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New Method Discovered For Making Telescopes On the Moon
NASA scientists have discovered a way to craft very large mirrors using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust. They say the technique will allow the construction of massive telescopes on the moon without the expense and risk of transporting the mirrors from Earth. Douglas Rabin of the Goddard Space Flight Center is quoted saying, "Our method could be scaled-up on the moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 meters in diameter." While this breakthrough was relatively cheap, NASA is currently offering up to $10 million for other good lunar research projects.
so .. after the mirrors are finished. how do they propose to keep the mirrors dustfree ?
But it takes forever to count out 12 quatrillion nanotubes for the recipe.
This should prove a useful means of allowing whalers on the moon to see their prey, which are mostly stuck on Earth.
using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust Is there anything he can't do?
"After that, all we needed to do was coat the mirror blank with a small amount of aluminum, and voilÃ, we had a highly reflective telescope mirror," says Rabin.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Forget your stupid observatory! I'm gonna make my own! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the observatory!
They'll still need to shuttle boxes of paper clips and rubber bands to the moon so they can make most of the items they need. Thankfully, both are relatively light weight, durable, and don't take up much space.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Taking away good American mirror grinding jobs and sending them to the moon (probably to be made by illegal aliens) while depriving FedEx of the shipping revenue!
Somebody contact Lou Dobbs!
The reason they can't just transport mirrors, of course, is that they're worried about seven years of bad luck.
...cannot wait to see some mad scientist use this technology to turn the moon into one giant magnifying mirror and having a nice game of "ants on the sidewalk." (And of course, the obligatory welcome to our new super-reflective overlords. Sigh.)
Took this comment seriously, did you?
Heck, the first thing that came to my mind was "When did NASA hire MacGyver?" :-) Anyway, the process sounds quite reasonable. And Moon would make a wonderful observatory. I have been dreaming about lunar observatories since I was a kid quarter a century ago (at that time, I stumbled upon books written by a well-known local popular science writer).
No atmosphere, sixth the gravity, little need for compensating the structure deformations? Sounds good. The question is how heavy the manufacturing equipment would be. And there might more problems at least with optical telescopers - I recently stumbled upon a nice article on this topic.
Ezekiel 23:20
So would this be the first time in history that humanity would be using materials from off the earth to construct something?
How cool would it be to design and build huge projects in 1/6 gravity? There would have to be some incredible designs that would just be too fragile to stand up under Earth atmosphere and gravity, and the range of materials you could use would seem limitless. Maybe a nest of lasers to give a long-term boost to an interstellar probe?
There's got to be huge advantages to building in a lunar environment, with raw materials available right there, and the chance to create living space just by drilling and sealing instead of fabricating from scratch.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Lunar mirror wipers, of course, and lasers to deflect any incoming space rocks.
"That's no space station. It's a moon!"
When you are the moon, there is a person people say is the sun. I saw the sun once, and he came past me, really fast. And it was an, it was called, the, an eclipse. And he came fast! But as he came past, I, I licked his back.
And he doesn't know I licked his back! All in his yellow suit!
I'm the moon.
Hire Dr. Evil to adapt his pet sharks with "Lasers" to be more like fish tank sucker fish that can co-exist in the Lunar habitat and enjoy new extreme environments for them to play, work, and live it, or perhaps have him create some kind of robo-sucker-wiper-kill-bot.
Doesn't it get really hot where the sun shines on the moon, because of the lack of atmosphere?
The problem that I see is that they will first have to build the fabrication facility and if they are going to spin a 50m morror that is going to be one large building.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Getting a large enough volume at room temperature (assuming you need some air pressure too) on the moon to mix it with epoxy and spin it (also presumably at room temperature) might be pretty hard to do without some bulky equipment. Although vacuum coating the mirror blank might seem easier on the moon, as other commentors noted, how do you keep it dust free?
So to summarize...
1. Bring epoxy, carbon nanotubes, aluminum and big spinner to the moon
2. ???
3. Coat resulting lunar dust blank with aluminum to make a mirror
4. Profit?!? (until it's covered with dust)
Using a ingenious new method of buzzword combination, scientists found a way to get funding to do what they want to do, selling it as method to do whatever the funding agency wants, wherever they need it. A new, more ambitious project, will employ nanotubes enhanced with teraherts waves, as a bio-reactor to create biodiesel, clean coal, and solve global warming, creating just the right amount of tritium needed to feed their fusion generator.
...scientists are researching applications of Carbon Nanotubes in curing cancer, bringing about World Peace, discovering the Meaning of Life, superluminal travel, and journeying to the center of the Earth.
