<p>Most of the needs for this colony of 500 persons can be supported by the moon itself. The Regolith (lunar dust) contains almost every element we need for our survival. The problem is to extract it by mining activities and the capability to store it in a proper way. Mining, manufacturing methods and power generation will be treated in this report. On the moon almost all materials needed for cloth making have to be cultivated and have specific manufacturing processes. Making cloth and insulation devices of plastic and rubber material is an energy consuming process (e.g. cultivate vegetables to produce oil) due to the minimal amount of carbon, but it is possible. Several welding methods are suitable (in vacuum) when the protective gases are removed. Hammer forging seems to be the best forging method. The calculated sum of the materials for the domestic appliances (100 kitchens), and the tools needed for cultivation and for domestic usage (50 storages) is: 1.4 metric tons of aluminium, 9.75 metric tons of iron (steel) and 1.25 metric tons of glass/ceramic. Hammer forging manufacturing need to add 170 kg iron/steel (the furnace included). The amount of regolith needed to extract 9.8 metric tons of iron is approximately 80-90 metric tons, depending on the extracting efficiency. Iron is the limiting factor in this case due to the small amount present in the lunar soil (less than 13%). While extracting iron all other needed elements could be extracted as well, e.g. aluminium and oxygen. It would be profitable if the amount of devices made of ceramic (and in some cases even glass) is high, since they are more easily manufactured (melted lunar soil) than metal materials.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:hv-780 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Westerberg, Irina |
| Publisher | University West, Department of Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Trollhättan |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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