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MMM Classics Year 12: MMM #s111-120 The First Fifteen Years December 1997 - November 1998 We never tire of trying As usual, we roamed else- to sketch the early days of the where through the solar system Lunar Frontier. We began with in this year. We need to abandon another article on skyscrapers the Apollo-like call for a “Mars- on the Moon; having to live andback” effort in favor of a under a blanket of shielding does Mars effort rooted in a “Marsto- not mean having to confine our- Stay” philosophy. Meanwhile, selves to molehills! we continue to pull our punches Then, mindful of how in “Mars Direct.” There is a way many of us love our outdoor to double or triple the crew size sports and other activities, we try for the same amount of consum- to show that even without an ables: “More to Mars.” atmosphere, the incurable out- We can’t do Mars at the doorsman will find plenty of end of an umbilical cord, as we opportunities to enjoy being out can the Moon. Instead we will on the surface under the stars. need to develop our installations Later in the year we take up the out of pre-landed “Yolk Sac” of idea of skiing on the Moon and supplies. Pantry Stocking will of cruising the mare seas and take a creative approach. sightseeing scenic cableways. “Oochies” - vehicles that It takes more than one run on oxygen (O2 or OO) and outpost to make “a world” out methane (CH4) are needed on of the Moon, and we attempt to Mars, and may have application sketch out how we will do that. on the Moon as well. One sign of coming of age will We revisit Venus, and look certainly be the establishment of at industries that will let us “live a University of Luna. But why off the clouds” and see skyport- should we wait, when we can set based airlines plying between up a U, of Luna at an Earthside aerostat Xities. We revisit the campus to begin to tackle and idea of “geomorphing Venus” guide all the research and deve- on a rational basis of adding lopment that needs to be done to hydrogen, not water. allow us to transition smoothly Europa, too, comes in for and steadily from a first station another look. There too, we can to a settlement civilization. We “live off the ice” using the will need to extend the Internet elements in the sea-brine that to the Moon and beyond. have made their way to the Modular biospherics surface. Callisto will be the and the ability to make fission- gateway to Europa and the rest able U-233 out of Thorium are of the Jovian system. needed technologies. Driving Finally, we revisit the all this will be the readiness to question of whether the Sun was reinvent everything! born alone or has siblings. ### Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 12 - Republished July 2006 - Page 1 For anyone imagineering a lunar surface settlement MMM #111 - DEC 1997 cozily tucked under its regolith security blanket for protection from the local cosmic weather and for thermal averaging, the idea of a skyscraper-studded "downtown" just did not occur. How would you shield something like that? Enter by happenstance, a picture of a Chinese pagoda in some book I was perusing, and a eureka brainstorming Out on the Lunar Surface avalanche was on its way cascading down the brainslopes of This month, we take an outdoors, or out-vac perspec- my mind. tive on the lunar settlement. Our first feature article takes a A little redesign slight of hand with those pent roofs second look at the possibility of "skyscrapers" out on the open (pent as in penthouse), and they could serve as overhanging - not under some fairy dome (for first article see MMM # 55). retainers that could hold a couple of meters of lunar regolith In our second feature article we explore the various ways the shielding - not prohibitively heavy in the light lunar "sixth- true outdoorsman (who will have given up so much on weight". forsaking the "Green Hills of Earth") might be able to satisfy the urge to be actively one with nature. Lunar Skyscrapers Shattering Low Expectations For people on the Moon for long duration or indefinite by Peter Kokh stays, it is important to be very, very conservative in minimi- [see MMM # 55 MAY '92, pp. 5-6, zing accumulative radiation exposure. "Windows" providing "SKYSCRAPERS on the Moon? Beyond Mole Hill City"] the satisfaction of regular views out onto the local moonscape An envelope-bursting topic revisited should incorporate broken pathways, using mirrors, so that the The conventional wisdom is that surface-embedded or observer is protected in every direction by adequate shielding, surface-burrowing lunar settlements will be monotonous so that the habitat or moon manor has not "hot spots". The complexes of "mole hills" unrelieved except by docking ports, same is true of any type of structure in which people regularly communications antennae and other systems hardware that work or spend