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

fi fi || THE QUEST FOR || ‹ ‹
by Peter Kokh
Relevant Readings from Back Issues of MMM
# 5 MAY ‘87, “LunARchitecture” [MMMC #1]
# 28 SEP ‘89, p 5, “Sardine Can Fatalism” [MMMC 21]
# 48 SEP ‘91, p 4 “Hostels: Foreword” [MMMC #5]
# 49 OCT ‘91, pp. 3-7 “Hostel Share of Workload”
[MMMC #5]
# 50 NOV ‘91, pp. 6-8 “Hostel Architectures” [MMMC #5]
# 75 MAY ‘94, p 1 “Lebensraum”; pp 4-6 [MMMC #8]
“Successful Lunar Appropriate Modular Architecture”
# 80 NOV ‘94, pp. 9-10, “Stretching Out” [MMMC #8]
“Canned” habitat space
If spacesuits are restrictive, so will be “canned” Made
on Earth habitat modules. In the beginning, there will be no
easy alternative. On the Moon, local building materials and the
factories to produce them and use them to manufacture shelter
components will be an early “priority”, read “not-immediatelyrealizable”.
Competing designs for habitat modules to be built
on Earth and shipped to the Moon will be judged both on how
compact they are and on how light they are. These are unavoidable
shipping concerns with all foreseeable transport options.
There is a long tradition behind sardine can space,
much of it in pre-nuclear era submarines. That people on short
tours of duty a few months long at best can adapt to such
cramped hot-racking conditions with minimal privacy or other
personal amenities is well established. Anything is bearable if
there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Relief from good human factors design
But a lunar Outpost Interface is not meant to be a
military operation. It is a facility that cannot fulfill its mission
if it does not foster experimental and even artistic creativity in
learning to adapt to an utterly unfamiliar environment with no
experience-recognizable assets. The base will have to be much
better designed than a W.W.II era sub to foster the high morale
needed for success under the challenging circumstances. Pairs
of berths used in shift sequence can trade off shared elbow
room personal space, via a movable partition. Common areas
can be cheerfully decorated and partitioned to create the
illusion of more complex, therefore psychologically more
generous space. There should be getaway retreats one can sign
up to use, and quiet spaces, and noisy gregarious spaces. And
there should be rotation of duties, qualifications allowing.
Hybrid rigid inflatables
Well before “in situ architecture” using locally
produced building materials begins to supply substantially
more spacious quarters for personnel, activities, and operations,
hybrid “rigid-inflatable” modules that compact for shipment,
and expand upon deployment, all the works and systems in a
rigid attached component (end cap, floor, ceiling, or central
core). Such hybrids with their fold down, pop out, snap up
furnishings opening into the inflatable space out of the attached
rigid works section, will solve the frequent objection to
inflatables based on the need to spend much time outfitting
them after deployment. [see the MMM # 50 reference above.]
These hybrids will allow more generous, if still tight,
personal quarters, and common space for recreational activities
which could not previously be supported. more importantly
they will offer space for more storage of equipment, samples,
and experimentation — all prerequisites to advancing to more
demanding mission tasks in the overall framework of learning
how to live and work productively on the Moon. Time sharing
and other tricks
Time-sharing of all common facilities by a full three
shifts will always be essential to getting the most product out
of every facility and piece of equipment per dollar spent and
time elapsed. On Earth, the part time use of facilities in line
with day shift chauvinism is the single most wasteful aspect of
all terrestrial economies. Fortunately, on the Moon artificial
lighting sequences allows us to engineer out of existence any
advantage of one shift over the other, removing all chauvinism
and preferential treatment.
Providing the option of duty reassignment and or the
chance to be reassigned to other sites, or at least to visit them,
will greatly relieve the symptom of feeling trapped and caged.
The flip side is that this need will motivate parties involved to
open up ancillary sites, making a humble down payment on an
interdependent multisite domestic lunar global economy.
Made on Luna shelter
Even with this expanded repertoire of tricks, imported
pressurized space will remain at a premium. The flip side is
that there will be an equal premium, a reward incentive, for the
early development of lunar building materials and an ever
expanding suite of shelter components made from them. The
options most frequently considered are lunar steel, lunar
concrete, and lunar glass-glass composites. The points on
which a decision will be made are these;
√ mass of capital equipment for processing, manufacturing,
and assembly and construction that must be brought
from Earth to realize the capacity.
√ number of man-hours needed to process, manufacture,
assemble and deploy equivalent structures in the competing
materials
√ diversity and variability of modular plans to which the
competing module suites lend themselves
For successful “Lunar Outpost Conversion” i.e. transition
from an Outpost Interface to a Settlement Incubator,
timely steps must be made to develop lunar building materials
and manufacturing and construction methods suitable to them.
We must take the plunge, not just talk about it. For more, see
the MMM # 75 reference given above.
lava tubes - real but limited relief
The use of spacious lunar lavatubes which provide
lots of ready made protected “lee vacuum” are most attractive
for the expansion of area-intensive industries and warehousing
operations. But in themselves, lavatubes do not address the
need for expansive pressurized volume, only the doing away
with the need for emplacement of regolith shielding. In lava
tubes the same solutions apply: good human factors design and
time sharing, the use of hybrid rigid inflatables, followed by
the introduction of shelter space built of lunar materials.
Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 58