Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
Isnt that where all the water is☺
Alex
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Hi Alex,
Indeed it is, though they have started to detect tenuous amounts of water
vapour elsewhere in the lunar atmosphere whenever a meteor makes an
impact.
Where the Chinese would get an enormous head-start in planning is to
pore over the volumes and volumes of publicly available studies for
building moonbases that NASA commissioned from the likes of Boeing and
North American Rockwell in the 1970's.
An enormous amount of engineering time and money must have gone
into these proposals.
For example, imagine the amount of expert knowledge that would go
into this one recommendation amongst thousands from one of the many
Rockwell studies from the '70's :-
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Lunar Base Synthesis Study, Final report Volume II, North American Rockwell, 15 May 1971
Pressure Garment Assemblies (EA)
Based on the present state-of-the-art pressure suit development and
the proposed lunar surface EVA work loading, it appears that more than one
suit plus spares will be required to assure continuous surface exploration.
Lunar dust, daily wear and tear, cleaning and drying, and the 30-day periodic
seal replacement all add to the pressure suit requirements.
To assure the operability needed to support lunar surface exploration,
a conservative estimate is felt to require a total of three pressure suit
garment assemblies for each crewman per six-month tour of duty if he is to
perform regularly scheduled lunar surface EVA'S. The first suit is for
immediate use, the second one for use while the first is being cleaned and
repaired, and the third is a spare in case of complete failure or nonrepairable damage.
Enough spare seals will be required to change the seals in each garment every 30 days,
plus a field repair kit for each suit for patching minor abrasions and
surface tears.
Each EA provides a mobile life support chamber for a crewman and a
100 percent oxygen environment at an operating pressure of 7.0 -/+0.2 psia.
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and so on and so on.
See
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/c...9710016382.pdf
The North American Rockwell proposal concluded at the time the optimal
place to build a base was within Kopff crater supported by an orbiting
Lunar Station. NASA and the University of Houston expanded the study
to build a colony inside Kopff crater.
Kopff Crater was chosen as the site for the lunar colony mainly because
its limb location was more conducive to some of the research effort
envisioned for a colony away from the influence of the earth.
They wanted to perform astronomy there, which sounds like a great idea
to me, and at the time proposed to build multiple telescopes there.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/c...9730002509.pdf
This was before they discovered water down at the south pole.
But I like the Kopff crater location simply because the name has this
really good ring about it.
See
http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Moonbases