13 ms·

NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon

73 points by DocFeind 4y ago

kodyo 4y ago
Nobody was going to build these roads until the government came along. Checkmate, Libertarians.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  In all fairness, the legal situation in outerspace is very anti-private business. It was based on the Antarctic Treaty which basically says "everything here must be done under the auspices of a government, and non-public activities are to be avoided." We should have based it on the Law of the Sea which says "As long as a ship is flagged by a government, it can do pretty much what it wants as long as it follows customary rules." You can't own territory on the open sea, but if you're using it for something, it's yours for as long as you're using it. That would be a good rule for the moon but realistically, if a powerful agency wants you to move, you move.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    The seafloor is being auctioned off.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Some countries are auctioning long-term seabed leases within their national waters or EEZ for purposes like offshore wind farms. But the seafloor under international waters isn't being auctioned off.
      - nerpderp82 4y ago
        The world is on the cusp of robotic mining of the seafloor on a massive scale. The International Seabed Authority is the organization formed to sell mining rights in international waters. You know weapons manufacturers and oil/gas will be chomping at the bit to build hardware to support these operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Seabed_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Seabed_Authority https://www.isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts https://www.isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/01/worlds-seabed-regulator-accused-of-reckless-failings-over-deep-sea-mining https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/01/worlds-s... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/deep-sea-mining.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/deep-sea-mining.htm... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/seabed-mining-regulations-00019005 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/seabed-mining-regul...
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Governments can make all the pronouncements they like about things in space. It'll be the people living there that decide what they do and don't do.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It's the next step beyond a "road to nowhere". These would be from nowhere, to nowhere.
- wmf 4y ago
  The Moon has no (net) commercial value so of course the market is wisely not building infrastructure where it's not needed.
shkkmo 4y ago
That headline/title "NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon" condenses information so much that is becomes both false and deliberately misleading. The actual article says: > to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon—including landing pads, habitats and roads. So the contract isn't to build anything but to develop technologies that could be used to build a wide variety of needed infrastructure on the moon.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Plus, most of that money is probably intended to focus on building landing pads since that's still NASA's biggest "unknown" risk factor regarding bringing large amounts of cargo down to the lunar surface. It isn't really clear if a large lander like Starship would be at risk of digging itself into a hole (and potentially tossing regolith into an orbit such that it comes around and hits the lander or surrounding infrastructure) if it landed using its main thrusters. For now the HLS design includes separate landing thrusters higher up, but since those add more complexity they're probably fairly interested in exploring other possibilities.
- Arrath 4y ago
  That does make much more sense, thank you.
aynyc 4y ago
Just curious, I get low gravity, extreme temperature and flying debris, what are the physical challenges of building infrastructure on the moon? For example, I assume we are probably use local material to build stuff. What can we get from the moon or do we need to ship the whole thing there?
- vkou 4y ago
  > What can we get from the moon Similar to what we can get from the Earth (The mineral composition of the two bodies is similar), with the key difference being that terrestrial construction sites don't turn undifferentiated piles of rocks into buildings, doors, windows, elevators, and roadways. There's a colossal supply chain that turns those piles of rocks into usable building materials. We're likely to see moon roads sometime after we get flying cars, and economically viable fusion energy.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Interesting paper on making concrete on the moon: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985lbsa.conf..381L https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985lbsa.conf..381L
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      That paper is not careful about the meaning of the used words and it does not discuss any of the difficult parts. "Concrete" normally refers to rocks that are bound with cement, without having to use high temperature and/or pressure. The paper does not explain how such a cement could be made from lunar rocks. The Portland cement and most other usual cements, which are used on Earth, require water, which is not available in most places on the Moon. What could be done is to extract the calcium oxide (quicklime), or other similar oxides, e.g. magnesia or yttria, from the lunar rocks. Without water, these oxides cannot be used to make cement, i.e. a binder that becomes solid without applying high temperature or pressure, but due to chemical reactions at low temperature. Nevertheless, these oxides can be used as binders in making ceramics, by sintering at a high temperature and moderate pressure, like making bricks on Earth. Thus one can make ceramics or glass on the Moon, which should be the cheapest materials, but not cement or concrete. There is no chance of making a building by pouring concrete, like on Earth. It should be possible to make a building from bricks, which might have shapes holding them together, but which must also use some metal parts, e.g. bolts or rivets, to ensure that they stay in place, in the absence of cement that could be applied like on Earth. It might be possible to seal the spaces between ceramic bricks with some kind of easily fusible glass, to make them airtight.
Kukumber 4y ago
Who owns the moon? shouldn't there be an international concertation to grant such infrastructure contracts? The question will arise when China will want its roads too Who will be there first? First to land, first to build, rights to own?
