Using Concrete to build space ships...

hello Ed,

>I see large space stations being made with sintercrete (concrete
>made from lunar dust using very little water) blocks held together
>by a network of steel cables. Tension on the steel cables would
>cinch the blocks tightly together; this takes advantae of both
>steel's high tensile strength and sintercrete's high compressive
>strength.

Why not using CNT - Carbon Nano Tubes materials for the net?
It is lighter and a lot stronger than steel.

>
>Like concrete, sintercrete is porous, so the blocks may need to have
>a thin layer of aluminum applied to their surfaces, to prevent
>outgassing and atmospheric leakage. Some variation on plasma
>epitaxy would probably be used for this.

>
>If the blocks are arranged in several layers (suppose 1/2 meter
>thick blocks stacked in ten layers), then damage from impact of even
>a relatively large object would be minimal, as the whole structure
>would flex and absorb the impact. Directly affected blocks could be
>replaced, while still having several layers of blocks between the
>interior and vacuum.
>
>It's nice and simple: the blocks are mostly made from regolith, the
>cables and aluminum coating are from the same source, a few basic
>molds are used hundreds or thousands of times. In the end you get a
>radiation-shielding, repairable, reflective, cost-effective hull
>capable of holding the air inside under even high energy impacts.
>

Sounds good to me.
The problem for my idea (bringing mold skeletons into space and fill
them there) is that you need pretty high temperatures and I think the
light skeleton castings out of CNT-materials would just burn out.

Or could you think of a mold for sintering which can stand those
temperatures, is lightweight and could be set up by astronauts near
the ISS for example?

>> Iron hulls solve the impact debris problem pretty well
>> and you can cut into the structure at any point to
>> make additions and modification easily. In case you
>> had to make a serious repair or change, all of that
>> concrete would work against you unless you have
>> figured out a way to seal the cracks.
>>
>> Cheers, Thor
>
>The problem with using iron (or any heavy-nucleus element) as a hull
>is the secondary radiation. Cosmic rays are bad enough with a thin
>hull, but one would pass right through and hit only a few strands of
>DNA; surround yourself in a meter thickness of iron, and instead of
>one cosmic ray you have a shower of zillions of secondary particles.

Ouch.

Frank