3 ms·

To make your power go further, we'd want some impressive insulation in our structures. Aerogel comes to mind, but it's low density and fragility means shipping

by chiph 4y ago

To make your power go further, we'd want some impressive insulation in our structures. Aerogel comes to mind, but it's low density and fragility means shipping it by rocket from Earth wouldn't work. However it may be possible to make it locally - the moon has lots of aluminum oxide, but we'd have to ship the water & alcohol needed for synthesis. Removing the water and alcohol after the aerogel structure gets created is done with freeze-drying, something that is easy on the moon, and the water + alcohol can probably be recovered for reuse in the next batch. Downside to aerogel? It makes for a lousy micro-meteoroid and radiation blocker, unlike something like rockwool that masses more.

pfdietz 4y ago
One could make low density glass foam on the moon simply by dissolving some volatile in molten glass, then spraying the melt into vacuum.
amluto 4y ago
The moon is a near vacuum, so aerogel is the wrong approach. The main form of heat loss is radiative, and the way to reduce radiative loss is with many layers of shiny things. This works like the superinsulation between layers of a Dewar flask. It could be literally a layered structure or a filling of shiny fluffy stuff inside something else. This will dramatically outperform mineral wool or really anything practical on Earth. All this insulation goes on the outside, vacuum side of whatever pressure vessel people live in. To the extent the lunar atmosphere is dense enough to cause meaningful conductive loss, one could pump a better vacuum inside the insulation. The pressure difference between this high vacuum and the lunar atmosphere would be low, so the mechanical strength needed for whatever container holds it would be corresponding low. (This seems very unlikely to be a problem at all. The moon’s atmosphere has an extremely low pressure. Offgassing from the insulation seems like a bigger concern.
kurthr 4y ago
Just hang your room from a wire (or 3) and wrap the thing in aluminized (or gold) mylar reflector. You've got an almost perfect thermos. Pretty quickly, you'll have to dump waste heat. Now cooling is pretty easy since just need a radiator in shadow. You could run a full on heat pump if you wanted to collect and store power, but this isn't like earth where there's an atmosphere with wind and rain. Or a place where there isn't always a significant solid angle of 3k space to radiate to, most of the sky is always night. It's just weird to me that they wouldn't go to the interesting and water/gas rich craters perpetually at the terminator. You've always got power there... just start digging.

by chiph 4y ago

pfdietz 4y ago

One could make low density glass foam on the moon simply by dissolving some volatile in molten glass, then spraying the melt into vacuum.

amluto 4y ago

The moon is a near vacuum, so aerogel is the wrong approach. The main form of heat loss is radiative, and the way to reduce radiative loss is with many layers of shiny things. This works like the superinsulation between layers of a Dewar flask. It could be literally a layered structure or a filling of shiny fluffy stuff inside something else. This will dramatically outperform mineral wool or really anything practical on Earth. All this insulation goes on the outside, vacuum side of whatever pressure vessel people live in. To the extent the lunar atmosphere is dense enough to cause meaningful conductive loss, one could pump a better vacuum inside the insulation. The pressure difference between this high vacuum and the lunar atmosphere would be low, so the mechanical strength needed for whatever container holds it would be corresponding low. (This seems very unlikely to be a problem at all. The moon’s atmosphere has an extremely low pressure. Offgassing from the insulation seems like a bigger concern.

kurthr 4y ago

Just hang your room from a wire (or 3) and wrap the thing in aluminized (or gold) mylar reflector. You've got an almost perfect thermos. Pretty quickly, you'll have to dump waste heat. Now cooling is pretty easy since just need a radiator in shadow. You could run a full on heat pump if you wanted to collect and store power, but this isn't like earth where there's an atmosphere with wind and rain. Or a place where there isn't always a significant solid angle of 3k space to radiate to, most of the sky is always night. It's just weird to me that they wouldn't go to the interesting and water/gas rich craters perpetually at the terminator. You've always got power there... just start digging.