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Moon bricks could keep the lights on and the heat up in Lunar colonies – TechCrunch
There may be no “dark side” of the Moon, but when and where it is dark, it’s dark — and stays that way for two weeks. If we’re going to have colonists up there, they’ll need to stay warm and keep the lights (among other things) on for the long lunar night. Turns out bricks made of Moon dust could be part of the solution.
Of course they will use the readily available solar power during the lunar day, and you might think that they could just charge up some batteries to last them through the night. But batteries are large and heavy — not the kind of thing you want to pack for a trip to the Moon.
How else could lunar colonies store energy? The European Space Agency partnered with Azimut Space to find out whether a sort of improvised geothermal energy solution would be feasible.
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Friday July 26 2019, @08:30AM (1 child)
Looks like it's only the north lunar pole which has a few spots of permanent sunlight (at least in the lunar 'summer').
solar power would be the natural choice there, maybe with micowave beamed energy to other locations...
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2005/04/eternal-light-at-a-lunar-pole [astronomy.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26 2019, @07:22PM
Assuming that we establish extraction and manufacturing processes on the moon, there is plenty of aluminium available for building normal electrical cables from remote power generating sites to bases, which would be substantially more efficient.