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Posts Tagged ‘lunar base’

Not long after NASA confirmed the moon has plenty of water, scientists and entrepreneurs started hatching plans to harvest it, either for lunar colonists or for rocket fuel. There are plenty of ways to do it — you could microwave the lunar soil to turn the ice into water vapor, you could use robots to harvest frozen chunks of ice, and so on.

Space.com talked to space law experts who said determining ownership of those resources may be a more complicated matter.

The Moon Treaty of 1979 was intended to govern how the moon’s resources would be used, Space.com reports. But none of the spacefaring nations has signed it, rendering it moot. This leaves countries to rely on the Outer Space Treaty, and because it doesn’t explicitly ban resource extraction, it can probably be interpreted to mean it’s allowed. Still, this doesn’t address who owns the title to the materials. On this planet, when you mine for precious resources, you’d want to make sure you own them after you take them out of the ground, because then you can sell them.

Figuring this out will probably require legislation or international agreements, according to Space.com. And a nice payday for space lawyers. Hey, what do you call 5,000 lawyers sent to the moon? A good start!

[Space.com]

The 18-foot, membrane-sheathed system collapses into a 4-foot wide disk for easy packing on an interplanetary mission. When extended, it is fitted with water-cooled lamps and seed packets prepped to sprout without soil. They hydroponic system needs little oversight, relying on automated systems and control algorithms to analyze data gathered by embedded sensors that optimize the controlled ecosystem. The whole system takes just ten minutes to set up and produces vegetables within a month.

The design is similar to that of a greenhouse housed at the U.S. South Pole Station in Antarctica, which was built by the same company that is collaborating with the CEAC on the lunar greenhouse. But the lunar greenhouse would possess some interesting technical twists that would make it even more sustainable. Water for the system would be derived from the attending astronauts’ urine, CO2 produced by their breathing, and fiber optics could pipe sunlight into the chamber from outside, dispensing with the need for power for the sodium vapor lamps (ostensibly a future lunar base would be built underground to shield it and its inhabitants from solar weather, cosmic radiation, and small meteorites).

But while designed for use hundreds of thousands of miles away, the technology could also have applications here on the ground. Engineers working on the project think the tech could enhance urban farming techniques, bringing food production out of the fields and into population centers. The emphasis on self-contained, self-sustaining systems in space could also inform efforts to make agriculture as efficient and sustainable as possible.

[Space]

A meteor strikes, damaging solar arrays and life support systems, and as you watch the billowing dust cloud move ominously toward your lunar camp, you have to restore critical systems and oxygen flow. Starting July 6, a new NASA video game will let you save the day, in 3-D.

NASA is releasing a multi-player game called Moonbase Alpha, wherein players assume the role of a moon exploration team member living in a lunar settlement.

Gamers will have to get used to running with a moon-bounce loping gait while wearing a bulky moon suit -- atypical for first-person video game missions. You can play alone or with a team.

The game includes VOIP chat, text chat, and pretty cool 3-D graphics. It's only supposed to take about 20 minutes.

NASA's Learning Technologies division built the game to prove the space agency can make cool video games that will inspire kids. Ultimately, the game could be used in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education programs.

And if Congress decides to end NASA's moon-return program, this might be the only way to have a lunar adventure.

Key to all of this, of course, is the robots themselves, and who better than the Japanese to dream up and realize the kind of intelligent, self-repairing, multitasking bots that will be needed to fulfill such a mission.

As currently envisioned, the robots that will land on the lunar surface in 2015 will be 660-pound behemoths equipped with rolling tank-like treads, solar panels, seismographs, high-def cameras and a smattering of scientific instruments. They'll also have human-like arms for collecting rock samples that will be returned to Earth via rocket. The robots will be controlled from Earth, but they'll also be imbued with their own kind of machine intelligence, making decisions on their own and operating with a high degree of autonomy.

Those initial surveyor bots will pave the way for the construction of the unmanned moon base near the lunar south pole, which the robots will construct for themselves. That base will be solar powered and provide a working/living space future robot colonizers, as well as -- presumably -- a jumping off point for future human moon dwellers.

Sound far-fetched? It's certainly an ambitious project given the timeline. But considering Americans put actual men on the moon in a decade span with far inferior technology it certainly seems within the realm of possibility. Moreover, the massive technological fallout from that initial push for the moon was a boon for private industry, seeding some important and amazing technological breakthroughs. Even if Japan falls short of its 2020 deadline, the advances in robotics technology that could fall out of this little project could be as exciting as the moon base itself.

[CNET]