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NASA's Future Inflatable Lunar Base
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you think that future NASA's moon camps need to have a science fiction look, you might be disappointed. Today, NASA is testing small inflatable structures. In fact, if these expandable 'tents' receive positive reviews, astronauts will 'camp' on the moon as early as 2020. These 12-foot (3.65 meter) diameter inflatable units could be used as building blocks for a future lunar base. Right now, a prototype is tested at NASA's Langley Research Center. But NASA also wants to test other inflatable structures in the not-too-friendly environment of the Antarctic next year. Still, it's too early to know if NASA's first habitable lunar base will use inflatable or rigid structures."
I wonder if these structures will be anything like the ones launched by Bigelow Aerospace. Their inflatable space habitat seems to be doing well.
They need to get people there first.
Personally, looking at the maps here, I know wher I'd put the colony.
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Both the building and the astronaut's rubber buddy have one big flaw which I'm hoping I'm just missing in all this... micro-meteorites. Are they going to be testing these inflatable structures with pellet guns? Or perhaps more accurately high power riffles?
It's the same thought I had about the inflatable space hotel story a few months ago... there you have to deal with increasing space junk. Or Chinese anti-satilite weapons.
Or am I just missing something? I would hope NASA scientists are far smarter than myself....
This thing is a basically a big paper bag, presumably to keep wight down. So why are the doors seemingly made out of 3" thick steal ?
Surely if the fabric dome can take any pressures or strains it needs to surely the door could be a thin carbon fiber construction, not something of a submarine ?
Basically, you would inflate a mold for the structure and then pour concrete over it. I could see where working with concrete or a concrete like substance would be difficult in low G and lunar tempatures, but I believe they should be looking at doing something along those lines rather just having people live in temporary ballons.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Inflatable tents on the Moon were done in the movie Moontrap in 1989. It starred Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov, Alfred Bester) and Bruce Campbell (Ashley 'Ash' J. Williams) and was used for a sex scene between Koenig (as Col. Jason Grant) and Leigh Lombardi (Mera) on the Moon.
Virus ripped it off 10 years later, sans Moon.
It's one of many obscure movies I'm wanting to come out on DVD.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You can make a fabirc with the same tensile strength as steel. So given unlimited money you can makes a tent with the same protection as a metal tent of more mass. Imagine a kevlar inflatible tent filled with water. You get a place to store you water and a decent radiaction shield. Druability problably isn't too much of an issue. As for micro meterors, your defence against them would problably involde kevlar derivatives anyways.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
NASA is going to try to make going to the moon as risk free as possible. This habitat is an example of risk aversion. Caves, though riskier, offer several advantages. They're bigger, they offer better solar storm protection. The downside is finding them and then sealing them. So instead, NASA is choosing to take a little cubicle up that has a higher probability of providing some protection for very few people. What's worse is that as soon as somebody dies there'll be tremendous pressure to shut it down which will encourage NASA to be even more risk averse.
Going to the Moon is risky and is going to require a variety of strategies to succeed and people are going to die. 150 years ago, folks who wanted to come west tried whatever way made sense to them to get out here. Lots of folks died trying to get here but more folks survived and prospered. Had NASA run the western expansion, we'd all still be in New York.
Instead, the billions of dollars NASA will waste would be better spent setting up prizes to get people to risk their necks to get to the moon. The X-Prize showed that you get more people spending more money than the prize value to win the prize. You don't even have to make it all money. Heck Pennsylvania was a land grant that paid off a royal debt. Give people who can settle and produce something on the moon property rights to the land and whatever they produce and we'll see a resurgence of pioneers willing to try it.
Since people can't walk to the moon like some walked to the West, NASA could say "we'll pay $20,000,000 for each settler you safely deliver to the Moon's surface. We'll pay $500,000 for each ton of provisions." and you'd see a wealth of companies spring up to ship people to the moon. If the prices are wrong, NASA could adjust as needed. Instead of 4 or 5 inhabitants for $100 Billion, you'd see 1000's.
You'll see lots of people die just like they have before but you'll see survivors as well. Those are the people who should populate the moon, not government employees.
Give me a break; the US has already spent $300 billion on a war in Iraq, and nobody seems to be fretting about that money as much as they should. That $300 billion could have paid for the NASA moon program 3 times over. Hell, it could have funded the research and partial infrastructure to switch to a solar-produced, hydrogen economy so that we could leave the middle east well enough alone. Now I know I'm being overtly liberal in my statement, but how can you keep a straight face while you say that liberals won't let us go back to the moon because they'll rather spend the money protecting poor people, when a conservative administration has already spend three times the cost of the NASA moon program fighting a war in Iraq. I'd be okay with you saying congress will never fund the NASA moon program because there is no political incentive to do so, but your statement is politically polarizing just for the sake of being politically polarizing.
It would be the main problem if they were going to bury them, but burying them only makes sense to protect from meteorites AND radiation. But it doesn't protect it from the other main problem, dirt.
The biggest problem with a colony the moon is moon dust. Due to the lack of atmosphere and running water, lunar dust is extremely jagged (compared to Earth dust that is pretty well rounded). As these structures shift around in the dirt, this dust will be scratching away at them. As the airlocks open and close, the dust will be wearing away at the seals. Read about the astronauts experiences. The dust sticks to EVERYTHING. Anytime someone goes outside they will track in more dust, which will coat surfaces and get in the air. And people thought asbestos was bad...
But that would be unstable. You bump the wall and half of it falls off. I see no reason not to build a more solid structure built out of plug-in modular units. Inflatable does not get you anything over solid units.
I noted earlier that the wall would end up very stiff. You hitting the wall wouldn't cause much vibration outside to begin with. As for it falling off, all you need to do to prevent that is to have some structure outside to prevent it. On earth we use sandbags. On the moon a net might be sufficient, though sandbags would work as well. Worst case you double-wall the shelter. Best case you simply pile up more soil along the sides to help support the soil higher up. Even if it ends up being sixteen feet along the sides instead of four, that simply gives you a more gradual slope to carry the soil to put up top.
I don't read AC A human right