[extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: Back to the Moon (?)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 06:58:31PM +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> What's tricky about welding titanium other than that you can't do
> it in an Earth-style atmosphere?  (Titanium burns with both oxygen
> and nitrogen.)

Probably the cheapest structural material on Luna is fused regolith (which
can be done very early with solar ovens made large mylar mirrors on a
lightweight truss structure or inflatable/in situ polymerizable scaffold).

One can glassify regolith surface, and lift resulting plates from loose
powder (or leave them, sputtering them with silicon in situ), or spun
fiber/rockwool from it.

Making metals (Al, Ca, Fe, Ti) and Si is best via electrolysis (there's a
neat process for Ti/Cr/Zr which works in CaCl2 melt), or hydrogen reduction
and subsequent sintering.
 
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org
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