MMM Classics Year 10: MMM #s 91-100 - Moon Society

primage, a solar concentrator able to produce various levels of
heat, various handy molds, some of them refractory (able to
withstand high heat), and sieving and compacting devices.
We’ll also want a lab capable of testing performance characteristics,
and a shop with in which we can “work” these initial
crude materials, and “fabricate” them into useful items: building
blocks and bricks, paving slabs, bins and other containers,
tankage, additional molds, support “tables” for additional
imported equipment, etc. As soon as feasible, we will want
equipment that will let us tinker with sintered and cast iron and
crude glass products.
Yes, we want to set out a ready-to-go-just plug-in
oxygen extraction pilot/demonstration module. But if we come
truly committed from the outset to a permanent industrial
presence, then the oxygen trick, taken alone, buys us little.
Oxygen is important enough to share top priority status.
Delivered back to LEO for refueling Moonbound ferries, it will
lower the cost of importing additional equipment to the Moon.
But every needed piece of low performance equipment that can
be made on the Moon in a simple starter industry also cuts
down import costs, even more directly, by cutting down
appreciably the total accumulative weight of equipment
needing to be imported. We need this two-pronged approach.
To scorn it, as unworthy of attention, would be, to put it
honestly, just plain fatally stupid.
Beyond that, we must always keep in mind, that anything
the outpost can make for itself, however crude - as long
as it is serviceable, is a potential export to other space locations
at a decided cost-advantage over unnecessarily refined alternatives
made within, and shipped out of Earth’s deep gravity well.
This should be the guiding philosophy of lunar industrial
diversification aimed at a healthy diversified export trade.
A companion stratagem that will “set us up” better yet
is to especially fabricate all equipment that does, and must
initially, come up from Earth so that those components which
can eventually be replaced by serviceable Moon-made parts are
made of elements not easily or economically produced on the
Moon, at least not in the near future, but which will be essential
for a healthy diversified industrial operation. For example,
tables, tanks, bins, dividers, separators, containers and other
packaging materials etc. should be made of strategic cannibalizable
materials such as copper, brass, stainless steel, aluminum
alloy, easily reusable simple polymers like polyethylene and
polyurethane, etc. [cf. MMM # 65 MAY ‘93 pp. 7-8, “MUS/cle
Substitutions” and “Stowaway Imports” - MMM Classics #7]
While such “special” manufacturing specifications
may make the import item initially more expensive in itself,
and perhaps even heavier and therefore more fuel-costly to
import, the subsequent advantage to infant lunar industry may
very well outweigh these upfront penalties. If we are indeed in
this for the long haul, then long term goals must be given
priority over short-term budgeting myopia.
To insure that this is the plan we will indeed follow, it
is absolutely essential that we first sell ourselves, then others
whose support we will need, on the whole “ladder” of a lunar
industrial settlement, and not just one innocuous unalarming
“rung” at a time. The rung-by-rung sales pitch now in vogue
among space-activists is perhaps the single most responsible
fatal flaw behind our current going-nowhere space efforts.
by Peter Kokh
The provident architect, in designing a building - be it
a residence, a factory, a school, an office, or a corporate headquarters
- will take into consideration the possible downrange
need to expand. For if the tenant of the premises prospers, the
structured interior space of the original construction may soon
be outgrown. If no provision has been made for easy and
orderly expansion, the original site may have to be abandoned,
and a new facility built on adjoining or distant property.
Much like the would-be architect using Lincoln Logs
or Lego blocks, and even more like the think-ahead Scrabble
player, the architect of the original lunar outpost will want to
leave a number of opportunities for expansion. His grounded
options must provide for changing needs in a flexible way.
“Expand EZ” features will mean minimum disruption and
disturbance of, and other inconvenience to, ongoing operations
This is the philosophy behind using multi-port nodes
as airlock modules, for example. We don’t have to give up a
point of access to expand. Spacing of such expansion/access
nodes must also be considered. The module or other pressurized
space to be added may or may not be of comparable size
to the starter module or modules. If connecting ports are
arranged at angles to one another, as for example in a cross-T,
hex, octagonal or other radial pattern, this provides more sizing
flexibility than does an initial configuration with expansion
ports arrayed side by side.
Expansion ports should be indifferent to the nature of
the added space: hard-hulled payload bay sized modules
brought up from Earth; “telescoping” or otherwise unfolding
hard-hull modules which allow more usable volume; or inflatable
structures. Of these, the cylinder can offer the same or
greater volume than the sphere for the same or lower height.
And the torus offers a more stable footprint as well as room for
built-in features in its “donut-hole” [cf. MMM # 50, NOV ‘91,
pp. 6-8 “Hostels: Lowering the Threshold to Lunar Occupancy:
Part IV, Hostel-Appropriate Architectures” - MMM C #5]
We have recently touched on another topic which will
greatly affect the ease or difficulty of outpost expansion: the
manner in which we apply shielding mass made of regolith. If
we apply it directly, a certain amount of tedious, gingerly
delicate, and messy excavation may be necessary to expose the
expansion point decided upon. If we apply our shielding
indirectly, as in a hangar shed arch roof over the outpost site,
then this shielding will not be in our way when we need to
expand, and, as a bonus, the workers affecting the expansion
can work in a safer, radiation and micrometeorite free “lee”
vacuum under the hangar shed.
The layout of the site must also be considered, and we
won’t want to pick a site that unduly constricts opportunities
for expansion with too close scenic but in-the-way features like
crater walls, rille shoulders, scarps, etc.
Expansion for what?
We will want to expand our outpost in a timely
fashion to provide together both more living space and more
operations space. In expanded living space will be additional
Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 4