If you are curious about this 'Moon Train': Here is a linked site that shows a drawing of the proposed train onthe site Worldless Tech@
https://wordlesstech.com/northrop-grumman-to-develop-lunar-railroad-concept/
Getting the CWR there should be interesting...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68Getting the CWR there should be interesting...
Even conventional stick rail would be interesting
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
samfp1943If you are curious about this 'Moon Train': Here is a linked site that shows a drawing of the proposed train onthe site Worldless Tech@ https://wordlesstech.com/northrop-grumman-to-develop-lunar-railroad-concept/
BaltACD tree68 Getting the CWR there should be interesting... Even conventional stick rail would be interesting
tree68 Getting the CWR there should be interesting...
I completely agree that even stick rail would have problems with coefficient of thermal expansion. What may be of more concern is if the low temperatures are below the brittle transition temperature of the rail. That strongly suggests some sort of insulating cover over the tracks, which could be multiple layers of reflective foil as done by the Webb space telescope. This would also make climate control on lunar passenger cars a lot easier.
With no moisture to cause leakage between the rails and no oxygen to cause oxides on the rail surface, track circuits should really well on the moon.
Since our money seems to be no issue, maybe they should try for a maglev train. The train weighs much less, and there isn't rail expansion/contraction to work around.
York1 John
Erik_MagI completely agree that even stick rail would have problems with coefficient of thermal expansion.
A thirty-nine foot cargo bay probably would be doable. A 1320' cargo bay is another story. Having a powerful enough rocket to lift it off would likely be an issue as well. A Saturn 5 would only be able to handle 23 39' sticks of 100 lb rail...
I would suppose that if the appropriate raw materials could be found on the Moon, that suitable rail could be manufactured there, if a plant could be built to do it.
How would a BOF furnace work with no oxygen? (Rhetorical question...)
To make a lunar railroad practical, the common structural materials would need to be mined from the moon. As for the BOF, my understanding is that the BOF removes the carbon other undesired elements such as sulfur and phosporus.
tree68 A thirty-nine foot cargo bay probably would be doable. A 1320' cargo bay is another story. Having a powerful enough rocket to lift it off would likely be an issue as well. A Saturn 5 would only be able to handle 23 39' sticks of 100 lb rail...
You could use Elon Musk's latest montrosity, which should have greater capacity, assuming that he can get to work properly. 33 engines is asking for trouble.
CSSHEGEWISCHYou could use Elon Musk's latest montrosity, which should have greater capacity, assuming that he can get to work properly. 33 engines is asking for trouble.
I of course would hold out for harvesting nickel-iron asteroids and smelting them with large spun-mirror arrays (as described in 1965, and in various works of SF).
I note the Chinese are reviving the old Vactrain idea -- they seem to be considering relatively short-term speed of about 621mph (metric equivalent, of course, as a nice round number) and are gearing up for speeds twice that, in what looks appallingly inadequate tube to hold the necessary vacuum. On the Moon much of the issue is solved, and all you'd really need is an updated type of Weems superstructure... which could double, if you work your detail design correctly, as a segment of a mass driver.
My opinion is that 'vacuum' anywhere but in suitable extraterrestrial locations is suicide of at least the same magnitude as pulverized-coal firing on locomotives. Go straight to Arnold Miller's approaches which involve positive-pressure flooding with something that is both a suitable fuel and a suitable coolant... just be wise to the jive of hydrogen-embrittlement mechanisms.
Probably possible from an engineering standpoint, but does the economics make sense? Probably not..
Erik_Mag To make a lunar railroad practical, the common structural materials would need to be mined from the moon. As for the BOF, my understanding is that the BOF removes the carbon other undesired elements such as sulfur and phosporus.
Lunar regolith contains significant amounts of oxygen, iron, and aluminum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil#/media/File:Composition_of_lunar_soil.svg
steel, however, is an alloy of iron and carbon, and the Moon apears to have virtually no native carbon. The most economical source of carbon for a lunar steel production facility ( from a delta vee standpoint ) would be carbonaceous chondrite asteroids.
