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Electric Motors & Generators

Administrator — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:49:02 +0000

Electric motors of various sizes will be needed in large numbers on the Moon for vehicle and mining robot locomotion, mills, machine tools, power hand tools, ventilation system fans, water pumps, compressors in cooling systems, solar panel and reflector Sun tracking systems, etc. Most will be DC motors running off solar panels, batteries, etc. AC generators driven by DC motors will be needed for induction heating in fewer numbers. A generator is very similar to a motor so if we can make motors we can make generators. These tasks will probably be to complex for robots so human workers will be required. There is no mica known on the Moon, so thin sheets of basalt might have to do for laminations. Aluminum windings instead of copper will also have to suffice. Wires must be coated with insulating enamel that might be made from harvested volatiles. If we can make laminated cores for motors and wind them too, we can also make transformers.

The prinicples of motors and generators are not hard to understand, but the designing and making of electric motors and generators is beyond my scope. Lunar electric motor mass production is going to have to be figured out by experienced electrical and manufacturing engineers.

Mining machines like Kulckinski’s Mark 3 will need motors for wheels, motors to drive the bucket loader, motors to run the augers that convey regolith into and out of the machine’s furnace, and motors to run compressors that pressurize volatiles into the machine’s tanks.

If we intend to build thousands of miners to mine for helium 3 and other volatiles we are going to need one heck of a lot of motors for the miners as well as the machines in the factories where they are made on the Moon.

Basic Manufacturing

Administrator — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:10:36 +0000

Most lunar products will be rods, beams, pipes and tubes made by extrusion. Also flanges, pressure vessels and tanks, nuts and bolts, and metal plates both flat and curved. Rods will be cut into short pieces, heads stamped on them and filed, and threaded to make bolts. Rods will also be used for axels and drive shafts for motors and generators. Flanges will be needed to join pipes to water tanks, liquid gas tanks and rocket propellant tanks. They could be forged with power hammers. Beams, pipes and tubes might be made of basalt as well as iron, steel and aluminum. Metal plates will be made by casting slabs and rolling them thinner in rolling mills. Flat plates will be used for vehicle cabins, habitat modules, rolling mill frames, mining shovel buckets and more. Curved plates will be rolled to make cement mixers, ball mills, cylindrical tanks, etc. How do we make domes for the ends of some tanks?? Flat plates will be cut with lasers to make various parts like webs for reinforcing rectangular habitat.

Besides bolting things togther, the major joining process will be electric arc welding with welding rods made of steel on the Moon. Aluminum will require TIG welding with upported tungsten rods. Some welding will be done with oxy-acetylene. Arc and TIG welding can be done outside but oxy-acetylene will be done inside pressurized chambers to recover CO2 and H2O from the air.

Casting will also be done. There will also be some forging of large parts. See: http://www.moonminer.com/Lunar-Manufacturing-2.html

Helium 3

Administrator — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:07:37 +0000

One kg. 3he fused with 0.66 kg D yields 19 MW years of energy. This is 166,440,000 kilowatt hours…at $0.01 a kW hr. , about the same fuel cost as coal or uranium, this stuff is worth $1.6 million a kg.

Ceramics and Refractories

Administrator — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:02:59 +0000

Who knows much about this? I am under the impression that grinding wheels are made by binding alumina particles with glass…and furnace linings by binding alumina with cement. How would we cast or sinter high temp ceramics like SiC or TiC?? In carbon or cooled furnaces??

carbon nanotube battery/ultracapacitor

Administrator — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:58:57 +0000

This is an interesting, possibly revolutionary, technical development.

Human Value

Administrator — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:43:22 +0000

If it costs $10,000 a pound to get payloads to the Moon and it costs a billion $ to get 4 humans there or $250 million for each human, do they need to produce 100 lbs. of parts in 250 work days per year? 250*100*$10,000 = $250 million If they can’t do this much work why not just send up 100,000 lbs of parts?? I think that humans rather than parts will be able to do fine assembly tasks that teleoperated robots cannot. If they can fix a multimillion dollar robot that cost millions to get to the Moon when teleoperaters on the ground can’t get a robot to fix a robot they will be worth more than the mass of parts they produc

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Administrator — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:22:43 +0000

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