Japan plans to put robots on the moon. Finally somebody gets it. What they also need is innovation. It seems to me that the moon is a perfect step to tele-presence. It also seems that if side facing sun is hot, side away from sun is cold, it is a heat engine that could easily be exploited to have as much energy as was needed. It might be the ultimate steam punk. Just by laying a circular pipe with in-line turbines at the poles, it wouldn't even need a recirculation pump.
I could likely engineer a payload that was a few pounds that would use existing materials to tunnel in the rocky surface to create a sub-surface ring that had plugs at various points about the circumference. It would generate the energy to expand the ring and also convert some of the oxygen bound in compounds. It would require some engineering, but I did this process control a hundred times on a wide range of toxic and non-toxic materials, H2O2, liquid nitrogen, silanes, ........ There is iron oxides and thus iron and oxygen. Fuel is a simple conversion. It solves the gravitational problem temporarily. I could expound on the nature of relativistic energy, but I will save it for another day.
Chemical composition of the lunar surface regolith (derived from crustal rocks)
| Compound | Formula | Composition (wt %) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maria | Highlands | ||
| silica | SiO2 | 45.4% | 45.5% |
| alumina | Al2O3 | 14.9% | 24.0% |
| lime | CaO | 11.8% | 15.9% |
| iron(II) oxide | FeO | 14.1% | 5.9% |
| magnesia | MgO | 9.2% | 7.5% |
| titanium dioxide | TiO2 | 3.9% | 0.6% |
| sodium oxide | Na2O | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| Total | 99.9% | 100.0% | |
The image was generated with gimp. It took about three minutes to create with a stock moon photo included. I suppose I could have done crater fill and gradient on a circle, but why reinvent something if you can just go outside and take a picture. I am assuming that the moon is not copyrighted , yet.
Considering that people will waste a day mining gold in a VR game, it would be a simple matter to establish a VR link to a subterranean bot that was doing stuff on the moon. I bet there are about 10 million people who would serve in the VR space core and could generate real money in the form of energy and product. A centralised laser link to a simple wifi could even serve as an internet of sorts. The moon could be a server. Google moon? The bots could have their own IP addresses. moon.third.life.net
It seems that the rings would be a transport system. If a sphere were inserted, it would be driven in a circle about the moon as the material was heated behind it. Free travel system.
You know, if there were metals on the moon you could make connections. Alas, all that could be extracted is Al and Fe, you would need aluminum and iron. I don't know what Al and Fe are, but they must be some exotic moon atoms. And also you would need sand but what is there is just SiO2. If there were metals like Titanium that would be nice too, but there is only Ti. Also what would you do for Oxygen and Hydrogen is probably the rarest atom in the universe to collect and combine with the Oxygen. It seems the reaction of H2 and O2 is extremely endothermic and requires much energy, or is it extremely exothermic, I forget.
I thought I heard once that sand was an insulator, but SiO2 probably is conductive.
Quartz would also be useful as it shows a strong piezoelectric effect perpendicularly to the prism axis. Applying pressure on a quartz crystal generates an electrical polarization along the pressure direction. Alternatively, applying an electrical tension leads to a mechanical deformation of the crystal. That would be something cool to use too, but I guess it would have to be fed-ex'd from the Andromeda galaxy.
It is a shame that all these chemicals are mixed up and unusable. They have pure chemicals here on Earth and I think they grow in the special environment of the chemistry supply house I use. There could be magic involved too. I know that just putting K in H2O doesn't work as you have to know the magic alchemists word *****, but that is a secret. I once heard somebody speak the wrong words when they mixed them and those I know. They are "Oh shit , why did that explode?"
Also it is possible to focus the sun's energy, but you can't make the temperature higher than the source, and I think the surface temperature of the sun is below boiling, otherwise we would boil if we walked in the sun light.
On top of everything else, the moon is 200,000 miles away and the speed of light is just a little faster than sound, AFAIK and that is 340 meters per second so it would take forever to communicate with the moon. Also you have to have a meter to miles converter in the signal path and they don't come cheap.
