ISRU – Page 4 – Space Settlement Progress

July 25, 2020September 22, 2024

The water economy of cislunar space

Illustration of an ice extraction concept for collection of water on the Moon. Credits: George Sowers / Colorado School of Mines

Mining the Moon changes everything. In an article in Air and Space, several prominent scientists we’ve been following discuss how in situ resource utilization (ISRU) can close the business case for companies that will build the infrastructure for a cislunar economy.

George Sowers of Colorado School of Mines and lead researcher on a recent study of ice mining in the solar system believes that water is “the oil of space” which can be used for all sorts of propulsion needs as well as supporting life. He believes that “…the economy of space will run off of water.”

Kevin Cannon, who has developed a treasure map for where the ice deposits are located at lunar poles based on satellite data to support ISRU, believes that we need to follow up with actual prospecting hardware to confirm how much water is actually present.

Joel Sercel, CEO of Trans Astronautica Corporation and recent recipient of a Phase II NIAC grant for a Lunar Polar Mining Outpost, has proposed calling a base located at the Moon’s north pole “New Mesopotamia” likening it to the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East on Earth.

Most of the experts agree that fuel depots on the moon are needed for a sustainable economy in cislunar space before we can push off to Mars and beyond.

July 14, 2020July 14, 2020

Pottery made from (simulated) Martian clay

Ceramics sintered using a MGS slurry system employing classic pottery (potter’s wheel), slip casting, material extrusion (robocasting/direct ink writing), 3D printing (layerwise slurry deposition with binder jetting) and as a reference dry pressing. Credits: David Karl et al.*

Development of the methods for in situ resource utilization on Mars requires validation ahead of time. Making durable and useful ceramics is one such material processing technique that would be valuable. In a paper just posted on the arXiv preprint server to be published in the journal Open Ceramics, David Karl at the Technische Universitaet Berlin and others* present findings on a study of such methods using Mars global simulants (MGS) as a proxy for clay on the Red Planet. These simulants, provided by Kevin Cannon’s Center for Asteroid and Lunar Surface Science (CLASS) Exolith Lab at the University of Central Florida, deliver superior strength when compared to other ISRU materials, as mentioned in a recent Tweet by Cannon.

The paper also documents the results of a sophisticated additive manufacturing technique called layerwise slurry deposition (LSD) using the MGS. As mentioned in the paper’s Introduction, “To highlight the importance of clay as a medium for human civilizations and thought (along with illustrating the usefulness of the unfired/fired concept, as cuneiform tablets are found in unfired as well as fired state), cuneiform tablets from 3D scans were reproduced as inspirational artifacts, illustrating the excellent LSD printing resolution”.

(Top left) Flowchart of MGS slurry production (described in detail in [5]), (top right) schematic of 2 the layerwise slurry deposition and (bottom) processing path for cuneiform tablets from 3D scans of 3 original cuneiform tablets made during the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BC), produced as technological 4 demonstrators for LSD and inspirational artifacts for Mars colonization. Credits: David Karl et al.*

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* D. Karl, F. Kamutzki, P. Lima, A. Gili, T. Duminy, A. Zocca, J. Günster,A. Gurlo, Sintering of ceramics for clay in situ resource utilization on Mars, Open Ceramics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceram.2020.100008.

July 5, 2020July 5, 2020

Human missions to Mercury and Saturn augmented by in situ resource utilization

A nuclear thermal rocket concept. Credits: NASA/Wired

In a paper presented at the 8th Symposium on Space Resource Utilization (2016), Bryan Palaszewski analyzes multiple mission architectures for human voyages to the inner and outer solar system. The planet Mercury has permanently shadowed craters at its poles which likely contain frozen water enabling ice mining for rocket propellant and oxygen for breathable air to sustain settlements. The outer planets and their moons are reservoirs of significant amounts of useful gases such as hydrogen, helium 3, methane, ethane, and ammonia which can be utilized as in-situ resources. Through nuclear propulsion and living off the land with ISRU, travel times can be reduced and payloads increased for both robotic and human missions. With a positive vision for eventual space settlement, Palaszewski concludes the paper with “These technological innovations will enable Krafft Ehricke’s vision of a polyglobal civilization“.

