[meteorite-list] Pnew Moona-ultramicroscopicsilicosi/moon rock

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:40:12 -0500
Message-ID: <040e01c76a66$cba49d80$ab7e4b44_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Mark, List,

    No nuclear reactors needed! Here's my idea of
the gizmo. You may have seen the little robotic
vacuum sweepers that are the rage. Well, imagine
a little robotic microwave oven with its bottom
sawed off, mounted on wheels, and carrying a
square meter or so of solar panel above it like
an unbrella.

    It's dedicated little brain will be programmed
to seek ground with loose soils (not microwaved
yet) and avoid ground with hard crusty soil (already
microwaved) within 50 meters of its "home base,"
to fry the dirt under it while moving at a rate that's
proportional to its energy flow (enough to solidify
the crust), to avoid others of its kind, to return to
home base when energy declines (lunar night) and
wait for more energy (lunar dawn).

    Each one weighs 4.357 kilos. We take 1000 of
the little devils with us on every visit, set them out
40 meters apart, covering 1.5 square kilometers
of lunar plain. When we leave, they keep right on
crisping up the dusty landscape and turning it into
lunar parking lot, until the whole area is finished.

    Then, they go sleep, and their base units "wake
up," lower their wheels, and migrate outward to
new positions outside and around the finished
square. Then, the base units wake up their roving
microwaves, who scurry (by their program) to
get within 50 meters of "their" home base, resume
crisping, while the base units go back to sleep until
the next "migration" is needed.

    And so, the Great Cycle of (Silicon) Life
Goes On!

    Every time we visit the Moon, we take another
1000 "Rover Ranges," or 500, whatever is handy.
They mindlessly continue to "crustify" the dusty
lunar landscape to make it useful to human purposes.
The real problem is not, will it work? No, the question
is, when do we stop them? Every flat spot within
10 klicks of the Lunar Base is hard and firm.

    Time to retire'em. No, we need the room for
future expansion. When every flat spot within 20
klicks of the Lunar Base is hard and firm, we move
the "herd" 50 kilometers away to start in on the ground
for the Lunar Base Two and assign some of them
to strengthen the soil where the Mag-Lev train
between the two bases will run... By 2237, Luna
City will post a bounty for rogue Rover Ranges
captured within the bounds of Luna County...
Dam little pests!


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "mark ford" <markf at ssl.gb.com>
To: <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Pnew Moona-ultramicroscopicsilicosi/moon rock



Hmm, ... this theory that's kicking around about melting moon dust with
a microwave oven- its all very well melting a few mg of moondust in a
1kW home microwave oven, but by my calculations to melt 1 ton of moon
dust you would need over 200MW of microwave power! So that's really
practical then.....(if you have got a couple of spare PWR nuclear
reactors with you on the moon!!!)

On that note can anyone tell me if concrete sets in space?

Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of doctor
death
Sent: 19 March 2007 17:25
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: [meteorite-list] Pnew Moona-ultramicroscopicsilicosis

Watch out for those sneezers:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6460089.stm

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Received on Mon 19 Mar 2007 04:40:12 PM PDT