Author Topic: Low Tech Space  (Read 6797 times)

Offline khallow

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Low Tech Space
« on: 08/17/2007 12:51 pm »
Given all the talk of advanced technologies, I think an overlooked area here is low technology. Here, I mean technology that is far lessed advanced than what we'll probably first use in space. For example, I discuss in the high speed Lunar maglev train thread the low tech alternative of the railway track (the familiar rail and tie structure) using local aluminum. Slower, but it is proven technology that should be feasible for a viable colony and it scales well to high volumes.

One might wonder why this topic should end up in the "Advanced Concepts" section. But my take is that making do in space in some of the harshest environments imaginable without access to modern technology is itself an advanced concept. We don't know how to do that yet, but someone will have to figure it out.

The problem, as I see it, is that not every colony will get or use the latest technology. Either they wish to be a little more self-sufficient (eg, using ISRU methods), don't have the economic pull to get normal hardware out there, or maybe something bad has happened to their supplier/transportation and there's no way the technology can be shipped to them. Also, they can be constrained by low quantities of elements that we take for granted, like the biological elements (nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen) or metals (eg, iron, platinum group, etc) or have available abnormally high concentrations of elements (eg, metal-rich asteroids). A common problem is that a colony might have little labor to go around.

We can expect them to have certain basic technologies: a machine shop (here's an example of how to build the core of a machine shop from scratch), glass blowing, garden (with some sort of food plant, fiber producing plant, and woody plant), basic electronics, etc.

For example, how do you build a spacesuit when you don't have access to the materials that current space suits are made of? One possibility is that if you have access to metal or a durable ceramic, you could make a hard shelled suit much like some diving suits in use today. Another possibility is to put the person inside a sort of inverted glove box. Even if flexible gloves are impossible, one can use waldos (hand-like remote manipulators) to do stuff outside the box. The box might be fixed in place or movable with the power source being usual technologies (electric battery, solar, chemical, etc) or even human powered.

Suppose you need to compute something and you don't have access to shipped in computers or calculators? We already know how to store data in the absence of a computer - paper in a filing cabinet. Something analogous to paper will be needed in case carbon is unusually scarce (perhaps engraved ceramic or metal sheets, like cuniform on mud tablets). Actual computation can be done using slide rules and other analogue computational devices (which have a long history in space exploration).

But suppose you really need a (primitive) computer. Then you can either build a vacuum tube computer or make your own solid state devices. Even integrated circuits should be feasible if one has enough knowledge and workforce. You need to be able to make very pure silicon (most likely substance) and be able to dope it with appropriate elements. Even if these elements are scarse, something is probably sufficiently common to work. Even a mechanical computer (like Charles Babbage's difference machine) might do.
Karl Hallowell

Offline renclod

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #1 on: 08/17/2007 02:20 pm »
http://astronautix.com/blog/?page_id=4
Low-Tech Colonization Needed - 2006-06-29

Offline halkey

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RE: Low Tech Space
« Reply #2 on: 08/17/2007 03:38 pm »
18th Century brewing technology should work just fine for brewing the beer needed to get one through the fact that they aren't likely to survive from all of the bad juju requiring the sudden manufacture of slide rules and spacesuits carved from rock.  Lets just hope someone had enough foresight to grow the hops before the wrath of God struck.

Offline khallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #3 on: 08/17/2007 05:51 pm »
Quote
renclod - 17/8/2007  7:20 AM

http://astronautix.com/blog/?page_id=4
Low-Tech Colonization Needed - 2006-06-29

Oh that's right. I forgot I had read this. Very neat blog, but I wish he'd write more often. Well, if you're going to plagiarize ideas, make sure they're good ideas.

Added:

Quote
halkey - 17/8/2007  8:38 AM

18th Century brewing technology should work just fine for brewing the beer needed to get one through the fact that they aren't likely to survive from all of the bad juju requiring the sudden manufacture of slide rules and spacesuits carved from rock.  Lets just hope someone had enough foresight to grow the hops before the wrath of God struck.

Yes, some preparation for unpleasant possibilities would be a good idea. Which is something we can help with, right?
Karl Hallowell

Offline meiza

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #4 on: 08/17/2007 06:15 pm »
The problem is that the environment is so extremely hostile you really can't fix stuff, you die so quickly.
On earth humans can just exist pretty easily - there is free air and water and plants that you can use easily with no effort, etc...

