Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
TransAstra Lunar Mining Idea Was Max Valier's In 1931
TransAstra's Lunar-Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (LPMO) idea lays out a potential architecture for exploiting the huge stores of water ice in polar craters.
(TransAstra Corp. aims to mine asteroid water by harnessing sunlight)
"One of our main objectives is to create icy-regolith simulants and test the effectiveness of these various heating methods in our cryogenic vacuum chamber," Sowers said during a presentation in June with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group.Sowers laid out a potential moon-mining architecture during his FISO talk, which was primarily focused on the economics of moon mining. Heliostats (mirrors that track the sun's movement) on the rims of polar craters could bounce sunlight down to the floors, onto the optics-equipped roofs of "capture tents."
This concentrated sunlight perhaps aided by buried heaters would cause subsurface ice to sublimate into water vapor, which would then be captured.
Austrian rocket pioneer and writer Max Valier wrote compellingly about this idea in his wonderful story A Daring Trip To Mars, published in 1931 in Wonder Stories:
The engineer had judged correctly for the ground on which the space ship had landed consisted of ice..."...Now be quick, get out the solar power apparatus and send it down to us from the air-lock by the crane."
A huge parabolic mirror built of light sheet silver collected the intense heat of the sun and first melted a small amount of ice in a closed container. The water thus formed - which cannot exist free on the airless moon - was heated to boiling, and provided the steam for a little turbine...
(Read more about the solar power apparatus)
Valier was among the first to write about using the Moon as a place to obtain propellant for exploring the solar system: see filling station Moon.
Via Space.com.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/1/2021)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Space Tech ")
Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...' - Clifford Simak,
Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris
Preventing annoying space debris build-up.
Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally its made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.' - Iain Banks, 1987.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Pole-Dancing Stripperbot Robot
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
Collective Superintelligence Is At Hand!
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
Instant Journalists: Ordinary People With Cell Phones
'We'll show them whose planet this is!'
Health Kiosk Has No Human Doctor
'The electronic body analyzer had been developed...'
Meta's Horizon Studio's Unique Avatars From Text Prompts
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
VaMEx Biomimetic Mars Robot Inspired By Skink
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
NEO Brain Computer Interface (BCI)
'The remains of the lace took on the rough shape of a brain...'
Did Frank Herbert Predict Bistable Displays Like E-Ink?
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
Monolith One Giant Industrial Metal 3D-printer
'The object seemed melted together like wax nothing was distinguishable.'
'Mooncrete' Lunar Regolith Concrete (LRC)
'And here they began to build...'
China's 'Magpie Drone' Ornithopter
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
MAI-Voice-2 Microsoft Text-To-Speech
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris
Preventing annoying space debris build-up.
Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
DIY Robotic Content Farming
'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'
