DARPA LOGIC (Lunar Operating Guidelines for Infrastructure Consortium)

[Asteroza]

So DARPA wants to make some interoperability standards for commercial lunar infrastructure and is spinning up an organization for companies to interact with DARPA and NASA for that.

https://logic.jhuapl.edu/

There's a sister organization called Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) also for promoting specific commercial surface activities work too

https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/

[Asteroza]

LSIC related,

Northrop is workin' on the (lunar) railroad...

https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/northrop-grumman-to-develop-concept-for-lunar-railroad

[Asteroza]

LSIC related,

Northrop is workin' on the (lunar) railroad...

https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/northrop-grumman-to-develop-concept-for-lunar-railroad

I wonder what kind of rail they are thinking of? A really simple setup of sintered regolith where ties can be flipped and turned over as rails would make a very primitive but usable setup (where the trains are rovers with suitable dual mode wheels). Getting a big solar regolith sinterer to poop out tie-rails seems like an easy add-on to other sintered brick duties for a base-builder system.

There was NASA and their FLOAT concept, using a solar roadbed to maglev float sleds down the railroad.

https://www.nasa.gov/general/float-flexible-levitation-on-a-track/

[jstrotha0975]

I think the lunar railroad will be maglev because of the lighter gravity on the moon.

[edzieba]

I think the lunar railroad will be maglev because of the lighter gravity on the moon.

That requires manufacturing (or importing from Earth) many km and tonnes of magnets and many km and tonnes of electromagnets, and supplying power during operation (so either installing a power grid or many spaced generating stations). That is not an insubstantial construction project, and very much not inexpensive.

A sintered dirt chute on the other hand does not even need material transported from other locations than the track itself. As long as a 'track layer' has power to heat and sinter regolith, it can roll along its own laid track Wallace-and-Gromit style.

That's actually a situation where RTG (and RHGs) or compact reactors are a boon: your main desire for power is for heating, so the direct heat output is a bonus rather than an inefficiency, and allows construction to continue for a full lunar day rather than half or less for solar power (without carting around an inordinately sized battery).

[jstrotha0975]

getting large materials to the moon shouldn't be a problem with Starship and New Glenn.

[Eric Hedman]

I don't see the point of a lunar railway any time soon.  It would mean at least two permanent fixed locations that need a significant amount of cargo and people moving between them to make it worth it.  I don't see that happening for a while.  In the meantime, lunar rovers that can go anywhere relatively flat.

[DanClemmensen]

I don't see the point of a lunar railway any time soon.  It would mean at least two permanent fixed locations that need a significant amount of cargo and people moving between them to make it worth it.  I don't see that happening for a while.  In the meantime, lunar rovers that can go anywhere relatively flat.

Yep, just grade the road and then use a road train. G'day, mate!
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train

[spacebleachers]

I don't see the point of a lunar railway any time soon.  It would mean at least two permanent fixed locations that need a significant amount of cargo and people moving between them to make it worth it.  I don't see that happening for a while.  In the meantime, lunar rovers that can go anywhere relatively flat.

That’s what DARPA does. It asks organizations to work on stuff for “possible future use” to see how feasible it is. There are projects that they solicit ideas for that don’t even get past the idea stage. So, “needed any time soon” is often irrelevant to them. Possibly needed and even practical to implement in the future is.

[DanClemmensen]

I don't see the point of a lunar railway any time soon.  It would mean at least two permanent fixed locations that need a significant amount of cargo and people moving between them to make it worth it.  I don't see that happening for a while.  In the meantime, lunar rovers that can go anywhere relatively flat.

Trains will beat trucks when the Lunar population is big enough to have multiple cities, and that won't happen for a very long time if at all. but those will be very high speed maglev, with speeds so high that the train would go into orbit if the track were not holding it down.