For current spacesuits you'd need hydrocarbons to make polymers. I don't know if you can make an airtight suit from any plant based fiber like hemp, probably not. Early diving suits used leather. A leather spacesuit would probably be possible, but the leak rate would probably be big.
I don't know if you could make some biodiesel from some plants and generate polymers from that through intermediate steps.

Can lunar glass fiber be easily created? That might be a good building material.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #5 on: 08/17/2007 06:36 pm »
The alternative to Low Tech is appropriate technology.  The one thing they people on the Moon and Mars are going to have are our encyclopaedias.

The Moon has very little carbon but it has a lot of silicon.  The lunar soil is over 20% silicon, making it second only to oxygen in abundance.  Silicon has a lot of the properties of carbon so it can make similar single bond compounds.  Silicon is also 17.5 times as strong as steel  7000 MPa vs 400 MPa and is about a third as dense 2.33 g.cc vs 7.8 g.cc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon

This suggests that silicon and its compounds may be used to make replacements for wood and plastics.  This includes tethers.  Even at low efficiency it may be cheaper to make furniture and walls out of silicon on the Moon rather flying them in from Earth.

Offline MKremer

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #6 on: 08/17/2007 07:22 pm »
But you also have to balance the price of launching/landing the necessary mass of industrial equipment and parts to collect the raw materials, separate the necessary elements, then create the final product -vs- just launching/landing the mass of the final products themselves.

It's important to remember that very, very few people (especially those with the power/financing that matter) care to wait 5-10 years or more to possibly start collecting returns on quite substantial investments (and quite substantial investments are needed for any type lunar startup industrial production). You can include Congress within that group.

Offline khallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #7 on: 08/17/2007 07:25 pm »
A. M. Swallow,

There are times when "low tech" is the appropriate technology and times when it's not. No good reason to dabble in vacuum tube technology or mechanical computation devices when there's cheap electronics from Earth.

meiza,

A colony would have to develope the technology to fix equipment that can't be easily replaced. That's just a requirement.

Also the idea about lunar fiberglass is interesting. Crudely, I understand that glass fiber is easy to make. One way is to take molten glass and blast air through it (I could be wrong here). Maybe pure oxygen would work? Or there might be other ways to generate glass fibers. Things like fiber optic cables would require a gentler process, but one that could be reasonably carried out on the Moon, I think. The really interesting uses of fiberglass require IMHO some sort of binder material. Concrete, for example, can be strengthened with fiberglass (it inhibits crack propagation). On Earth, most things made of fiberglass use plastic. No idea what you could use on the Moon.
Karl Hallowell

Offline khallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #8 on: 08/17/2007 08:13 pm »
Quote
MKremer - 17/8/2007  12:22 PM

But you also have to balance the price of launching/landing the necessary mass of industrial equipment and parts to collect the raw materials, separate the necessary elements, then create the final product -vs- just launching/landing the mass of the final products themselves.

It's important to remember that very, very few people (especially those with the power/financing that matter) care to wait 5-10 years or more to possibly start collecting returns on quite substantial investments (and quite substantial investments are needed for any type lunar startup industrial production). You can include Congress within that group.

Here's some observations.

First, the costs (including the people) don't scale linearly with capability. For example, with extensive recycling, the cost of supporting a few more crew members isn't signficantly more. Second, an early colony is going to generate waste. There's no reason that most of the necessary industrial equipment can't be fabricated out of what gets throw away.

My take is that five or ten years into the lunar colony, they've figured out how to recycle all the basis biological materials: water, carbon, oxygen, etc, and have a good sized junkyard now. Ship in a machine shop expert or two with some sort of starter equipment (say a lathe, forge, and stuff that would be valuable but hard to make on the Moon) and have them construct a machine shop over a few months. Now you have the capability to make and repair various sorts of industrial equipment on site. Same thing goes for an electronics shop (at least using near future tech). A lot of times, you'll be able to strip and reuse electronics components. And lastly, any farm will have five or more years of refuse to use as fertilizer for growing crops and recycling oxygen.

None of these people will directly contribute to the mission, but they provide support services that otherwise would have to come directly from Earth. As A. M. Swallow points out, there will be some times when the "appropriate" technology is to use a crude homemade device rather than ship from Earth, merely because it saves cost or cargo space. Those savings would be the justification for sending them in the first place.
Karl Hallowell

Offline MKremer

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #9 on: 08/17/2007 08:49 pm »
Great, but you're still describing miniscule tools for production, compared with the volumes needed for major construction projects.

