Digging the hole at the bottom of a deep crater will increase your protection by putting kilometers of regolith between the base and stuff coming in from the horizon.CaptainBeowulf wrote:For a moonbase I would be inclined to dig out a hole in the regolith and put the base mostly "underground".
Search found 267 matches
- Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:12 pm
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
- Fri Apr 23, 2010 10:59 pm
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
How long do solar storms last? And how long a storm would you design for? One sigma, two sigma, three sigma length? Or six sigma? It could make a difference in the size and resources needed within the shelter. They are short-term events. Exceptional flares can last 3 hours or more although the geom...
- Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:55 pm
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
So practical manned space exploration is going to favor power density. Yep, power or ultra-clever materials technology. And fusion gives us that power. But there's a caveat with powered shields... power failure. Power plant or shield projector failures would normally not be a big deal re: exposure ...
- Fri Apr 23, 2010 5:18 am
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
Thanx, zapkitty. I never was too clear about which types of radiation NASA thought necessary for longer voyages than the moon. Both types are important to deep space travel but only the solar particle stuff can even be partially handled by any shielding that current spacecraft can carry. A classic ...
- Thu Apr 22, 2010 10:25 pm
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
Did anybody ever come up with a description of how it's shielded from cosmic radiation? The wiki editors are dieing to know, also. That's easy.... almost nothing protects you from cosmic rays once you're above the exosphere. Beyond the last traces of atmosphere it takes a couple of metric tons of w...
- Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:23 pm
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
Thinking big, those modules must have well over 800 square meters of aluminum surface that could make up for lost radiative efficiency while reducing capital expense and launch weights by eliminating the dedicated radiators. Errr.... these are the inflatable Bigelow Aerospace modules I've been goin...
- Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:31 am
- Forum: News
- Topic: Lawaranceville E-Newsletter
- Replies: 880
- Views: 527190
The PW is well positioned for high power density applications, although I'm reading a gigantic heat dissipation challenge... Yep... I just ran the numbers for an orbital installation assuming that the PW doesn't vent waste products overboard for cooling help (if that would even help). Dealing with ...
- Tue Apr 20, 2010 4:56 pm
- Forum: Implications
- Topic: Project FOOF - Declassified!
- Replies: 30
- Views: 50378
I've never looked for actual documentation, but IIRC the Bigelow modules have a load bearing structure down their middle. There is a lattice work truss down the middle, but Bigelows are supposed to retain their structure sans the truss once inflated so I said "... and the latticework core of the mo...
- Tue Apr 20, 2010 1:37 pm
- Forum: Implications
- Topic: Project FOOF - Declassified!
- Replies: 30
- Views: 50378
Re: Skylon by modules, or Heavy Lift.
Uh, as I see it, you must arrange to assemble eg Skylon-shipped Polywell modules in shirt-sleeve environment, vent, bake then retreat to safe distance and light up. Skylon would work wonders for shipping PW parts... when it's flying ;) But I was aiming at using existing LVs so as to get a test unit...
- Tue Apr 20, 2010 6:09 am
- Forum: Implications
- Topic: Project FOOF - Declassified!
- Replies: 30
- Views: 50378
Tempting... A possible way to speed deployment... but is it cutting things too close? Needs a sanity check here... While PW doesn't scale small very well it is a fact that current spacecraft power regimes deal in kilowatts, not megawatts. Even pulse generation of a few MW a couple of times per day w...
- Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:44 pm
- Forum: General
- Topic: In Obama's America we don't Do hard
- Replies: 100
- Views: 26094
I think that Bigelow wants to do his own station with his modules. The ISS would probably be unneeded balast for him. From what I understand his modules would make for a much larger station than the ISS (in regards to volume). Not quite. Bigelow would be perfectly happy to sell a module or three to...
- Mon Apr 12, 2010 4:23 pm
- Forum: Implications
- Topic: Project FOOF - Declassified!
- Replies: 30
- Views: 50378
Project FOOF - Declassified!
"Fusion On Orbit Fastest" - Project FOOF :) If polywell and pB11 pan out I've been considering the best methods to implement a polywell-powered spacecraft as quickly and as economically as is feasible. I believe that research enabling the quick application of such systems in space is important to ov...