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Good question. Technically, nobody, due to Outer Space Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty). In practice, the only reason the treaty is still up is because it is not very practical to go to terrestrial wars over possession of a piece of Moon surface or an asteroid while you have no realistic method of making any use of it. It is likely one of the powers will withdraw from the treaty when they are finally ready to take possession of a significant asset in space and the benefits outweigh the risk of terrestrial war. And then other countries will do pretty much the same not to get behind.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    NASA puts the west in a very bad position, India will want its roads too unless they'll be forced to do like ESA/CSA/JAXA and become just an equipment supplier for NASA How can you negotiate to prevent other organization to go solo and claim ownership, if you yourself go solo? We are headed for a big mess, thanks to Greed, that guy is omnipresent nowadays China is prepared, they know how to build autonomous space stations, they replaced the ISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      Describing ESA/CSA/JAXA as 'just an equipment supplier for NASA' is exactly the issue you're attributing to the West. They aren't prevented from developing their own crewed spaceflight capability. They aren't even prevented from working with China (ESA has experiments on Tiangong for instance). They just find it more effective to put aside greed to work closely with NASA. It is well understood that the only reasons ESA and JAXA in particular don't have crewed spacecraft is a lack of need, as both are clearly capable of developing reliable rockets and having supplied modules for the ISS are also clearly capable of designing spacecraft that can keep humans alive. If India wants its Lunar infrastructure in the hypothetical case where the West somehow has already fully colonized it before India has had a chance to establish and maintain its own colony, perhaps India too should put aside its greed and seek to work through things via mutual cooperation?
discussDev 4y ago
Misleading title, funny enough the road outside my house is nothing more then compacted gravel that the intentionally leave the dust in... its called B2 modified I think. so as long as your moon buggies have reasonably wide tire to weight all you need to do is grind it to the right size and compact it. ... but the article itself is about much more then that and it will be interesting if 57M can actually build a solid structure from those materials. As others have said no water or anything so if it can be done without a big supply chain then I bet the "tech" will be to compress what's there into bricks of some sort. So they just reproduce the materials here and see how much they need to be compressed to make something usable.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  Since my childhood home is next to a gravel road, I somewhat doubt that compacted gravel would be feasible. Gravel roads of all kinds spin up a lot of dust when you drive on them, and on the Moon it would take even longer to settle than on Earth. A constant cloud of floating particles can not be good for your gear if you want to travel through it with any reasonable frequency.
  - avmich 4y ago
    > A constant cloud of floating particles can not be good for your gear if you want to travel through it with any reasonable frequency. I bet on the Moon that dust behaves very different. No atmosphere, so no usual clouds. Static electricity, so some possible weird behavior. No erosion and soil, so dust is sharp and hard. It would be interesting to see how road construction looks like on the Moon.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      Moon dust is totally weird stuff. Because there's no erosion, it's super shardey and pokey. This also means that points of contact between individual dust particles are minimal, so it's highly insulating and also has very poor thermal conductivity across the bulk. I wonder if it would be worth it to set up a mid/high frequency vibration device up to the moon and just run it for a few months? Years? To cause vibrational contact erosion in the immediate environs of wherever you intend to land to soften up the shards... Would that even work?
m3kw9 4y ago
The contract is more likely to test road building instead
marcodiego 4y ago
What I really would like to see on the Moon: more investigation about peaks of eternal light[1]. These are points close to the poles of a body which receive sunlight (almost) continuously. On the Moon, if there is an area with a few peaks which are illuminated for long enough and with icy water close by; it is possible to store energy in the form hydrogen and use it for the periods without light. That could enable permanent settlements on the Moon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light
1970-01-01 4y ago
Landing pads are part of this deal and are critical to Artemis. More info here: https://www.thespaceresource.com/news/2020/6/how-will-we-handle-lunar-dust-without-landing-pads https://www.thespaceresource.com/news/2020/6/how-will-we-han...
dr_dshiv 4y ago
I think the most efficient construction on the moon would be inflated structures constructed underground in the mooncaves. Let the caves block the radiation and just focus on the thermal insulation and the air pressure integrity. This means it would be possible to build large volume spaces, like sporting arenas. And that’s the segue I need to share a deck promoting “Moonball.” “A Modest Thesis on Moonball: Billions of people will want to watch professional athletes playing sports on the moon. A successful event or sports franchise could fund economically sustainable human habitation by 2035.” I would love any feedback on this totally modest proposal: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5VtxJdLMzLo8LFhBPJRagyWFdjY/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5Vtx...
- pablo24602 4y ago
  I am convinced by your thesis. I'd add more details on the potential revenues garned by such an event, however- and how it'd compare to the cost to construct such a sporting arena. For example, FIFA is supposedly raking in 4.7B in revenue for the World Cup this year.
- Hoasi 4y ago
  The plea for sports on the moon we didn't know we needed. It's a good departure from some of the usual ideas around Moon bases. Create a mainstream event around moon sports, fun and absurd enough to catch billions of eyeballs and drive revenue for future exploitation of the whole satellite. Brilliant.
- clarents 4y ago
  I'm sold. Where can I buy Moonball swag?
jkmcf 4y ago
Seems to me that rail would be much better than roads. We don't need to replicate on the Moon the mess that is American roads and sprawl. Either way, 3D printing rail/roads sounds like a good idea.

