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Materials and ISRU

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Building Habitats on the Moon

Part of the book series: Springer Praxis Books ((SPACEE))

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Abstract

The severe lunar environment not only causes concerns about human survivability, but also about material degradation. Issues include thermal stability, fatigue resistance, ultraviolet radiation effects, solar flare protons, galactic cosmic rays, high charge and high-energy particles, vacuum stability, and interior humidity gradients.(1) Materials at particular risk are composites, those fabricated by merging a suite of materials, each of which addresses part of the spectrum of strength or durability needed in a modern structure.

“Live off the land.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Japanese SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) mission, also nicknamed Kaguya, was launched on September 14, 2007, and was intentionally crashed into the lunar surface at the end of its mission on June 10, 2009.

  2. 2.

    GRAIL was the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft used to calculate the Moon’s gravitational field to high precision. Two spacecraft, Grail A and Grail B – later renamed in a contest to Ebb and Flow – orbited the Moon for almost a year, and were able to map the lunar gravitational field using data from detected changes in their relative positions. The spacecraft took off within a few hours of each other on September 10, 2011, went into lunar orbit on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012, and remained there until both targeted the Moon on December 17, 2012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

    Haym Benaroya

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  1. Haym Benaroya
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Benaroya, H. (2018). Materials and ISRU. In: Building Habitats on the Moon. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68244-0_7

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