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Northrop Grumman To Study DARPA Concept For Lunar Railroad

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Posted by samfp1943 on Saturday, March 23, 2024 10:28 PM

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/

 

 


 

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Posted by tree68 on Sunday, March 24, 2024 6:53 AM

Getting the CWR there should be interesting...

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Posted by BaltACD on Sunday, March 24, 2024 8:30 AM

tree68
Getting the CWR there should be interesting...

Even conventional stick rail would be interesting

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, March 24, 2024 9:39 AM

samfp1943
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/

I'm afraid that the entire technical content of their 'future lunar railroad' is summed up in the short phrase "AI-generated".

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Posted by Erik_Mag on Sunday, March 24, 2024 1:36 PM

BaltACD
 
tree68
Getting the CWR there should be interesting...

 

Even conventional stick rail would 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.

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Posted by York1 on Sunday, March 24, 2024 2:32 PM

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.

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Posted by tree68 on Sunday, March 24, 2024 11:26 PM

Erik_Mag
I 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...)

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Posted by Erik_Mag on Monday, March 25, 2024 10:01 AM

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.

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, March 25, 2024 10:15 AM

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.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, March 25, 2024 11:33 AM

CSSHEGEWISCH
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.

It's not the 33 engines that's the issue so much (with modern manufacturing and quality control); it's the dumb decision not to go through the EPA rigmarole to have a proper flame trench and vibration-suppression spray system... and the no-brainer decision to learn something -- doesn't have to be that much of a something, and you could get it surfing the Web -- about the characteristics of Formag (and, in particular, what you do NOT use it for...)

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.

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Posted by Ulrich on Monday, March 25, 2024 3:12 PM

Probably possible from an engineering standpoint, but does the economics make sense? Probably not..

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Posted by ORNHOO on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 4:01 PM

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

 

 

 

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 4:58 PM

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'...

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Posted by ORNHOO on Saturday, June 1, 2024 12:17 PM

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/

 

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Posted by Euclid on Saturday, June 1, 2024 12:51 PM

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?

 

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Posted by BaltACD on Saturday, June 1, 2024 3:59 PM

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?  

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Posted by Euclid on Saturday, June 1, 2024 8:18 PM

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.   

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Posted by tree68 on Saturday, June 1, 2024 8:38 PM

Euclid
What we really need is a railroad to ship those minerals to Earth where they can be used.   

That's a lotta track.  

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.  

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Posted by BaltACD on Saturday, June 1, 2024 11:14 PM

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.

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Posted by blue streak 1 on Sunday, June 2, 2024 9:08 PM

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

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Posted by ORNHOO on Monday, June 3, 2024 1:25 PM

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

 

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 3, 2024 3:40 PM

ORNHOO
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

Is this analogus to SLOAT - Stupidest Lawyer of All Time

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Posted by 54light15 on Monday, June 3, 2024 10:29 PM

A railroad on the moon is a bunch of Weapons Grade Balonium. 

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Posted by Euclid on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 12:06 PM

54light15

A railroad on the moon is a bunch of Weapons Grade Balonium. 

 

Yes it certainly is.  At this point, the most productive, practical, and cost effective endeavor on the Moon would be to develop improvements in methods of detecting and extracting mineral samples.  Then build those improvements into robotic systems.  The entire process of going to the moon, finding minerals, returning test data, retrieving samples, and transporting them back to earth, will all be unmanned. 
 
I am guessing that China is now doing exactly that. 
 
Design and build that prospector machine and send it to every moon and planet we can. 

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