There is a proposal to use the SpaceX lunar starship as a rapidly deployable moonbase. It could be completed 180 days after the SpaceX lunar Starship lands on the moon.
UPDATE SOURCE FOUND: The source for this work is Team Project “Solutions for Construction of a Lunar Base” is the product of 9 intense weeks of collaboration during the Space Studies Program 2021 – Strasbourg, at the International Space University.
A new article summarizes the materials from 119 pages os the International Space University study.
The payload area of the Starship is about 1000 cubic meters. This proposal would tip over the lunar Starship and cut it open to use three times as much volume and enable it be buried for radiation shielding.
NASA and Thales Alenia just rolled out their first Moon Base concept for the Artemis project. Why do we need a tiny module when we have over a thousand cubic meters in Starship? Does this base have any use at all?
If we assume the flag in the image is a standard size of 1.8 meters, the module has a length of around 10 meters and about 2.5 meters in diameter. SpaceX Starship will be 50-60 meters long and 9 meters in diameters.
Thales Alenia Space has been awarded an Italian Space Agency (ASI) contract to continue the development of its Multi-Purpose Habitat, which the agency hopes will be the first permanent outpost on the Moon.
In September 2020, ASI and NASA signed a joint statement of intent to cooperate to advance the goals of the Artemis programme. An ASI press release at the time explained that the cooperation would include but not be limited to: “the provision of crew habitation capabilities on the surface of the Moon and associated technologies to enable short-duration stays for crews on the Moon.” It would, however, take another two years before a solid plan to execute this planned cooperation would emerge.
In June 2022, ASI signed a bilateral cooperation agreement with NASA to conduct a preliminary design of the “Lunar Surface Multi-Purpose Habitation Module.”
On 23 November, Thales Alenia Space announced that ASI had entrusted it with continuing to develop the Multi-Purpose Habitat. The award followed the completion of a NASA element initiation review, which was completed in mid-October. The next major milestone in the development of the Multi-Purpose Habitat is a mission concept review that is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2023.
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What makes anyone think the Starship can handle the load of its own weight when laid on its side? And then add the load of regolith piled atop it? Remember the early Atlas rocket that imploded b/c it couldn’t stand up w/out the pressure of filled fuel tanks?
Why not do an EVA in moon orbit to detach the main engines for return to earth to save on landing weight? And after landing use the moon landing thrusters on one side to start tilting the ship over and the thrusters on the opposite side to slow down (catch) the fall for a gentle “touchdown”? I agree that if – for whatever reason – insulation from the hull was needed, a Bigelow type inflatable could be deployed internally – but I seriously doubt it would be needed.
And yes, we are talking about at least two types of lunar starship to begin with: #1 is cargo-only convertible “special” (prefitted interior, etc) that would land 1st. #2 would haul the astronauts and also serve as return ship. Post landing, they could be connected for fuel and oxidizer transfer (and water, before departure). Obviously, leave as much as possible on the moon. You would deliver holding tanks to the moon to store the excess fluids. Or use the existing tanks in #1, counting on the conversion of type #3/#etc interior tanks to habitable volumes in the future.
I would land #1 by a crater lip (south polar regions) and have it roboticaly empty its cargo, then lay itself down its side with its tip pointing toward the Crater edge to serve as the attachment points for the crater elevator scaffolding! The humanoid robots can be used to remotely prepare the interior while backhoe robots / dirt plow robots cover the exterior. (It would be an amazing sight if the entire top of the Starship was hanging over, the crater lip, with its originally vertical elevator door now hanging over the crater still serving as the top of the crater elevator!)
#2 can land after #1 is finished to complete the outfitting of the 1st base. The next cargo lander (#3) could bring the 100 ton micro nuclear reactor (to be buried in the hole already prepared by the robots delivered by #1). If you are worried about radiation, deliver the fuel on a separate mission or leave this starship too to be disassembled and used as raw materials.
You can do #1, #3, etc (all robotic) before bringing in #2 (manned) so that #2 happens only after the place is mostly set up. This would allow for some failed robotic missions to occur in between and then be replaced, with #2 happening only after the station is ready to accept people producing #2!
Rinse, repeat, and you also have your Mars colony!
With respect to the buried vertical starship, that is a lot of regolith that you would have to pile up and a very steep hill that you would have to climb! However, you could take a page out of the Chinese approach and land a starship in a previously prepared vertical hole into a horizontal lava tube or some such (a lucky find?). Or if you have the equipment, perhaps you dig your own vertical shaft….? Time+robots = endless possibilities! But that would be a later robotic mission.
And yes: you would have external radiators and possibly even put a Stirling cycle engine in the middle to extract some energy from the waste heat in the meantime! If you are going to dream, dream Big!
Radiation – that’s the challenge for lunar bases, and that’s why they are underground. As a storage unit I could see a case, but for humans no way.
If you mean no way for the unburied Thales Alenia module, it is certainly sot suitable for long term occupation — the buried Starship or the ASI one is, albeit the smaller one is more of a tiny shack.
