But I think building habitats from asteroid regolith can happen sooner than you're expecting, it's just that you can't do anything clever with it. I'm thinking something along the lines of a mold that takes loose regolith and stamps/sinters it into segments of a large scale torus. You use the regolith as your compressive component, and import (steel) cables from Earth as your tensile component when you want to fuse the whole thing together. Such massive structures will be much easier to work with in microgravity.
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/04/2017 08:50 amBut I think building habitats from asteroid regolith can happen sooner than you're expecting, it's just that you can't do anything clever with it. I'm thinking something along the lines of a mold that takes loose regolith and stamps/sinters it into segments of a large scale torus. You use the regolith as your compressive component, and import (steel) cables from Earth as your tensile component when you want to fuse the whole thing together. Such massive structures will be much easier to work with in microgravity.How about using basalt fibers to reinforce some form of concrete?http://novitsky1.narod.ru/babv1.html.htmOr even basalt fiber to reinforce sintered basalt? The fiber has higher strength because of the low defects, and the sintered basalt serves as fill.
Not quite sure what you mean by counterweighted rollable trusses (I'm assuming you mean baton-stations/tumbling pigeons?)
There is a third option I'm calling DEployable Spin Gravity Array (DeSGA - small animation attached), which I would put on space craft intended to support humans working out at asteroids.
But I think building habitats from asteroid regolith can happen sooner than you're expecting, it's just that you can't do anything clever with it. I'm thinking something along the lines of a mold that takes loose regolith and stamps/sinters it into segments of a large scale torus.