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How would you power it? A nuclear reactor?
by adricl 5y ago
How would you power it? A nuclear reactor?
- lstodd 5y agoA RITEG would do. It doesn't need much power.
- femto 5y agoSolar would also do, as long as it has about 14 days of battery backup. Lunar weather is pretty consistent! :)
- lstodd 5y agoSolar+batteries sort of can do it, but that wasn't ever attempted on the Moon, while ritegs are a very well known and proven tech. This all pales beyound mounting the cables though. If anyone does _that_ then the power issues are moot.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoRadio receivers are not power hungry. Even a small solar cell and battery would probably suffice. I suspect that returning the signal to Earth would consume more power than the actual receiver part.
- Ginden 5y agoAre you sure about that? https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20190131a/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2019013... > In a breakaway session, a telescope engineer told colleagues that power consumption alone could cost tens of millions of euros each year, a sizable chunk of the array’s projected €100 million annual operating cost. If costs did not come down, the energy requirements had the potential to hobble or even sink the project.
- rtkwe 5y agoYou're comparing two vastly different types of radio observatories. That's for an array where you have dozens to hundreds of amps, signal processors and antennas that require power. This would be much closer to the Arecibo telescope or the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope in power requirements.
- jl6 5y agoSolar+battery would work just fine. There’s no dark side of the moon, just longer days and nights.
- marcyb5st 5y agoAs others mentioned solar is just fine. I believe the majority of the energy will be needed to keep the batteries warm enough to work (like the drone that is currently on Mars). Bouncing the signal back to earth will be more problematic as you need a satellite orbiting the moon.
- phaemon 5y agoOr a long cable... 5078dc16f05cc325c8f8804f68e20feac85bea84
- phaemon 5y agoActually, it wouldn't need to be that long. The circumference of the moon is 40k kilometres, so assuming the site was in the center of the far side (though there's no reason it needs to be), that would put it at ~10,000 km from sight of the earth. That's shorter than some transatlantic cables. I reckon it would be doable.