Lunar operations would most likely come under the jurisdiction of the Outer Space Treaty: https://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf
In particular Articles II, III, VI, and IX
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_real_estate
Personally, I fail to see why any lunar railroad would need huge quantities of steel rail even at the 'lunar equivalent' of pounds per yard. It would be built as slab track, mostly of minimally-processed lunar material, with methods of heatsinking down into the lunar crust, and only the 'running surface' from tread around through gauge corner to inside flank would be in hard material subject to running wear. (In a sense, this is like a return to the kind of construction with strap rail in the 1830s, with better engineering to prevent or mitigate 'snakeheads'...
NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed an alternate lunar surface transportation system using magnetic levitation: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/flexible-levitation-on-a-track-float/
ORNHOO NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed an alternate lunar surface transportation system using magnetic levitation: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/flexible-levitation-on-a-track-float/
Anything acquired on the moon will be transported to Earth. Why would there ever be a reason to transport things or people from one place on the moon to another place on the moon?
Euclid ORNHOO NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed an alternate lunar surface transportation system using magnetic levitation: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/flexible-levitation-on-a-track-float/ Anything acquired on the moon will be transported to Earth. Why would there ever be a reason to transport things or people from one place on the moon to another place on the moon?
Why are people and things transported from one place to another on the Earth?
BaltACD Euclid ORNHOO NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed an alternate lunar surface transportation system using magnetic levitation: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/flexible-levitation-on-a-track-float/ Anything acquired on the moon will be transported to Earth. Why would there ever be a reason to transport things or people from one place on the moon to another place on the moon? Why are people and things transported from one place to another on the Earth?
Because people live all over Earth, so they need things shipped to them from other points on Earth where those things are produced.
There may be many places on the moon where things can be produced, mostly in the form of extracted minerals. But why do we need a railroad to ship those products to other locations on the moon? What we really need is a railroad to ship those minerals to Earth where they can be used.
EuclidWhat we really need is a railroad to ship those minerals to Earth where they can be used.
I'm sure there will be limited points from which spacecraft will be launched to take the mined materials back to earth. For an example of how this would work, one need only look at the logging railroads of the past, where the tracks were laid and used until the lumber supply dried up. Logs were hauled to mills or to interchange points for forwarding to mills.
Or, take a look at iron ore mining around Lake Superior. The ore is taken to a select few ports around the lake, where it is loaded onto ore boats for the trip to the mills.
Euclid BaltACD Euclid ORNHOO NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed an alternate lunar surface transportation system using magnetic levitation: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/flexible-levitation-on-a-track-float/ Anything acquired on the moon will be transported to Earth. Why would there ever be a reason to transport things or people from one place on the moon to another place on the moon? Why are people and things transported from one place to another on the Earth? Because people live all over Earth, so they need things shipped to them from other points on Earth where those things are produced. There may be many places on the moon where things can be produced, mostly in the form of extracted minerals. But why do we need a railroad to ship those products to other locations on the moon? What we really need is a railroad to ship those minerals to Earth where they can be used.
238K miles of track that moves around the entirety of the Earth every 28 or so days, thus the termination location on Earth is constantly on the move.
NO! If we looked simply at the location over a point it would be 30 - 70 minutes later each day. ~~ average of 50 minutes does not coompute either. then we have the variation of the moon's orbit that takes it both north and south enough that at short times there is no moon set at the north and south poles. That means not over the same point except ~~ once a month. But that even does not compute.. Then it gets so complicated that my brain fried with a 404 error code.. Have fun reading this link.
Orbit of the Moon - Wikipedia
FLOAT as presented is conceptually more like a maglev conveyor belt, moving small "packets" at high frequency. As such it would not seem to have the large cargo and passenger moving capacity of the wheel on rail Northrop Grumman concept. If only there were a way to combine the two: https://www.ironlev.com/news/2024/4/5/letexpo-2024
ORNHOOFLOAT as presented is conceptually more like a maglev conveyor belt, moving small "packets" at high frequency. As such it would not seem to have the large cargo and passenger moving capacity of the wheel on rail Northrop Grumman concept. If only there were a way to combine the two: https://www.ironlev.com/news/2024/4/5/letexpo-2024
Is this analogus to SLOAT - Stupidest Lawyer of All Time
A railroad on the moon is a bunch of Weapons Grade Balonium.
54light15 A railroad on the moon is a bunch of Weapons Grade Balonium.
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