Illustrations Key: Six of the more interesting articles in this public- cation year (six illustrations at right) were: • Lunar Industrial Seed 3b- • Alternative sites for Analog Research (abandoned dry mine galleries, quarries, hangars • Eartly road network on Mars • Apollo 13 Essays: “Human Exploration is worth the risk” • The importance of hallways on outposts and settlements • Getting past the Macims of Peenemunde Other Articles of note include: • A Page from the Luna City Yellow Pages • Basalt Fibers industry • Lunar Base Preconstruction • L1 Gateway to the Moon • Platinum MOON (Book Review) • Peter’s Shielding Blog • Pendeulum of views on ancient Mars • Mars Analog Stations • “Thermal Wadis” on the Moon • Expanding on the Google Lunar X-prize technology opportunities • Basalt as the linchpin of lunar industry • More than one settlement - role of trade • Research and Development for the International Lunar Research Park • Is Bigelow tackling only half the challenge of TransHab? • Kalam , NSS, and Space Solar Power challenge • “in this Decade” win the race, lose the war • Fresh look at the Spacesuit Concept • Lunar Cold Traps key to outer solar system • L1 Gateway, 2 • Calcium Reduction for processing moonduat • Mining Asteroids on the Moon • An Asteroid Mission that makes sense • An Avatar Moonbase? • Lavatubes: from skylights to Settlements • Sweet Spot in farside’s Mare Ingenii • Lunarcrete: a concept from two decades ago Read and enjoy! 1 Zubrin: “Earth is to Moon and Mars as Europe is to Greenland and North America” So says Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin in Defining the Lunar Industrial Seed: a recent release. Let’s get real! Earth is to Moon and By Dave Dietzler [email protected] Mars as Europe is to Iceland and Antarctica. This Part 3B: Manufacturing comparison is truer both in distance and logistics costs, and in terms of economic viability. North America is every The “cle” part of the bit as fertile and livable as Europe. That certainly is not Industrial Development MUS/cle Strategy* the case of Mars in comparison with Earth. http://www.lunar-reclamation.org/papers/muscle_paper.htm We agree 100% that Mars is destined to be the omplex,C lightweight and electronic (or expensive) second most populous human world. But that will take small to medium sized items will be upported in the early some time. Meanwhile, there is an economic case for stages and mass produced when the base grows and the opening the Moon: first, lunar tourism, while expensive masses of parts demanded exceeds the mass of the at first, is eminently doable. But who, no matter how rich, machines and manpower needed to produce them. is going to spend three years of his/her life, a year of Manpower involves not just the mass of the worker, but more just in transit to and from Mars, and then a year also the mass of the habitat and life support needed to plus on Mars before being able to come back home? support the worker. These items will include computers More to the point, there is a real and significant and telephones for a long time because it costs billions market for lunar products: Anything that can be made on of dollars to build a chip factory, but there might be a the Moon can be delivered to Low Earth Orbit and to miracle like nanofabrication with low mass nanoassem- Geosynchronous Earth Obit (LEO & GEO) at a significant blers that changes this picture. Parts that will be Moon transportation cost advantage over competitive products made after the MUS manufacturing stage is in full swing made on Earth and shipped up the steep gravity well; include hinges, nuts and bolts, pumps, switches robot That means building products with which to make space parts and much more. stations, space industrial parks, orbital tourist complexes 3D Additive Manufacturing – all in LEO, as well as giant satellite-hosting platforms in This method of automated manufacturing GEO (only 180 available slots 2° apart), energy relay includes stereolithography, selective laser sintering and stations and solar power satellites. All of these things will direct metal laser sintering. These machines build up be needed to further build out our terrestrial economy material layer by layer. Guided by CAD data in computers without further damage to the environment. they can make almost any small to medium sized part What is the economic case for Mars? Zubrin had and not just simple ones but very complex detailed parts reached into tenuous fantasy to come up with “pharma- too. Accuracy is within thousandths of a millimeter, so ceuticals made from soils on Mars that can’t be made on precision parts can be made. Parts can be made of Earth. We have been after him for two decades to work on plastic, metal, glass or ceramic. the Economic