Lunar Lawn Mower - Use Electro-static Properties of Lunar Soil

[Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI,

"Lunar Lawn Mower"
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-05zzr.html

: Scientists and engineers figuring out how to return astronauts to
: the moon, set up habitats, and mine lunar soil to produce anything
: from building materials to rocket fuels have been scratching their
: heads over what to do about moondust.

: It's everywhere! The powdery grit gets into everything, jamming
: seals and abrading spacesuit fabric. It also readily picks up
: electrostatic charge, so it floats or levitates off the lunar
: surface and sticks to faceplates and camera lenses. It might even
: be toxic.

: So what do you do with all this troublesome dust? Larry Taylor,
: Distinguished Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of
: Tennessee has an idea:

: Don't try to get rid of it--melt it into something useful!

: "I'm one of those weird people who like to stick things in ordinary
: kitchen microwave ovens to see what happens," Taylor confessed to
: several hundred scientists at the Lunar Exploration Advisory Group
: (LEAG) conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center last month.

: Apropos to the moon, he once put a small pile of lunar soil brought
: back by the Apollo astronauts into a microwave oven. And he found
: that it melted "lickety-split," he said, within 30 seconds at only
: 250 watts.

: The reason has to do with its composition. The lunar regolith, or
: soil, is produced when micrometeorites plow into lunar rocks and
: sand at tens of kilometers per second, melting it into glass. The
: glass contains nanometer-scale beads of pure iron – so called
: "nanophase" iron. It is those tiny iron beads that so efficiently
: concentrate microwave energy that they "sinter" or fuse the loose
: soils into large clumps.

: This observation has inspired Taylor to imagine all kinds of
: machinery for sending to the moon that could fuse lunar dust into
: useful solids.

: "Picture a buggy pulled behind a rover that is outfitted with a set
: of magnetrons," that is, the same gizmo at the guts of a microwave
: oven.

: "With the right power and microwave frequency, an astronaut could
: drive along, sintering the soil as he goes, making continuous brick
: down half a meter deep--and then change the power settings to melt
: the top inch or two to make a glass road," he suggested.

: "Or say that you want a radio telescope," he continued. "Find a
: round crater and run a little microwave 'lawnmower' up and down the
: crater's sides to sinter a smooth surface. Hang an antenna from the
: middle--voila, instant Arecibo!" he exclaimed, referring to the
: giant 305-meter-diameter radio telescope in Puerto Rico formed out
: of a natural circular valley.

: Technical challenges remain. Sintering moondust in a microwave oven
: on Earth isn't the same as doing it on the airless moon.
: Researchers still need to work out details of a process to produce
: strong, uniformly sintered material in the harsh lunar environment.

: But the idea has promise: Sintered rocket landing pads, roads,
: bricks for habitats, radiation shielding--useful products and dust
: abatement, all at once.

: "The only limit," says Taylor, "is imagination."

--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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