Astronomical telescope mirror manufacturing is a labor intensive, hands-on, non-automated process. And the culture of aerospace is highly risk averse: this comes from the very customers, like the good people at NASA Goddard.
:)
Lunar telescope manufacturing would require some exciting scientific, engineer, and processing improvements that would also pay off for terrestrial manufacturing.
First, assuming they're not planning to house and employ a standard aerospace company, with 1000 engineers, technicians, and managers on the moon, this would be fully automated. Mirror making is anything but automated. The development of highly automated methods for processing and testing mirrors would be quite a move forward. It would also have direct benefits for conventional manufacturing.
Second, making a mirror on the moon would seem to require a tolerance of risk currently not accepted. Every time a mirror is moved, a crew of people must oversee the affair, sign the (physical) paperwork, and manually inspect the mirror afterwards. For lunar construction, this would have to become an assembly line that ran without that direct oversight, paperwork, or crews. Enabling more efficient methods would certainly benefit normal processes as well.
Moreover, the task of creating such a facility would keep many, many aerospace workers employed for years
ShoutingMan.com
Like oil, it's a finite resource and shouldn't be wasted on trivialities like telescopes.
...shortly after he rode the mighty moon worm.
Humans will be living on the moon and this means they'll probably be living in glass houses.
Invenio via vel creo
Until twilight hits...
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07dec_moonstorms.htm
So, Ikea has an astronomy equipment division?
Yes, their biggest seller is called Skope, but you can also get the Refraktor or Kassegrain.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
While this sounds like a great idea, I want more information before I accept their "Eureka!". How much weight is actually saved? What percentage of this 'lunar concrete' will be lunar dust, and how much of it will be materials brought up from space?
How is it going to be aluminum plated? To use the minimal amount of aluminum here on earth, we would use electroplating - which requires that the entire dish be put in an electroplating tank - and that's going to be one big tank! I am not so sure that you can get the smooth finish needed with any sort of 'paint'. But maybe there's something I'm missing, and that a telescope of that size need not be built to the same stringent tolerances as the Hubble.
Next, it seems as though this is being built without any way to 'aim' it. This limits its utility, as we can only look at what the moon is pointing the dish at. Yes, sure, we can built several, that's nice. But what about when the telescope is brought into focus of an intensely bright object, such as the sun? I guess whatever is at the focus of the dish will have to be moved in order to not be 'fried'.
Any what about lunar dust and micro (or macro) meteorites?
Perhaps I ought to see how earth observatories like araciebo work.
While have a tool like this will do wonders for space exploration, and eventual colonization, It's only the first step of the observing network we need, which will be tens or even hundreds of telescopes all over the solar system, which can work in concern to achieve very high resolution and accuracy. This is the kind of data we will need to plan missions, to either find intelligent life (which is doubtful) or to colonize other star systems (which is far more probable).
The pseudo-nanotechnology people are a pain. Especially when they work for NASA. They make some minor improvement in materials science, then call a press conference to announce giant telescopes on the moon.
Let's see those guys produce one good-sized mirror without polishing before turning on the NASA PR machine.
Where was this method hiding when they "discovered" it?
It would be nice if they could create inexpensive shatter-proof windows here on Earth using this technology....and the fact that it contains aluminium means that perhaps the windows could be used to generate solar power...
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
If we're thinking about people stationed on the moon, living in habitats big enough to not go nuts in, with either on site energy generation, oxygen production and food supplies, or all of these things shipped in, then I don't see how making and transporting large mirrors in parts and assembling them on the moon is such a complex task. Especially when contrasted against making the thing in situ, in an environment we aren't familiar with, is very deadly and experimental. Think about the factory that would have to be assembled, that could spin a liquid mirror in the vacuum and dust environment of the moon. In many ways, it seems MORE complex to make it up there. I think it's great that people are thinking up these things, but in this case I don't see it as a resource or an energy saver.
Why do you need a building? What "elements" are you protecting the fabrication facility from?
Aren't methods "invented" or "developed", rather than "discovered"?
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I was thingking more about maintaing the state of the paste while it is spun and cures so that it does not freeze or boil off depending on the amount on sunlight hiting it.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Good God. You have like 2 weeks to do the work during the "day". The Epoxy is going to have to survive exposure to those temperatures in vacuum anyway. If the uncured epoxy boils at temperatures seen on the lunar surface, then it's probably not the appropriate choice; and, most epoxies cure faster if heated. If it doesn't set up within two weeks (minus the time to mix and pour) then you're in trouble.
A quibble here. Why is an "aerospace" company making telescopes on the Moon? Shouldn't it be say an "optics" company?