Case for Mars. So far there has been only Stereolithography makes plastic parts up to 20" one realistic suggestion, and it is ours, and something RZ by 20" by 24." These parts could then be pressed into opposes or ignores: mining Phobos and Deimos for plaster to make molds for aluminum and magnesium volatiles (should the postponed Phobos-Grunt probe casting; or they could be used to make impressions in confirm that one or both are of carbonaceous chondrite sand molds for casting metals with higher melting points composition) and then shipping them in the form of like iron or titanium. They biggest drawback to liquid ammonia (NH3) and liquid methane (CH4) to stereolithography is the cost of the photo-curable resin volatile-thirsty markets on the Moon. that costs $300 to $800 per gallon [1]. On the Moon, It does not matter that Mars has a much more some way of recycling the resin would be needed so that complete set of resources on which to base a self-suffi- we could make plastic parts for molds, convert the plastic cient second human world. What matters is that no one, back to photo-curable resin and make more molds. no set of companies, no set of governments, is going to Direct metal laser sintering can make parts from pour that kind of investment into Mars, with no hope of powdered metals. Parts can be made within dimensions return, no hope of Martian exports to defray the cost of a of 250 x 250 x 215mm (9.84" x 9.84" x 8.46") [2]. The world-making flood of capital goods imports! machine can run on its own 24 hours a day and make A point needs to be made. No how much wetter many parts faster than by conventional casting and and warmer Mars once was in its past, it is now stuck in machining. It is also possible to sinter metals with a the same thermal range as Antarctica, a place with fresh device that uses an electron beam instead of a laser. This breathable air, and surrounding sees full of seafood. Yet must be done in a vacuum and the Moon offers free no one is beating down the gates of the Antarctic Treaty vacuum. Since radiation can be emitted by e-beam to earn the right to settle even the friendlier fringes of sintering, piles of regolith for shielding will surround the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The terrain such machines during operation. may be similar, but the temperatures are not. Below: What kinds of parts will we make with Direct what Mars looks like (top), and what it feels like (bottom). Laser (or E-Beam) Metal Sintering? I see casings and http://www.moonsociety.org/images/vallesmarineris.gif rotors for centrifugal pumps and pistons, rods, cylinders Once this fact is driven home, the pool of willing and crankshafts for reciprocating pumps. We will need Mars settlers will dry up, …. except for one source: hardy pumps to move liquid gases, water and sewage. Electric Lunans who will see Mars as a “walk in the park.” PK 2 motor armatures, bearing races and roller bearings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_spinning and refrigerator compressor parts and high pressure gas http://www.terrytynan.com/metalspinning.html compressor parts, perhaps parts for power tools also Blacksmithing could be made. In the early years these could be This ancient art might find use on the Moon. upported. In time we will need very large numbers of Lunan blacksmiths with electric forges and power these things. Everyone will want a small refrigerator in hammers could make all sorts of things including tools, their cabin and some people with multi-room apartments hinges, pins, bolts and ornate metal work from iron and will want full sized refrigerators. We will need lots of steel. We won't be able to do much without steel tools power tools and the plumbing systems will use lots of and ornate iron work will help with psychological survival. pumps. Compressors will be needed to drive oxygen gas Iron could also be used for nuts and bolts and just about through space radiators and pumps will be needed to everything else today made of mild steel on Earth. Lunar move LOX into and out of storage tanks. Compressors iron will be rather pure like wrought iron and have similar will also be needed to drive hydrogen into hydrides or properties (about 40,000 psi tensile) as opposed to cast carbon nanotubes and to fill oxygen gas tanks in iron that has more carbon in it than steel. Cast iron has spacesuit life support backpacks. about 3.5% carbon and steel is about 0.2% to 1.5% While 3D sintering looks like the key to almost carbon. Iron from molten silicate electrolysis should be magical "Santa Claus machines" it might also prove that rather pure while iron from meteoric fines will contain casting steel, aluminum, titanium, iron and magnesium some nickel and cobalt that makes it stronger.