As a thought experiment, explore the current Earth-based industrial production sites that produce fiberglass structures, steel and large steel structures, etc. Now visualize how to produce the volumes of product they output, but done on the lunar surface. (and don't forget to include the equipment and facilities needed to separate tons of elements at a time to feed those furnaces and foundries to make the final products for assembly)

Offline khallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #10 on: 08/17/2007 09:19 pm »
One word: bootstrap. Once you have sufficiently flexible production facilities, no matter how small, they can be used to build larger facilities. Repeat.
Karl Hallowell

Offline MKremer

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #11 on: 08/17/2007 09:34 pm »
Quote
khallow - 17/8/2007  4:19 PM

One word: bootstrap. Once you have sufficiently flexible production facilities, no matter how small, they can be used to build larger facilities. Repeat.

I agree, but that may not be such a linear progression off-Earth - larger facilities require larger overall environmental stability (Earth-norm -vs- <1G/vacuum/extreme temp/environmental controls) per facility.

That either requires new larger facilities/locations for each larger step, or just create one gigantic environmentally controlled area first before stepping through production facility increases.

Offline Tom Ligon

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #12 on: 08/17/2007 11:22 pm »
The Artemis Society has a plan for colonizing the Moon using minimalist technologies.  Some of their ideas are a little bizarre, but may have merit.  I was intrigued by their 1-person lunar launch vehicle, essentially a folding lawn chair with a simple rocket motor and guidance system.  My company could probably make the guidance system around 6 ounces and for around $10k.  

John Carmack and Armadillo Aerospace could build a workable propulsion system for it.  http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #13 on: 08/17/2007 11:51 pm »
Quote
khallow - 17/8/2007  8:25 PM

A. M. Swallow,

There are times when "low tech" is the appropriate technology and times when it's not. No good reason to dabble in vacuum tube technology or mechanical computation devices when there's cheap electronics from Earth.

Wrong attribution.  I am not the one who mentioned vacuum tubes or mechanical calculators.

Offline khallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #14 on: 08/18/2007 12:48 am »
Quote
A_M_Swallow - 17/8/2007  4:51 PM

Quote
khallow - 17/8/2007  8:25 PM

A. M. Swallow,

There are times when "low tech" is the appropriate technology and times when it's not. No good reason to dabble in vacuum tube technology or mechanical computation devices when there's cheap electronics from Earth.

Wrong attribution.  I am not the one who mentioned vacuum tubes or mechanical calculators.

My mistake. I misread your post. I think I see your point. Wooden ties and steel rails wouldn't appropriate for the Moon even though they are "low tech". Build with what's there.
Karl Hallowell

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #15 on: 08/18/2007 01:18 am »
Materials available on the Moon's surface:
Oxygen
Silicon
Iron
Calcium
Aluminium
Magnesium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil

Mars has a similar list of materials plus carbon.  Also Argon forms 1.6% of Mars' atmosphere.

Glass fibre can probably be manufactured on both the Moon and Mars.
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad28apr98_1a.htm

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #16 on: 08/19/2007 06:20 am »
Although it can sometimes be fun to speculate about the far future, I tend to prefer to be more near-future practical. For instance, it's going to be a long, long time before a railway is needed on the Moon. You need a great deal of traffic to justify a railway, otherwise you're better off with trucks. But you'll need to breathe straight away!

Initial production on the Moon is going to revolve around substituting for things that you would otherwise be bringing from Earth. Recycling helps, of course, but Oxygen production is likely to be the first (cottage) industry. Then water production - you'll need some water, and it's better to bring in hydrogen than water directly (better still is to find a source on the Moon). Then food production, which also helps with recycling.

A basic workshop would be useful for scrap recycling, but also for the next step which is likely to be basic metal production. Look around in your house at what could be simply made from metal. Tables, chairs, beds and cupboards, crockery, cutlery, pots and pans, doors, ladders, hammers, and spades and other tools, clipboards, paper clips, safety and other pins, sunshades, corrugated iron, wheelbarrows and trolleys etc, etc. Then there's wire.  Very useful for tying things together is wire, but you can also make electric motors out if it, and telephones.

Next up, probably glass. Possibly easier to produce, but more difficult to shape as you either need moulds (made out of metal) or a  glassblower. Obvious uses, but also glass fibres. Actual glass-fibre needs a matrix to hold it together, but the fibres themselves can be useful. You can make glass wool out of it, which is a good insulating material (heat and sound), but can also be used to stuff mattresses and chair seats. You can also make cloth out of it - handy for bags. Fill some of them with dirt, pile them up and get radiation protection. Also rope, etc. Deposit some metal on the surface and you have a mirror.

