2 ms·
While the temperature is rather wide, I would expect the actual energy difference to be relatively small, as without atmosphere for convection and little conduc
by kimixa 4y ago
While the temperature is rather wide, I would expect the actual energy difference to be relatively small, as without atmosphere for convection and little conduction down due to the insulating properties of regolith it may end up heating just the very surface, so very little mass.
The fact that people could stand in spacesuits on the surface for significant amounts of time, with little heat removal capacity, likely means the actual energy insolation isn't huge. Functionally it'll be the same as on earth at a similar angle to the sun, minus atmospheric absorption (which a quick google says may be in the order of 20%).
Similarly you need a way of easily removing the heat from the "cold" end of whatever system you use to generate power, as otherwise it'll quickly heat up and remove the differential. Again without convection you'll likely rely on radiation, which may not be a big difference at the temperatures we're looking at, and conduction through the ground, which may require some way of sinking significant heat into the ground. Possibly using some pipes driven deep containing some kind of heat transporting medium, e.g. a liquid, but then you have issues on finding something with a high heat capacity that doesn't vaporize/solidify at any of the temperatures.