PLEASE tell us about PAW.Edit:
Coming from a facilities maintenance perspective, pay attention to maintainability. Filters have to be changed, pumps and such have to be replace, repaired and serviced. Belt drives wear out, gears get fouled (especially in a dusty environment), etc. Consider space for access ladders, platforms, hoists to lift up equipment and lower down equipment. ......
seems like a good start. Maybe too early in concept to show it in diagrams too access, ladders, pump platforms.
What about making polyurethane? It's a liquid, and requires only C, O, N.I tried mixing polyurethane lacquer with sand - the result is a sort of "plastic concrete". Sand on Mars is readily available, even sorted by size in dunes...
Quote from: gospacex on 05/06/2017 12:07 amWhat about making polyurethane? It's a liquid, and requires only C, O, N.I tried mixing polyurethane lacquer with sand - the result is a sort of "plastic concrete". Sand on Mars is readily available, even sorted by size in dunes...I really like your idea. Following tdperk, we should test it in a vacuum chamber.If this works, the process would readily fit into the modular chemical industry described in the paper I mentioned above . The carbon and oxygen could be derived from an oxygen generator module and the nitrogen would be a byproduct of the 4-step CO2 cleaning process. The production of perc and plastic concrete could be a module unto itself. Would you like to pursue your idea? I could help.
As of this week, the final technical paper was uploaded to AIAA and accepted.
......Congrats to your team for the acceptance, well done. (and a thanks to the NSF reviewers that helped... )That's two years in a row now right? What are you going to do next year?
Will be interesting to see what sort of scale your chem processing might be able to do in the much smaller cargo spaceships that Musk outlined last week at IAC2017.Can your processes scale down and fit in the smaller modules, just at a lessened chem ops capability? Or would some of your processes require the larger process line, say distillation towers, etc.?
Quote from: gospacex on 05/06/2017 12:07 amWhat about making polyurethane? It's a liquid, and requires only C, O, N.I tried mixing polyurethane lacquer with sand - the result is a sort of "plastic concrete". Sand on Mars is readily available, even sorted by size in dunes...Polyurethane is aromatic, so you're going to have to make Benzene or similar at some point.Polyurethane or epoxies are probably essential for industry. Much harder to make than polypropylene, etc, though.