Posted on 04/27/2008 9:36:27 AM PDT by janetjanet998
I wish Halliburton would get in on this project. It would drive the moonbats right over the edge.
This is the right thought process. We need to divert all the resourses we are wasting on manned flight to the process of putting robots on the moon to build infrastructure.
Diesel?
Wait till they get a pair of Cat 637s with push-pulls on the moon. They’ll really move your mortgage.
Roads on the moon???
I just had a vision of 5 county workers in space suits leaning against their shovels.
Uh... landing strips?? I don’t think so. Maybe landing pads or zones, but no landing strips needed on the moon. No atmosphere means no atmospheric style flying machines.
Nukes? Keep those Euro-greenies far away.
NO WAR FOR MOON DUST!!!
If those ‘leaders’ in Washington are in need of a solution to our economic situation, they could simply repeal the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and stand somewhere out of the way.
Yeah - Killdozer needs the work.
Right but wrong. The #1 application for Caterpillar machines should be to dig horizontal tunnels in hard rock. The purpose of such tunnels is for habitation, and by building them, they achieve enormous cost and time savings.
Importantly, the Lunar lander taking the machines to the surface is on a one-way ticket, so it can be cannibalized for things like reinforcing rod, structural supports, flooring and importantly, pressure doors.
By building tunnels, astronauts are out of the heat and cold, the vacuum, radiation from space and enhanced radiation on the surface, and that terribly abrasive and destructive Lunar dust.
Such mining robots don’t have to be fast. Even and inch or two of rock a day taken from the wall, crushed and passed out of the tunnel, will be more than sufficient. At intervals they insert advanced ceramic bolts, stronger than steel, to reinforce the ceiling, and spray the walls with sealant against micro fissures.
The robots work for a year or two before people show up. In that time they prepare the tunnel. Most likely the finishing and testing would have to be done by humans.
After a tunnel is done, the robot either continues to mine additional tunnels, or it is used to mine and transport water ice back to the tunnel. Its reactor can also provide power for the tunnel: heat, light and air processing.
By doing it this way, great amounts of time and energy will not be wasted on bringing habitat after habitat to the surface of the Moon, where they will soon become unserviceable. If habitats are transported from Earth, it will be to put them inside of tunnels.
Bring plenty of duct tape. Just ask Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt.
It’s more comfortable to land a motorcycle on a diagonal ramp than on a horizontal surface. Although unprepared lunar surface is almost certainly too rough to allow for horizontal landing, I would think that a prepared ramp could be handy.
Actually, if there are a number of habitations at different parts of the moon, I wonder what sort of acceleration/deceleration would be required to “ramp-jump” from one to the other? The jumping vehicle should probably include some rockets for precision guidance, but having takeoff/landing ramps (possibly with catapults and drag cables) might safe a lot of energy.
They wasted all that time and money on the useless space station when they could’a been working on the moon setting up a station there.
That will be interesting.
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