Mechanical Properties of Lunar Soil and Simulants
Investigation of the physical and mechanical properties of lunar soil carried out by the USSR and the USA; both in situ and on returned samples, has resulted in considerable information...
Structural Materials from Lunar Simulants Through Thermal Liquefaction
Thermal liquefaction that allows development of intermediate ceramic composites from a lunar simulant with various admixtures is used to develop structural materials for construction on...
In-situ Release of Solar Wind Gases from Lunar Soil
A concept is described which has the potential to perform the in-situ heating of the lunar regolith in order to release the solar wind gases. The poor thermal conductivity of the lunar...
Analysis of Two Lunar Oxygen Production Processes
Frequently, chemical engineers must evaluate processes, design systems, and size equipment based on a chemical or physical reaction without the benefit of laboratory data or previous industrial...
Hydrogen Reduction of Lunar Soil and Simulants
Carbotek, Inc., and the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) are cooperating on further development of the Carbotek process to produce oxygen from lunar ilmenite by hydrogen...
Lunar Oxygen ? The Reduction of Glass by Hydrogen
The direct reduction of volcanic glass by hydrogen has been proposed as a method of extracting oxygen from the lunar soil. Experiments using lunar simulant glasses reacted with flowing...
A Modified Sulfate Process to Lunar Oxygen
A modified sulfate process which produces oxygen from iron oxide-bearing minerals in lunar soil is under development. Reaction rates of ilmenite in varying strength sulfuric acid have...
Steady State Composition with Low Fe?+ Concentrations for Efficient O2 Production by Magma Electrolysis of Lunar Soils
Parameters are estimated for a hypothetical, well stirred, continuous-feed electrolytic cell that converts 20% of a lunar soil feedstock to O2 gas,...
Transient Analysis of Flexible Space Structures
A new approach for numerical analysis of flexible space frames subjected to impact forces is presented. The method is particularly effective in the analysis of large amplitude vibration...
Structural Design of the GN&C Navigation Base for the Space Station Freedom
The Space Station Freedom (SSF) pointing accuracy budget requires that the Guidance, Navigation and Control hardware maintain alignment within ? 0.1 degrees of arc. The ring laser gyros...
Response of Space Structures Under Sudden Local Damage
Damages to space structures can come from such adverse events as impact by foreign objects, docking, drastic temperature changes, and exposure to radiation and charged particles. This...
Structural Studies of Two Aerobrake Heatshield Panel Concepts
Structural sizing and performance data are presented for two different aerobrake hexagonal heatshield panel structural concepts. One concept features a sandwich construction with an aluminum...
Modeling and Analysis of Doubly Curved Aerobrake Truss Structures
Recent studies have indicated that vehicles designed for a piloted mission to Mars may have their initial Earth Orbit mass reduced by nearly a factor of two if aerobraking is used rather...
Structural Design Methodology of Large Space Structures
This paper discusses considerations and outlines a methodology for structural design of large space structures (LSS) deployed in low earth orbit. It includes definition of mission requirements,...
Beneficiation of Lunar Rocks and Regolith: Concepts and Difficulties
Considerations of the resources which can provide feedstocks of ilmenite, glass, agglutinates, anorthite, etc. at a lunar base require an appreciation of the geology of the situation....
Measuring Vibration in an Advanced Composite Beam with Localized Internal Fiber-Optic Strain Sensors
Two optical fibers embedded with different configurations were used separately as strain sensors to measure the natural frequencies and modal amplitudes of a cantilevered graphite/bismaleimide...
The Analysis Related to the Impact of Composite Panels
In analyzing experiments under impact loading, a dynamic model is needed to solve for the deflections and strains as functions of time. For composites, where shear deformation can be very...
Regolith Dynamics
Due to the differences of the gravitational accelerations of the Earth and Lunar environments, geotechnical engineering must be applied differently in the two environments. This study...
Principles of Control for Robotic Excavation
Excavation can be considered one of the most unstructured problems in the construction environment. On one hand, many technologies have been developed in the past to build shelters using...
Thermal Investigation of a Large Lunar Telescope
Recent interest in construction of a large telescope on the Lunar surface (Nein and Davis, 1991; Bely, Burrows, and Illingworth, 1989) has prompted this feasibility study of a thermal...
Return to search