 watt hours so 30,923 kcals is 35,963 watt hours or 129,468,416 watt seconds. This divided by 717,685 watts is 180 seconds.
So in three minutes the slab would solidify for sure. It can’t evaporate much in that time…and a thin skin would probably harden first on the surface exposed to space and prevent evaporation
Essential manufacturing technologies for bootstrapping on the Moon include:
1) pipe and tube making- for everything from water systems and chemical processing devices to space radiators and cooling systems for furnace electrodes, coils and electrical leads.
2) electric motor making- all sorts and sizes for machine tools (drills, milling machines, hammer forges, lathes, extruders, etc.), ventilation fans, water pumps, cooling system compressors, ground vehicles, mining robots, manufacturing robots, solar panel aiming/ Sun tracking systems, DC motor/AC generator invertors, glass fiber cloth looms, cranes, drag lines, auger systems, pulverizers, ball mills, centrifugal grinders, etc.
3) electrical and electronic components making- high power transistors for induction furnace oscillators, magnetrons, simple light switches and electrical outlets, LEDs, fuses and/or circuit breakers, transformers of various sizes, diodes, rectifiers, amplifiers, coils and capacitors of all sizes, resistors, etc.
4) chemical processing equipment- for making plastics essential for wiring insulation to binders for sand casting to paints for interior walls of iron and steel modules to prevent internal rusting. The feedstocks will be H, CH4, CO, CO2, and N from volatiles harvesting. Other reagents and catalysts will be required and will probably be upported from Earth and recycled.
upported mining robots, power supplies (IE solar panels) and furnaces will be used to produce metals and ceramics. Upported casting and machining devices will be used to make more mining robots, power supplies and furnaces and thus more metals and ceramics, and more casting and machining devices until a large enough industrial base is created that can build a factory that a thousand or more helium 3 mining robots can be produced by. Since humans will also be needed; habitat, LSS, farming, etc. to support humans must also be built.
hundreds of thousands of manufacturing operations must be worked out by armies of engineers and technicians. programing computers to guide robots will require millions of instructions.
welding-electric arc might be most common. steel electrodes could be Moon made. In the vacuum shielding won’t be needed, but might the molten weld volatilize? Perhaps arc welding will be done in inert gas filled chambers by robots and humans with breathing gear. TIG welding will require upported tungsten electrodes since there is no available tungsten on the Moon. Oxy-acetylene welding will require hi pressure O2 tanks and special C2H2 tanks with porous material and acetone in them-so we’d have to produce acetylene and acetone. Electrical power supplies will also be needed for arc and TIG welders
Space radiators and cooling systems that keep induction furnace coils from melting and electrical leads to electrolysis furnace electrodes and perhaps even arc furnace electrode cables from melting will have to be welded up.
gaskets and seals making-these might be made of silicones. Cl is needed to make silicones
regolith beneficiation-magnetic and electrostatic, also centrifugal grinders to break up agglutinates that compose 50% of regolith particles…screens and seives…molten silicate electrolysis does not require feedstock beneficiation but most other processes do.
bioleaching for trace elements-this is the use of microbes to extract elements from regolith…this works best for sulfides as the microbes metablolize sulfur for energy…but most lunar minerals are combined with oxygen and silicon….could they be reacted with sulfur to displace oxygen? Controlled conditions of temp, salinity, pressure and light will be required.
Also, making solar panels and electronic components will require upported dopants in some cases.
Computers and spacesuits will probably be upported instead of made on the Moon.
spring steel for vehicle and rolling robot suspensions will req. silicon and manganese. Silicon is easy enough but i am not so sure about Mn
titanium has to be heated to about 1400 F to bend it…Ti will probably be used for small parts made by 3D e-beam sintering. Large things will be made of steel, aluminum and magnesium.
surfaces of some parts might be intentionally oxidized to prevent vacuum welding, or they will be mated with silicone gaskets between them or possibly ceramic spacers…
lubricating oil will have to be upported and later made from harvested volatiles. drilling will req. oil and a pressurized work module
bolts might vacuum weld to threads…could some silicone grease prevent that?
will human and/or robotic blacksmiths forge iron and steel items on anvils?
Salt pots and induction heaters will be needed to heat steel, pressurized work chambers and water tanks to quench steel, annealing furnaces or bury heated parts in vermicuilte made by steaming regolith have to be included also
P=0.5(5.6707E-8)(5 m^2)(1500K^4 – 4^4) = 717,685 watts…..of course as it cools it will radiate slower…but that would take calculus would it not??
In an earlier discussion you said that because the heat conduction is so high the slab probably wouldn’t form a skin. Also, if we pour into a shallow titanium mold with a titanium lid with a thin oxide layer to prevent vacuum welding because we don’t want the iron to volatilize away, that would slow down the cooling….but if we poured into sand and covered with sand…it would really slow the cooling, but sand (regolith) is cheap and abundant!
hey Mark, why don’t you start a thread about the carbon nanotube battery (ultracapacitor)???
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a small army of engineers and techs with years of experience at different manufacturing jobs are going to be needed to figure out how to make the thousands of parts (10s or 100s of 1000s of parts?) needed to industrialize the Moon, if there is ever a profit making reason to do it.
I’ve been thinking, maybe if we show some basic “hows” maybe the “why” will emerge, even though “why” usually comes before “how” in the real world dominated by financial factors.
Welcome to the moonminer.com blog.
If we pour out slabs of iron in shallow sand molds on the Moon will evaporation of molten iron be a problem???
http://www.optotherm.com/emiss-table.htm
If we estimate emissivity of iron at 0.5, and we pour out sand molds 3cm deep, 1m by 5m, at 1200 C., then 717,685 watts will be radiated.