significant accumulative time. must be on the surface or surface-exposed. Yes, we have all In comparison, the "pent roof" balcony overhangs seen science fiction artist renderings of skyscraper studded would provide safely set back vertically narrow eye level slit lunar and Martian cities on great glass domes. But that is an windows, and through them, horizontally constrained views of eventuality for realization somewhat further down the road, if the moonscape. Looking out through one of these, the observer ever. And as to settlements within lunar lavatubes, some with would see just enough "sky" to frame the view, a sky with very ceiling heights a thousand feet high or more, - why, what we'll few square degrees of exposure to the naked cosmic heavens have there, are ceiling-scrapers (or even ceiling-touchers). In and its hot delights. both these cases within pressurized megastructures, the first If you wanted to build a pentroofed office building, manmade, the second provided by nature), the skyscrapers are you would have to tweak the internal layout so that the interior likely to be conventional copies of what is current construction space sporting these view ports was reserved for use princi- structure and form on Earth. pally by visitors, and, compromisingly, for regular office But what excited me when I wrote the first article five personnel and daily maintenance staff people "on break". The and a half years ago, was the realization that the starter premise principal break room and lounge areas, however, would be in just wasn't necessarily true. We could build fully shielded interior parts of the building that did not sport such direct-view "skyscrapers" to centralize the downtowns of lunar settlements windows). In other words, lunar office towers would have such built the way settlements on Old Earth always have been, the slit windows only here or there. The architect could always old fashioned way, one structure at a time. resort to rows of fake trompe l'oeil windows to create the right external effect. After all, the architect has two goals in mind: The "Pent Roof" makes it possible an optimum, occupant / user-friendly interior arrangement, Egyptian pyramids, Mesopotamian ziggurats, ant the with a full suite of desirable function areas; and, a pleasing, Tower of Babel notwithstanding, the practical skyscraper was readily identified, and positive image-creating external appear- an urban innovation that awaited two inventions: the steel ance on display for the potential using public passing by. girder, and more importantly, the first people mover - the Such pent roof windows might be used with more elevator. (Yes we know the Russians have built high rises abandon in buildings more heavily used by visitors, such as the without elevators, so, what's your point?) Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 12 - Republished July 2006 - Page 2 Luna City Hotel. Even so, for the protection of guest room dings, corporate headquarters, and hotels. cleaning staff especially, the architect would want to tweak the internal room layout to minimize the total accumulative frac- tion of daily time spent in the hot spot pools of naked sky exposure. And hotel management will be constrained by law to rotate staff duties to minimize the chances of anyone getting too much accumulative exposure. KEY: (1) Outer retaining wall of pent roof; (2) shielding; (3) "Hull" wall of Hotel, with narrow, high, window slit; (4) Interior, shielded, viewing "balcony"; (5) an interior "shielding partition"; (6) Guest Room proper A Second Look In that article we looked at three possibilities: (a) single or multiple vertical cylinders with pagoda like pentroof balconies holding shielding mass, yet which allowed vertically narrow views of the surroundings; (b) Stagger-stacked hori- zontal cylinders, again with pentroof shielded and windows; (c) a circular pyramid of horizontal cylinder sections of decreasing diameters. KEY: (left ) see-thru observation dome skyscraper (right) outside In retrospect, this last design option seems the most view of twin tower with revolving restaurant. Both have 23 strained. Pressurization stresses would make it the most likely occupiable floors. to fail. This article offers a radical rethinking of the round From Pent Roof To Caisson pyramid format. The illustration effort above yielded rather ugly Instead of stacked cylinder sections of decreasing results. The important thing about the torus - central shaft stack diameter, we now propose stacked torus units of decreasing is its dynamic stability pressurization-wise. Why not, for this outer diameter, but of set inner diameter (of the donut hole). application, shuck the pent roofs for cylindrical caisson And they would be stacked over and around a vertical cylinder sections holding shielding up against the building.

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