LIC (Lunar Industrial Complex) - Moon as a Potential Industrial Base for Earth and Mars
- Paper number
IAC-08.C3.1.7
- Author
Mr. Sanket Nayak, University of Southern California, United States
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Energy crisis is one of the major problems planet earth has been facing for quite many years now. Now, that we are celebrating 50 years in Space and planning to head towards more ambitious missions to Moon, Mars and beyond, energy issues still remain as a point of concern for mankind. As per past In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) studies, Moon can possibly be an ideal source for Helium (3He) and Silica (SiO2) Mining. As we know, Helium can be utilized as a Nuclear fuel for nuclear fusion reactors and due to safety issues we don't have fusion reactors on Earth. A nuclear fusion reactor would yield energy quite appreciable in magnitude than several fission reactors. My idea is to develop an industrial base on lunar surface. A series of controlled nuclear fusion reactors underneath the Lunar regolith would be a great potential source of enormous amount of energy. Electricity generated from the fusion reactions. The idea is to convert the electrical energy generated from the fusion reactors into Microwave radiations. This can further be sent as bits of energy impulses and could be transmitted on to numerous coherent relay satellites in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) and subsequently to the Earth Power Station (EPS) by means of series of Solar (SOL) satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). All these SOLSATS could be solar powered and the solar arrays to be required for meeting up the power requirements of these satellites could be manufactured on the Lunar surface itself from the abundant silica and breccias found on the surface. All the SOLSATS on LLO would be positioned in orbits such as the solar arrays constantly face the sun, the same thing applies to LEO SOLSATS also. To be more ambitious, the energy could also be stored on to the International Space Station (ISS) and utilized for onward space exploration missions to Mars and beyond. The basic idea of this abstract is to develop a concept for a sustainable inter-planetary power transmission system. Major scope of research includes developing an efficient way of converting electric impulses into microwave and establish a wireless transmission through energy packets.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)