Since this slab would be about 0.375m^3 it would amass about 2,890 kg. and have to lose 30,923 kcals to cool by 100 C. Q=2,890kg.*0.107 kcal/deg kg.*100 deg.
One kcal= 1.163 watt hours so 30,923 kcals is 35,963 watt hours or 129,468,416 watt seconds. This divided by 717,685 watts is 180 seconds.
So in three minutes the slab would solidify for sure. It can’t evaporate much in that time…and a thin skin would probably harden first on the surface exposed to space and prevent evaporation
What do you think???
Essential manufacturing technologies for bootstrapping on the Moon include:
1) pipe and tube making- for everything from water systems and chemical processing devices to space radiators and cooling systems for furnace electrodes, coils and electrical leads.
2) electric motor making- all sorts and sizes for machine tools (drills, milling machines, hammer forges, lathes, extruders, etc.), ventilation fans, water pumps, cooling system compressors, ground vehicles, mining robots, manufacturing robots, solar panel aiming/ Sun tracking systems, DC motor/AC generator invertors, glass fiber cloth looms, cranes, drag lines, auger systems, pulverizers, ball mills, centrifugal grinders, etc.
3) electrical and electronic components making- high power transistors for induction furnace oscillators, magnetrons, simple light switches and electrical outlets, LEDs, fuses and/or circuit breakers, transformers of various sizes, diodes, rectifiers, amplifiers, coils and capacitors of all sizes, resistors, etc.
4) chemical processing equipment- for making plastics essential for wiring insulation to binders for sand casting to paints for interior walls of iron and steel modules to prevent internal rusting. The feedstocks will be H, CH4, CO, CO2, and N from volatiles harvesting. Other reagents and catalysts will be required and will probably be upported from Earth and recycled.
upported mining robots, power supplies (IE solar panels) and furnaces will be used to produce metals and ceramics. Upported casting and machining devices will be used to make more mining robots, power supplies and furnaces and thus more metals and ceramics, and more casting and machining devices until a large enough industrial base is created that can build a factory that a thousand or more helium 3 mining robots can be produced by. Since humans will also be needed; habitat, LSS, farming, etc. to support humans must also be built.
hundreds of thousands of manufacturing operations must be worked out by armies of engineers and technicians. programing computers to guide robots will require millions of instructions.
industrializing the Moon will not be simple.
other technologies that must be included:
welding-electric arc might be most common. steel electrodes could be Moon made. In the vacuum shielding won’t be needed, but might the molten weld volatilize? Perhaps arc welding will be done in inert gas filled chambers by robots and humans with breathing gear. TIG welding will require upported tungsten electrodes since there is no available tungsten on the Moon. Oxy-acetylene welding will require hi pressure O2 tanks and special C2H2 tanks with porous material and acetone in them-so we’d have to produce acetylene and acetone. Electrical power supplies will also be needed for arc and TIG welders
Space radiators and cooling systems that keep induction furnace coils from melting and electrical leads to electrolysis furnace electrodes and perhaps even arc furnace electrode cables from melting will have to be welded up.
gaskets and seals making-these might be made of silicones. Cl is needed to make silicones
regolith beneficiation-magnetic and electrostatic, also centrifugal grinders to break up agglutinates that compose 50% of regolith particles…screens and seives…molten silicate electrolysis does not require feedstock beneficiation but most other processes do.
bioleaching for trace elements-this is the use of microbes to extract elements from regolith…this works best for sulfides as the microbes metablolize sulfur for energy…but most lunar minerals are combined with oxygen and silicon….could they be reacted with sulfur to displace oxygen? Controlled conditions of temp, salinity, pressure and light will be required.
Also, making solar panels and electronic components will require upported dopants in some cases.
Computers and spacesuits will probably be upported instead of made on the Moon.
spring steel for vehicle and rolling robot suspensions will req. silicon and manganese. Silicon is easy enough but i am not so sure about Mn
titanium has to be heated to about 1400 F to bend it…Ti will probably be used for small parts made by 3D e-beam sintering. Large things will be made of steel, aluminum and magnesium.
surfaces of some parts might be intentionally oxidized to prevent vacuum welding, or they will be mated with silicone gaskets between them or possibly ceramic spacers…
lubricating oil will have to be upported and later made from harvested volatiles. drilling will req. oil and a pressurized work module
bolts might vacuum weld to threads…could some silicone grease prevent that?
will human and/or robotic blacksmiths forge iron and steel items on anvils?
Salt pots and induction heaters will be needed to heat steel, pressurized work chambers and water tanks to quench steel, annealing furnaces or bury heated parts in vermicuilte made by steaming regolith have to be included also
congrats. i agree but have not double checked your calc’s yet
using 0.5 for emissivity of iron
P=0.5(5.6707E-8)(5 m^2)(1500K^4 – 4^4) = 717,685 watts…..of course as it cools it will radiate slower…but that would take calculus would it not??
In an earlier discussion you said that because the heat conduction is so high the slab probably wouldn’t form a skin. Also, if we pour into a shallow titanium mold with a titanium lid with a thin oxide layer to prevent vacuum welding because we don’t want the iron to volatilize away, that would slow down the cooling….but if we poured into sand and covered with sand…it would really slow the cooling, but sand (regolith) is cheap and abundant!
hey Mark, why don’t you start a thread about the carbon nanotube battery (ultracapacitor)???
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a small army of engineers and techs with years of experience at different manufacturing jobs are going to be needed to figure out how to make the thousands of parts (10s or 100s of 1000s of parts?) needed to industrialize the Moon, if there is ever a profit making reason to do it.
I’ve been thinking, maybe if we show some basic “hows” maybe the “why” will emerge, even though “why” usually comes before “how” in the real world dominated by financial factors.