Glass is the main bulk material of amorphous solar cells. Together with locally produced silicon, it's not too difficult to start producing these in bulk. May not be very efficient at turning light into electricity, but they'll also be a lot less efficient at turning dollars into power. Power to make your metals and glass.

Then masonry. Apart from a handy cave, the simplest way to make large stuctures - just look at the pyramids - though you can also make smaller items with it, like table tops. You can make walls directly out of stones, but for buildings you'll probably want to have bricks (you don't need mortar). You can shape stone directly or you can make from fusing regolith with heat (build a solar oven out of stone and mirrors made of metal and/or glass). Dig a trench, build a brick vault (perhaps a double layer with cavity-wall glass wool insulation) and put the dirt back to provide compression against the (breathable) atmospheric pressure and radiation shielding.

Then transistors. Not integrated circuits (at first), but simple transistors. Easy to make, and once upon a time (60 years ago!) the whole electronics industry revolved around transistors. Transistor radios obviously. Yeah, not in your spacesuit, but remote sensors radioing back their results? And the sensors themselves. Not just scientific, but industrial and environmental - carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms, etc. Electric clocks.

Clockwork might also be a useful industry. Not just for telling the time, or timing control generally, but also a handy emergency power source converting muscle power into electricity.

Then there's inorganic chemistry. Given the dearth of carbon, substituting for plastics and organic chemistry is going to be a strong driver for lunar industry. No doubt new techniques will be developed, some of which may then have applications on Earth.

That should be enough to be going on with!

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #17 on: 08/19/2007 06:43 pm »
Quote
CuddlyRocket - 19/8/2007  7:20 AM

Although it can sometimes be fun to speculate about the far future, I tend to prefer to be more near-future practical. For instance, it's going to be a long, long time before a railway is needed on the Moon. You need a great deal of traffic to justify a railway, otherwise you're better off with trucks. But you'll need to breathe straight away!

The justification of a train depends on what you use it for.

A passenger train may be justified where long distances are involved.  Ground vehicles are likely to be limited to 5 mph since we are going over ruff ground.  A 1000 mile journey between 2 villages would take 1000 / 5 = 200 hours or nearly 17 days at 12 hours per day.  Cable cars tracks can be easier to construct than roads and be over 100 times as fast.

A second purpose of a cable car train is the bulk movement of raw materials.  To make 10 tons of oxygen something like 10 / 40% = 25 tons of regolith needs processing.
[Formula may need changing from % volume to mass.]
Moving 25 mT from the mine, probably in the side of a hill, to the base's refinery is likely to take a long time using say a 1 mT truck.  The silicon and iron produced can be turned into construction materials.

Offline hop

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #18 on: 08/19/2007 11:33 pm »
Quote
A_M_Swallow - 19/8/2007  11:43 AM
A passenger train may be justified where long distances are involved.  Ground vehicles are likely to be limited to 5 mph since we are going over ruff ground.  A 1000 mile journey between 2 villages would take 1000 / 5 = 200 hours or nearly 17 days at 12 hours per day.  Cable cars tracks can be easier to construct than roads and be over 100 times as fast.
You can travel much faster than 10 MPH on an unfinished road surface (regolith/crushed rock/gravel). Making such a road is going to be far simpler than building a railroad or cable car. On flat, open terrain, 60mph isn't at all unreasonable. Ordinary passenger cars do this all the time.

To build such a road, you just need some heavy equipment (bulldozers etc). Constructing a cable car or railroad would require similar equipment. Unlike a railroad, you don't need a lot manufactured materials.

Given the lack of natural erosion, unfinished road surfaces would need much less maintenance than on earth. They would also be much simpler to engineer, since you don't have to worry how runoff etc are going to affect it. If you have a lot of heavy traffic, then you will need a more robust surface to keep rutting and washboarding in check.

edit:
This is not to say that railroads or cable cars will never makes sense. There are obviously cases where they will be the right answer, but outside of things specifically constructed for mining operations, I would expect them to be very far in the future.

Offline docmordrid

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Re: Low Tech Space
« Reply #19 on: 08/20/2007 06:54 am »
The problem with high speeds is that it'll kick up tons of regolith, an abrasive of the first order & bad for equipment that it settles on.  

Another problem is that this would be like driving on a dirt road.  I lived on a dirt road when I was a kid on the farm.  Know what happens after a few months of traffic that goes to fast for the surface?  It turns into a washboard that will rattle your teeth out.  The solution on the farm was the county road grader, but I'm not too sure about launching an equivalent to the moon

I see slower as the way to go for that reason unless you build tracks for a lunar train.
DM

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