[HN Gopher] Powering the lunar base, version 2
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Powering the lunar base, version 2
Author : 6177c40f
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-12-31 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Good but it should probably be mentioned that solar power
| production and transmission from geostationary orbit (where the
| sunlight is nearly constant) would work better and have the same
| positional advantage. Costs have to be considered, of course.
|
| I still kinda like the idea of dropping a few nukes on crater
| rims at one of the poles to reduce the height necessary to get to
| perpetual sunlight though.
| bob1029 wrote:
| How infeasible would it be to deploy an HVDC cable that actually
| connects opposite sides of the moon and sidesteps most of the
| storage issue? The longest one on earth is 2500km so it seems
| within the realm.
|
| You could hypothetically split the conductors east/west,
| eliminating the need for most insulation. Conductors could
| potentially be deployed from space and stitched together with
| robots or something.
| yyyk wrote:
| Just about every solution you can think of is _feasible_ with
| enough engineering effort. We need to think about what we want
| to optimize.
|
| We need a solution which involves a logistical tail to Earth as
| tiny as we can, being very light on the mission [ = don't cost
| much weight/fuel ], and dealing as little as possible with
| lunar, and in general non-terrestrial, surfaces [ = less
| uncertainty, easier to fix] . Your suggestion fails the last
| two, and probably the first if we ever need to replace the
| cable (unless someone does come up with those ultra-special
| robots half of these proposals suggest).
|
| These considerations strongly lean towards external power
| supply solutions. I hadn't considered the variant the article
| suggested. Neat, but I suspect it's politically infeasible -
| all nations on Earth will demand a vote, and just look at
| climate negotiations to see how long this takes and how
| expensive this will get.
|
| IMHO, the obvious solution given our tech level involves
| geostationary satellites, requires no tech beyond our current
| capabilities, covers 100% of the surface and involves
| relatively little burden on the mission itself or dealing with
| non-terrestrial surfaces. If we think anything is at risk of
| going wrong, we can just launch more satellites.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The weight of it would be fantastic.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The temperature on the dark side of the moon is -130 degrees
| Celsius. The hottest super conductor we've build is ~-140
| degrees Celsius which isn't too far away. I wonder if you can
| use HVDC to transfer the energy from the light side to the dark
| side over a shorter distance and then use super conductors to
| transfer it "for free" all over the dark side...
| [deleted]
| nynx wrote:
| Apologies to Casey if this was in the article and I missed it,
| but what about nuclear power?
| WalterBright wrote:
| It was in the article.
| [deleted]
| clort wrote:
| Well, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, they had a bit of a
| revolution on the moon and started throwing rocks. Having the
| power generators situated on earth would keep that scenario at
| bay.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Still, a good space navy & sufficient sensor coverage is the
| only real mitigation against people playing with KEWs.
|
| Still I wonder how dangerous a mass driver launched rock from
| the Moon is as long as the mass driver is originally configured
| for cargo launch, so "just" a few km/s.
|
| Still could do quite a bit of damage if it hits something but
| if it does not do any.manuevers &could be detected, then there
| should be ~days for arranging something to collide with it and
| turn it to plasma or dust.
|
| But I guess if they could spam it & be creative with the
| resulting trajectories. Still the mass driver is fixed on the
| Moon surface, so it might not survive for long until it is
| itself hit by something in retaliation.
| choeger wrote:
| Come to think of it, the tidally locked orbit kind of makes such
| a supply seem obvious, doesn't it? I mean it's like a big fat
| "send power here" sign.
| idlewords wrote:
| Too bad it's not also in geosynchronous orbit, or we could just
| use an extension cord.
| gigel82 wrote:
| I'm not an expert or anything, but is this making the assumption
| that there is 0 loss? You put 1Kw into a microwave transmitter on
| earth and expect to get 1Kw out of the receiver on the moon?
|
| That's preposterous - I would be surprised if you get more than
| 5% of the power considering the losses in the transmitter,
| receiver (and related circuitry), not to mention the atmosphere
| itself plus whatever little bits get in the way (like, I don't
| know, the thousands of Starlink satellites and other space junk).
| georgeoliver wrote:
| I think the assumption is that Earth power is much cheaper than
| lunar, so the inefficiency doesn't matter.
| rippercushions wrote:
| > _Current space hardware development costs range from $100,000
| /kg for basic, boring LEO hardware up to >$1m/kg for deep space
| robots such as the Mars Science Laboratory rover. A 50 T lunar
| power system would then cost between $5b and $50b_
|
| This assumption seems highly dubious. Nearly all of that 50T will
| be solar panels and batteries that only need to be designed once,
| meaning the development costs will scale sub-linearly.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This is one of those late-night-dorm-conversation topics that is
| fun but pretty much hypothetical. We will not have any bases on
| the moon for a long, long time. We can't even manage powering our
| society here on earth.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > We can't even manage powering our society here on earth.
|
| Those are political problems, not engineering ones.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > We can't even manage powering our society here on earth.
|
| It's orders of magnitude less power so that doesn't matter.
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