[ExI] Lunar dirt

[spike]

On Behalf Of Keith Henson
Subject: [ExI] Lunar dirt

>...Will someone enlighten me about what remote manipulators on the moon are
going to be doing? Keith

Keith you ask a good question.  Building small machinery capable of making
solar cells is one hell of a difficult task.  The machine itself would be
built here and soft-landed there, where another machine would supply ground
up lunar soil and energy.  We may not get there any time really soon.  I
don't know enough about the manufacture of solar cells to be of much help
there. 

What I actually had in mind is using lunar machinery to create tunnels, and
then create tubes in the tunnels so they could hold water and oxygen
liberated from the regolith.  Then I can imagine devices that mine water ice
and carry it to the tunnel.  But without a looootta lotta solar cells, it
would all be a pointless exercise.

The end game would be to create a rail launcher so that we could hurl lunar
soil into lunar orbit, and make stuff from it there.  This task is harder
than any space engineering feat I have seen to date.

spike