73 points by DocFeind 4y ago

kodyo 4y ago

Nobody was going to build these roads until the government came along. Checkmate, Libertarians.

pyuser583 4y ago
In all fairness, the legal situation in outerspace is very anti-private business. It was based on the Antarctic Treaty which basically says "everything here must be done under the auspices of a government, and non-public activities are to be avoided." We should have based it on the Law of the Sea which says "As long as a ship is flagged by a government, it can do pretty much what it wants as long as it follows customary rules." You can't own territory on the open sea, but if you're using it for something, it's yours for as long as you're using it. That would be a good rule for the moon but realistically, if a powerful agency wants you to move, you move.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  The seafloor is being auctioned off.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Some countries are auctioning long-term seabed leases within their national waters or EEZ for purposes like offshore wind farms. But the seafloor under international waters isn't being auctioned off.
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      The world is on the cusp of robotic mining of the seafloor on a massive scale. The International Seabed Authority is the organization formed to sell mining rights in international waters. You know weapons manufacturers and oil/gas will be chomping at the bit to build hardware to support these operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Seabed_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Seabed_Authority https://www.isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts https://www.isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/01/worlds-seabed-regulator-accused-of-reckless-failings-over-deep-sea-mining https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/01/worlds-s... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/deep-sea-mining.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/deep-sea-mining.htm... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/seabed-mining-regulations-00019005 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/seabed-mining-regul...
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Governments can make all the pronouncements they like about things in space. It'll be the people living there that decide what they do and don't do.
HPsquared 4y ago
It's the next step beyond a "road to nowhere". These would be from nowhere, to nowhere.
wmf 4y ago
The Moon has no (net) commercial value so of course the market is wisely not building infrastructure where it's not needed.

shkkmo 4y ago

That headline/title "NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon" condenses information so much that is becomes both false and deliberately misleading. The actual article says: > to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon—including landing pads, habitats and roads. So the contract isn't to build anything but to develop technologies that could be used to build a wide variety of needed infrastructure on the moon.

