from the good-idea-or-just-a-bunch-of-hot-air? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Pneumocell, a company specializing in inflatable structures, submitted a study to the European Space Agency laying out the concept for an inflatable lunar habitat.
A vision of a future moon settlement is assembled from semi-buried inflatable habitats. Sited beside the lunar poles in regions of near-perpetual solar illumination, mirrors positioned above each habitat would reflect sunlight into greenhouses within the doughnut-shaped habitats.
Once inflated, these habitats would be buried under 4–5 m of lunar regolith for radiation and micrometeorite protection. Above each habitat a truss holding a mirror membrane would be erected, designed to rotate to follow the sun through the sky. Sunlight from the mirror would be directed down through an artificial crater, from which another cone-shaped mirror reflects it into the surrounding greenhouse.
A slicker and more marketable version of their concept can be found on their website.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:23AM (4 children)
The idea of living inside of a giant balloon sounds scary to me. I don't even like inflatable boats!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:44AM (2 children)
I've seen too many cartoons to know what the consequences are of having your inflatable boat punctured!
I wonder what they would propose for the material for the structure. Isn't the lunar regolith pretty abrasive?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 08 2022, @01:08PM (1 child)
The problem that bothers me isn't that it's rough and abrasive, it's that it's in vacuum. Most plasticizers are volatile, and when they leave, the rubber/plastic becomes brittle.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday September 08 2022, @01:37PM
ISS has an inflatable module. As far as we know, it goes very well.
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With enough duct tape, it could be called sustainable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 08 2022, @12:27PM
If the build quality of the base is as bad as their grammar, I would not go anywhere near it.
Note they don't list basic, important parameters like mass of the habitat. They don't seem to have any concept even for an implementation plan (where will the stock pile of regolith come from? how would one deploy such a thing?) It is very lightweight and unconvincing, even for a preliminary activity.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday September 08 2022, @08:21PM (1 child)
Instead of a bouncy house, this project should have a 10' x 30' nuclear (actual reactor) power tunnel boring machine, and about seven nuclear(RTG) power bots that take the rock form the boring machine and make it into blocks and construct a huge pyramid on top of the tunnel. Do it right or don't do it at all.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday September 10 2022, @03:05AM
So *that*'s what Eon's boring company is intended for!