July 4, 2020July 4, 2020

Paragon selected by NASA to develop lunar water collection and purification system

Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center

Paragon Space Development Corporation, a subcontractor for Dynetics which is one of the three companies NASA has selected to begin work on designs for human lunar landers, was just awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant to develop its ISRU Collector of Ice in a Cold Lunar Environment or ICICLE. The system will use a cold trap for collecting and purifying water from ice mining the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. The purification and collection of lunar water is a critical step in generating in-situ propellant, breathable oxygen, and potable water for space settlements and the cislunar economy.

July 2, 2020July 2, 2020

The logistics of dining off Earth

Artist concept of dining in space. Credits: Disney/Eater

In a recent Twitter thread Kevin Cannon shares his thoughts on the logistics of feeding an expanding population as humans settle other worlds. His “food quality” model compares different food preparation venues in an effort to highlight the challenges of feeding folks in in remote locations such as space settlements (and no, there likely won’t be food trucks in space).

Rough index of “food quality”. Credits: Kevin Cannon / Twitter

The obvious goal is sustainable, high frequency food replenishment utilizing in situ resource utilization (ISRU). Cannon recently published a paper in which he modeled the calorie needs and land requirements for a martian settlement that reaches a population of one million people becoming self-sufficient within a hundred years. A wealth of research relevant to space settlement can be found at his website kevin.cannon.rocks.

June 25, 2020June 25, 2020

SpaceX will need suppliers for Mars settlement

In a thread on Twitter, Kevin Cannon suggests that suppliers for services that SpaceX will need to settle Mars such as sanitation, medical supplies, entertainment, finance and others, get started sooner rather then later laying out their plans if they want to be selected to help settle a new world.

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020

Accessibility of lunar ice

In a recent thread on Twitter referring to a forthcoming paper, Kevin M. Cannon calculates the optimum path for rover access down into the cold traps in lunar craters at the Moon’s poles. The entire dataset including an ice prospecting guide is available on Cannon’s website which is now linked on our In Situ Resource Utilization page

Lowest-energy, lowest-distance and lowest-slope paths from illuminated, flat staging areas outside the cold trap to a target within it. Image and text credits: Kevin Cannon via Twitter

June 8, 2020June 8, 2020

Spinning fiber from lunar regolith

A European student team call Ampex 20 is working on a project called MoonFiber which aims to automate production of glass fibers on the Moon. Applications include fabrication of composites, thermal insulation, fabrics and other products requiring woven material. Products made in-situ from local materials significantly reduce costs by not having to transport them from Earth.

Spinning unit capable to withstand the Moon environmental conditions. Image credit: Ampex 20

The MoonFiber project is being conducted by RWTH Aachen University in Germany. A teaser video is available here.

May 22, 2020May 22, 2020

Making Mars soil fertile

A just released study published in the journal Plants documented the results of experiments to find the best ratio of compost to Martial soil simulant to effectively grow nutritious butter lettuce with the least amount of water while optimizing crop performance. Such findings will enable in situ resource utilization and reduce the mass of supplies needed to be transported to Mars to support farming in human settlements.

May 4, 2020May 4, 2020

Living off the land (and air) on Mars

If we ever settle Mars, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is essential for sustainability of a Martian colony as dependence on Earth for resupply would be too expensive. UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab chemists are developing a biohybrid system which attaches bacteria to nanowires that when exposed to sunlight and locally available carbon dioxide and water, produce a useful organic compound called acetate. Acetate is a building block for a range of products including fuels, plastics, drugs or even yeast. A byproduct of the chemical reaction is oxygen, which could be used for breathable air. There is even a dual use on Earth for carbon capture.