They were going to save the space shuttle main fuel tank by ferrying it all the way to orbit. I saw a Nasa demonstration walk through on TV where they described some of the existing features in the tank that would allow it to be easily converted into a space station. Attach a bunch of them together, and you would have a massive station for relatively free. They cancelled that idea and built the multi-nation mess that’s in orbit now. I’m sure we’ll spend billions on the Italian lab and other programs with political benefits.
Some fuel tanks don’t need to be habitable, they can be used for future garage, workshops, fuel or water depot.
We they can separate the payload/habitat section from tankers much better use of all resources.
I find the effort of tilting the Starship rather pointless. Adds risk. Just install an airlock at the bottom of the tank and prefit the tanks with floors and internal stairs/lift. Instant vertical observation post, no need to waste 180days.
Add large marginal safety thin membrane inflatables around the base in a ~30-40m tall and wide donut surrounding the starship giving a diameter of ~50-80 meters. Deployment can be done by pressurization, with excavator/crane or robotically as the weight of the deflated inflatables is beyond astronaut capabilities. Cover that with regolith, which can be done by robotics. Leave the top part of the starship open to the elements. It is your observation deck and serves as heat rejection.
The whole will appear as a gray half-sphere of regolith with a white stainless steel tip sticking out. At the bottom of the regolith dome we find access points to garages.
Reinforce the inflatables from the inside to make them fully rigid in case of decompression.
One starship results in ~80m diameter half-dome structure with both pressurized and unpressurized garages.
Some of the pressurized could be just too make it habitable, something between 8 and 14 psi.
It would take weeks to modify the lunar Starship design to land horizontally instead of vertically, using superdraco thrusters along the side. A month or two at the outset.
Frankly, I can’t understand why they ever thought about landing it vertically, as the moon is not necessarily very level.
Land it sideways. Once it’s in the moons atmosphere land it like an F35 doing a vertical takeoff and landing.
What moon atmosphere?
Are you joking?
And how would it land sideways? It would need rockets on its side, not mere maneuver thrusters
Don’t bother cutting into the tanks for extra volume. Tip starship over, the cargo bay will hold an inflatable habitat with airlock. Use tanks for water and oxygen.
How can astronauts return to Earth if building of moon base fails?
The Starship used for the structure isn’t the one the astronauts use the get to, and return from, the moon.
The moonbase Starship would take off from earth, transfer to the moon, and land autonomously.
What moon atmosphere?
Are you joking?
And how would it land sideways? It would need rockets on its side, not mere maneuver thrusters
There is supposed to be a hook up where one star ship can fule another star ship in orbit. You could use that to hook 2 starship together! Then you could keep 1 ships tanks for water/o2, the others could be cut open.
Simple. They won’t build a base with the FIRST ship to land. There will always be a ship to return. Additional ships are transformed into bases
The Starship hull is just a single layer of stainless steel. It has no insulation, no redundancy against leaks, nothing to immediately plug leaks, nothing. It’s simply not comparable to a real space station or moon station module.
Given it should be a new internal design to support this use case, maybe pre-install insulation and an inner hull in the tanks.
Also mesh “baffles” in the tanks that are oriented to be floors once the ship is turned on its side.
If the tanks need to be made longer to keep the same volume, just have them impinge into the payload bay, as this would be a straight trade of off space for space.
Use an airbag to lower the ship. Throw regolith rather than trucking it.
Regolith will mitigate it pretty well; It’s fair insulation, unless compacted, due to the vacuum between the grains. You might want to fractionate it to avoid a mix with a good packing fraction, though.
As I’ve suggested before, there’s nothing standing in the way of a purpose built Starship that is just extra large tankage already fitted out with grid floors, with utility penetrations, airlocks and windows behind removable SS covers. With just enough cargo space to hold the fittings that won’t stand cryogenic temperatures.
It really is an enormously more efficient approach than using the Starship to carry bespoke living space.
Such a single use Starship could easily be mass produced, then you’d just dismount the engines and ship them back periodically.
Sorry I didn’t read yours before I answered others!
Absolute agreement.
You could even make the engine section into a removable module (or three, so it fits in a Starship bay for return) to reduce the effort for re-usd both in space and on the ground.
Why not simply increase the length of the Starship, decrease the tank size, and add the crew features needed? The Starship only needs enough fuel to get to the rendezvous point in space, say the ISS, and then hook up with a full fuel Starship that drives to the moon and lands there. It does not need to leave the moon. Also, empty Starships can take the slow path to the moon using much less fuel enroute, saving it for landing.
Suffers from the Skylab wet lab proposal’s same faults, namely the insulation of the tankage is problematic, and the actual fit out process. At least a regolith cover helps to mitigate some of that.
The regolith cover probably would be a thermal problem. Equipment inside produces heat which needs to be rejected. A regolith covering thick enough to protect against solar particle events would provide enough insulation to require sig if i ant heat rejection systems.
Just leave a part of stainless steel hull uncovered, near the bottom, underneath a tent structure open to the outside, in perpetual darkness.
That part of the hull would be unprotected space. Coolant transfer to an external radiator (possibly into a location always in shadow) would be more efficient from both a space use and thermal transfer perspective.
I think the trade off between extra mass vs. additional usable habitat would be worth it.
According to the article, compacting the regolith will reduce the insulation it provides. I assume without reducing the protection, since the vacuum that is compacted out doesn’t stop too much radiation 😀