dotnet00 4y ago
Plus, most of that money is probably intended to focus on building landing pads since that's still NASA's biggest "unknown" risk factor regarding bringing large amounts of cargo down to the lunar surface. It isn't really clear if a large lander like Starship would be at risk of digging itself into a hole (and potentially tossing regolith into an orbit such that it comes around and hits the lander or surrounding infrastructure) if it landed using its main thrusters. For now the HLS design includes separate landing thrusters higher up, but since those add more complexity they're probably fairly interested in exploring other possibilities.
Arrath 4y ago
That does make much more sense, thank you.

aynyc 4y ago

Just curious, I get low gravity, extreme temperature and flying debris, what are the physical challenges of building infrastructure on the moon? For example, I assume we are probably use local material to build stuff. What can we get from the moon or do we need to ship the whole thing there?

vkou 4y ago
> What can we get from the moon Similar to what we can get from the Earth (The mineral composition of the two bodies is similar), with the key difference being that terrestrial construction sites don't turn undifferentiated piles of rocks into buildings, doors, windows, elevators, and roadways. There's a colossal supply chain that turns those piles of rocks into usable building materials. We're likely to see moon roads sometime after we get flying cars, and economically viable fusion energy.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Interesting paper on making concrete on the moon: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985lbsa.conf..381L https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985lbsa.conf..381L
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    That paper is not careful about the meaning of the used words and it does not discuss any of the difficult parts. "Concrete" normally refers to rocks that are bound with cement, without having to use high temperature and/or pressure. The paper does not explain how such a cement could be made from lunar rocks. The Portland cement and most other usual cements, which are used on Earth, require water, which is not available in most places on the Moon. What could be done is to extract the calcium oxide (quicklime), or other similar oxides, e.g. magnesia or yttria, from the lunar rocks. Without water, these oxides cannot be used to make cement, i.e. a binder that becomes solid without applying high temperature or pressure, but due to chemical reactions at low temperature. Nevertheless, these oxides can be used as binders in making ceramics, by sintering at a high temperature and moderate pressure, like making bricks on Earth. Thus one can make ceramics or glass on the Moon, which should be the cheapest materials, but not cement or concrete. There is no chance of making a building by pouring concrete, like on Earth. It should be possible to make a building from bricks, which might have shapes holding them together, but which must also use some metal parts, e.g. bolts or rivets, to ensure that they stay in place, in the absence of cement that could be applied like on Earth. It might be possible to seal the spaces between ceramic bricks with some kind of easily fusible glass, to make them airtight.

Kukumber 4y ago

Who owns the moon? shouldn't there be an international concertation to grant such infrastructure contracts? The question will arise when China will want its roads too Who will be there first? First to land, first to build, rights to own?

twawaaay 4y ago
Good question. Technically, nobody, due to Outer Space Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty). In practice, the only reason the treaty is still up is because it is not very practical to go to terrestrial wars over possession of a piece of Moon surface or an asteroid while you have no realistic method of making any use of it. It is likely one of the powers will withdraw from the treaty when they are finally ready to take possession of a significant asset in space and the benefits outweigh the risk of terrestrial war. And then other countries will do pretty much the same not to get behind.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  NASA puts the west in a very bad position, India will want its roads too unless they'll be forced to do like ESA/CSA/JAXA and become just an equipment supplier for NASA How can you negotiate to prevent other organization to go solo and claim ownership, if you yourself go solo? We are headed for a big mess, thanks to Greed, that guy is omnipresent nowadays China is prepared, they know how to build autonomous space stations, they replaced the ISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Describing ESA/CSA/JAXA as 'just an equipment supplier for NASA' is exactly the issue you're attributing to the West. They aren't prevented from developing their own crewed spaceflight capability. They aren't even prevented from working with China (ESA has experiments on Tiangong for instance). They just find it more effective to put aside greed to work closely with NASA. It is well understood that the only reasons ESA and JAXA in particular don't have crewed spacecraft is a lack of need, as both are clearly capable of developing reliable rockets and having supplied modules for the ISS are also clearly capable of designing spacecraft that can keep humans alive. If India wants its Lunar infrastructure in the hypothetical case where the West somehow has already fully colonized it before India has had a chance to establish and maintain its own colony, perhaps India too should put aside its greed and seek to work through things via mutual cooperation?