Sorry for posting as AC, I've been a lurker on these boards for too long.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/newsbriefs/read/113
Anyways, a professor in my physics departement, Ermanno Borra, has been working on a very similar concept for about 20 years. And honestly, it has become pretty much a running joke, seeing how much money he's getting from the government, although he has very few results to show.
He works on liquid mirrors. It uses a liquid that is preferably ferromagnetic and covered with a thin film of silver nanoparticles, so that you can put an array of electromagnets under the spinning mirror to do real-time spatially-continuous adaptive optics. Sounds cool (which it is), but there are a lot of difficulties that come to mind which are presumably common to the project described in TFA.
Firstly, the parabolic shape is always pointing up. Since the mirror is liquid, as soon as you tilt it to the side, it loses its parabolic shape, and becomes useless. Now, the adaptive optics part may help you to try to correct for the distortion, but the best results that Borra managed to get is a correction of a tilting of about a tenth of a minute. Disregard this if the material they use for spinning actually solidifies after a while - you could tilt it afterwards, I guess. Not the liquid one, though Borra has promised a range of 5 to 10 degrees on his device for years.
Even if it becomes hard as concrete, the logistics of tilting a 50-meter wide piece of concrete without any structural deformation is impressive. That means, unless you find a way around this, you'll have to keep your mirror looking up, at all times. So you either place it on the pole, in which case it will be looking at the same place for a very, very long time (until precession slowly moves it around). This is good for doing very deep fields, but hasn't much use otherwise since if there's nothing interesting to look at there, you're stuck there anyways.
Or you can place it anywhere else than the pole, but then you're never gonna look at a given object for more than a couple seconds.
Or they might just chrome the moon: http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/1380/crmoon.html
And how much will the giant shield (aka atmosphere) cost to protect this mirror from all the meteorites and various junk flying around out there?
Just reading TFA and thinking that, after reading the sentence "When they mixed small amounts of carbon nanotubes and epoxies (glue-like materials) with crushed rock that has the same composition and grain size as lunar dust, they discovered to their surprise that they had created a very strong material with the consistency of concrete.", wouldn't building living (and other) structures on the moon using this material be a better application of this technology?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
What's the advantage of having a telescope on the moon instead of in space?
Visit the
That's true. Nanotubes mixed with dust is nothing special. ANY fibrous material mixed in with a binder will produce a composite structure with great strength.
tubes and lunar dust is not much different from mud and straw.
Hasan
"Two or more such telescopes spanning the surface of the Moon can work together to take direct images of Earth-like planets around nearby stars and look for brightness variations that come from oceans and continents."
Two telescopes plus a very long radio-telescope array would look like this:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/54799main_mars_smiley_face.gif
Hasan
Peter Chen is a great guy, has always been willing to give talks and demo his stuff to local astronomy clubs, very open to ideas and willing to answer questions. I wish him all the luck in the world in this project - that's he's been working on for years and years and years...
"You are the prophet sent to us by Shai-Aku!"
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Moon dust isn't as stable as you might think. Static electricity from solar wind causes dust bunny issues up there. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07dec_moonstorms.htm
http://images.slashdot.org/hc/92/f975cee5e74b.mp3
A couple of thoughts on this...
First off, I'm reminded of the Lunar Lawn Mower which was proposed as a way to fuse lunar regolith using microwaves. I'll come back to that, later.
Arecibo: As for the mirror being immobile, What about the 305m-diameter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico? Instead of moving the mirror, they move the receiver's location WRT to the mirror, to wit:
Granted, that would then entail creating and operating machinery to move the receiver. That requires power and equipment to construct it as well as operate it. OTOH, nothing says it has to be a 305m dish like Arecibo, or 50m as mentioned in TFA; I'm sure a single 5m or 10m dish, could provide much useful science to start off with.
Array of scopes: As the skills and techniques are developed to construct and operate, say, one 10m telescope on the moon are developed, an array of these could be constructed. Some would aim at the same point overhead so as to provide a larger apparent aperture. Others could point at nearby points overhead so that, as an object under investigation sweeps out of view from one scope, it would already be in view of the next one. This would permit longer-term continuous observation of an object. Then, as more scopes are constructed, one could get both increased apparent aperture AND longer-term observation.
Because gravity on the moon is 1/6th that of the earth, it would take much less infrastructure to support the receiver. This, in turn, suggests less power would be required to move the receiver, too.
Lunar Lawn Mower: This was proposed by Larry Taylor, Distinguished Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Tennessee. It was discussed here a while ago: (Slashdot | Lunar 'Lawnmower' Devised for Moon Colonists).
Log parent up! There is one electrically charged dust storm circling the moon from pole to pole every day!