Not wrong but researchers and engineers always envisaged that any facilities on the moon that were intended to be manned for anything more than a few days would need to be protected from radiation and micrometer impacts by either being buried under a meter or so of regolith or else placed in convenient caverns/lava tubes. You cold also I suppose find a crater of the right size, build a roof over it and then bury the roof. Finally you would still have surface installations, it would just be the living quarters that would need to be sheltered, people could do short work shifts if they had to above ground.
Yes. I think it's something like 10 feet of water being equivalent to 6 feet of concrete. So, if you had a ten foot deep swimming pool on the Moon, you could hide out under that. Of course, it would be ice, but you wouldn't want to be in the pool, anyway.
I think most of what would be mined on the moon would be used in space. One such use could be making power and then beaming it back to earth. The only mineral that would be worth sending back to earth would be a special type of helium that has only one neutron. One other purpose of the moon would be to build radio telescopes on the far side. These would be shielded from radio waves from the earth. They could also be built much bigger than on earth.
Unless a way can be found to produce or effectively recycle oxygen in space then pretty much all of this is a fantasy. Water too. If it is necessary to keep shipping those from earth to space then any mining operation will still be uneconomical.
I believe it was NASA who held a competition for building a super lightweight bulldozer robot for that purpose - since burrying a moon station is more than some moonman iis going to accomplish. The idea was that a numberr of such robots could be sent to the moon to do the work of deploying a space station in a crater and then burying it, preparing the way for some future moonman. Theere were several real problems related to low gravity. By being light, they could push only tiny loads. Plus, tthe dusty surface of the moon would give little traction to light vehicles. One idea was that a lightweight bulldozer could land on the moon and then fill a bucket on its back with a bunch of moon soil to make it heavier. But, then there were problems wiith tipping over. I think we forget how unforgiving space is. We detect water and think we're just going to send moonmen to work mines like on earth!
Yes, it would be ineresting to hear about a real oxygen system - how much volume per moonmman would be required to be sent for a safe initial repository, the design of the energy source for breaking up captured CO2 or water, etc. I still think moonmen are so fabulously expensive and our robottics are advancing fast enough that having an actual living moonman is not the best solution. If we want to mine the moon, we should find something worth mining and then consider making robots to do the mimining. Just in general, whatever we mine is going to need to be pretty darn valuable.
Entertaining to watch Europe behave as if they mattered! Boeing or Airbus? Reminds me of India successfully placing a satellite in orbit around Mars. The information and materials are out there. It only takes the decision to "do it" and the funding. Moi is working on an Arctic Space Port.
Actually that is part of one of the plans for a potential moon base. Using a water tank to shield, store water, and provide fish as a source of protein.
20kg of water and algae (0.02 m³) spread over an 8 m² surface can produce enough oxygen for one person. So there is a possibility of doing it.
Well, the moon moves between -300 at night to +225 in the day. Plus there is no fish food or oxygen. Also, burying the swimming pool means no light - which limits what fish might be happy as well as hindering the growth of fish food. Maybe something could be done to help with that. But, it in't a matter of burrowing under a swimming pool.
A layer of water that thin exposed to sunlight on the moon would alternate between boiling and freezing, wouldn't it?
Well it would be contained in a pressurized, climate controlled area of the habitat and not actually out on the surface and would get its needed light through full-spectrum lighting...likely the new full-spec LEDs. True, it isn't a matter of burrowing under a swimming pool, but I've seen designs that involve pressurized, climate-controlled, full-spectrum lit tanks with systems in place for feeding, caring, and harvesting the fish. It's not going to be simple, but it can be done with the right planning and engineering.
How much energy is required to extract that oxygen and how drinkable is whatever is frozen on the Moon?
I think splitting 1 cup of water would require a little less than1 kilowatt-hour of energy. Of course, there would be energy loss so, my guess is that 1 kilowatt-hour per cup wouldn't be too far wrong, at least on earth. I think 3 2018 technology solar pannels that are 6' by 3' would generate almost a kilowatt. So, an array of that size might come close to splitting a cup of water per hour. Surely there would be losses of efficiency. And of course there are lots of questions from there, like how long the oxygen in a cup of water would keep a human alive, how much hydrogen and oxygen would be required to launch stuff from the moon, etc.