discussDev 4y ago

Misleading title, funny enough the road outside my house is nothing more then compacted gravel that the intentionally leave the dust in... its called B2 modified I think. so as long as your moon buggies have reasonably wide tire to weight all you need to do is grind it to the right size and compact it. ... but the article itself is about much more then that and it will be interesting if 57M can actually build a solid structure from those materials. As others have said no water or anything so if it can be done without a big supply chain then I bet the "tech" will be to compress what's there into bricks of some sort. So they just reproduce the materials here and see how much they need to be compressed to make something usable.

Etheryte 4y ago
Since my childhood home is next to a gravel road, I somewhat doubt that compacted gravel would be feasible. Gravel roads of all kinds spin up a lot of dust when you drive on them, and on the Moon it would take even longer to settle than on Earth. A constant cloud of floating particles can not be good for your gear if you want to travel through it with any reasonable frequency.
- avmich 4y ago
  > A constant cloud of floating particles can not be good for your gear if you want to travel through it with any reasonable frequency. I bet on the Moon that dust behaves very different. No atmosphere, so no usual clouds. Static electricity, so some possible weird behavior. No erosion and soil, so dust is sharp and hard. It would be interesting to see how road construction looks like on the Moon.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Moon dust is totally weird stuff. Because there's no erosion, it's super shardey and pokey. This also means that points of contact between individual dust particles are minimal, so it's highly insulating and also has very poor thermal conductivity across the bulk. I wonder if it would be worth it to set up a mid/high frequency vibration device up to the moon and just run it for a few months? Years? To cause vibrational contact erosion in the immediate environs of wherever you intend to land to soften up the shards... Would that even work?

m3kw9 4y ago

The contract is more likely to test road building instead

marcodiego 4y ago

What I really would like to see on the Moon: more investigation about peaks of eternal light[1]. These are points close to the poles of a body which receive sunlight (almost) continuously. On the Moon, if there is an area with a few peaks which are illuminated for long enough and with icy water close by; it is possible to store energy in the form hydrogen and use it for the periods without light. That could enable permanent settlements on the Moon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light

1970-01-01 4y ago

Landing pads are part of this deal and are critical to Artemis. More info here: https://www.thespaceresource.com/news/2020/6/how-will-we-handle-lunar-dust-without-landing-pads https://www.thespaceresource.com/news/2020/6/how-will-we-han...

dr_dshiv 4y ago

I think the most efficient construction on the moon would be inflated structures constructed underground in the mooncaves. Let the caves block the radiation and just focus on the thermal insulation and the air pressure integrity. This means it would be possible to build large volume spaces, like sporting arenas. And that’s the segue I need to share a deck promoting “Moonball.” “A Modest Thesis on Moonball: Billions of people will want to watch professional athletes playing sports on the moon. A successful event or sports franchise could fund economically sustainable human habitation by 2035.” I would love any feedback on this totally modest proposal: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5VtxJdLMzLo8LFhBPJRagyWFdjY/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5Vtx...

pablo24602 4y ago
I am convinced by your thesis. I'd add more details on the potential revenues garned by such an event, however- and how it'd compare to the cost to construct such a sporting arena. For example, FIFA is supposedly raking in 4.7B in revenue for the World Cup this year.
Hoasi 4y ago
The plea for sports on the moon we didn't know we needed. It's a good departure from some of the usual ideas around Moon bases. Create a mainstream event around moon sports, fun and absurd enough to catch billions of eyeballs and drive revenue for future exploitation of the whole satellite. Brilliant.
clarents 4y ago
I'm sold. Where can I buy Moonball swag?

jkmcf 4y ago

Seems to me that rail would be much better than roads. We don't need to replicate on the Moon the mess that is American roads and sprawl. Either way, 3D printing rail/roads sounds like a good idea.