3 ms·

In a place with lab quality vacuum instead of an atmosphere, at that distance from the sun, I suspect you could use direct focused sunlight for smelting. Not su

In a place with lab quality vacuum instead of an atmosphere, at that distance from the sun, I suspect you could use direct focused sunlight for smelting. Not sure if that would be more practical than electric furnaces, though. It would be more efficient, but the setup is less flexible.

hutzlibu 8y ago
You can also do solar sintering here on earth: https://kayserworks.com/#/798817030644/ https://kayserworks.com/#/798817030644/
rtkwe 8y ago
The surface of the moon itself has a tiny bit of atmosphere so I'm not sure you could do it there. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.htm...
- stcredzero 8y ago
  My understanding is that the Moon's atmosphere is so tiny, it's a lab quality vacuum. I got this from reading stuff from hard SF author Ben Bova. This might be a bit outdated, however. https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=Ben+Bova++moon+vacuum&source=bl&ots=3GOCjbMLjz&sig=ACfU3U3vsS3y_WwAsljeNr0NAQ_roc6hZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKndS58frhAhU8GTQIHbVWBUsQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ben%20Bova%20%20moon%20vacuum&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=...
  - eesmith 8y ago
    http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/DegradeLunarVacuum.html http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/DegradeLunarVacuum.html from 1990 suggests that a human presence on the Moon could make the vacuum level worse than can be achieved artificially on Earth: > Establishment of a lunar base will degrade the lunar vacuum. The time scale for distribution of exhaust gas across the surface of the moon is much less than the excape lifetime of the gas in the lunar atmosphere, and thus exhaust gas can be approximated as uniformly spread across the surface. A 20 person exploration base will contribute an amount of waste gas on the same order of magnitude as the daytime "natural" atmosphere. A 250 person "industrial" facility would be likely to contribute considerably more due to waste gas from various production processes such as lunar oxygen production and mining of helium 3 from the lunar regolith. This could degrade the lunar ambient to levels on the order of 3 nanotorr, replacing the mostly non-reactive gasses hydrogen, helium, and neon with more reactive gasses containing carbon and oxygen. This vacuum is still good enough to perform many important vacuum processes, such as plasma-deposition of amorphous silicon for solar cells, but processes such as molecular beam epitaxy or locating a intersecting beam accelerator on the moon will require additional vacuum pumping. In any case, though, pumping to ultrahigh vacuum will be much easier on the moon than on Earth.

hutzlibu 8y ago

You can also do solar sintering here on earth: https://kayserworks.com/#/798817030644/ https://kayserworks.com/#/798817030644/

rtkwe 8y ago

The surface of the moon itself has a tiny bit of atmosphere so I'm not sure you could do it there. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.htm...

stcredzero 8y ago
My understanding is that the Moon's atmosphere is so tiny, it's a lab quality vacuum. I got this from reading stuff from hard SF author Ben Bova. This might be a bit outdated, however. https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=Ben+Bova++moon+vacuum&source=bl&ots=3GOCjbMLjz&sig=ACfU3U3vsS3y_WwAsljeNr0NAQ_roc6hZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKndS58frhAhU8GTQIHbVWBUsQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ben%20Bova%20%20moon%20vacuum&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=...
- eesmith 8y ago
  http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/DegradeLunarVacuum.html http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/DegradeLunarVacuum.html from 1990 suggests that a human presence on the Moon could make the vacuum level worse than can be achieved artificially on Earth: > Establishment of a lunar base will degrade the lunar vacuum. The time scale for distribution of exhaust gas across the surface of the moon is much less than the excape lifetime of the gas in the lunar atmosphere, and thus exhaust gas can be approximated as uniformly spread across the surface. A 20 person exploration base will contribute an amount of waste gas on the same order of magnitude as the daytime "natural" atmosphere. A 250 person "industrial" facility would be likely to contribute considerably more due to waste gas from various production processes such as lunar oxygen production and mining of helium 3 from the lunar regolith. This could degrade the lunar ambient to levels on the order of 3 nanotorr, replacing the mostly non-reactive gasses hydrogen, helium, and neon with more reactive gasses containing carbon and oxygen. This vacuum is still good enough to perform many important vacuum processes, such as plasma-deposition of amorphous silicon for solar cells, but processes such as molecular beam epitaxy or locating a intersecting beam accelerator on the moon will require additional vacuum pumping. In any case, though, pumping to ultrahigh vacuum will be much easier on the moon than on Earth.