zero gravity manufacturing Forum: SSI-List
Thread: zero gravity manufacturing
It seems that we may need to look at how all manufacturing can be done
on the moon since there seems to be little on what to do with lunar
resources once they are in zero gravity. One of the conclusions of theoriginal NASA space settlement studies was thatall of the refinement and manufacturing should take place in HEO, rather than on the lunar surface. Some reasons were that HEO has continuous sunlight available, which means solar-powered operations can go on continuously, and not just 2 weeks out of every 4. Another advantage is that while we can use centrifuges for separation or settling of materials whenever we want, we can still have convenient access to 0-G (for whatever processing advantages might be had there). Another issue is that emplacing ore refineries, manufacturing facilities, etc. in HEO will require less energy than will soft-landing it all on the moon, and such facilities will be easier to visit from Earth. If we're only launching raw ore (rather than finished components) off the moon, we can use very high-G mass drivers of modest length and diameter. If launching finished components, lower accelerations are needed which means greater lengths. And the bore size must be greater, all of which results in a much bigger, more ambitious mass-driver. The original studies only recommended lunar-surface manufacturing in the era when you were wanting to build additional mass-drivers to expand the throughput of operations. They felt that the program could get started without any manufacturing capability on the moon.
Mike Combs