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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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3D printed screws from fake moon dust

Researchers in Europe have successfully printed screws and gears using simulated moon dust.

These printed materials weren’t carbon-based plastic or metal, according to a statement from the ESA, but rather a sort of lunar ceramic. “Ground and sieved down to particle size, the regolith grains are mixed with a light-reacting binding agent, laid down layer-by-layer, then hardened by exposing them to light,” according to the statement. “The resulting printed part is then sintered in an oven to bake it solid.”

In other words, all these little gadgets had production histories closer to the dinner plate in your cupboard than the screws holding that cupboard together.

This is still an experimental project, so there’s a lot more testing to be done — including whether these parts are strong enough to stand up to the stresses of real-world use.

They might find these parts aren’t hard enough for their use as screws and gears, but finding a way to produce these parts in space rather than having them shipped from Earth will be essential for making any future space colony viable.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • wayne

    Very interesting!

    Haven’t tracked back to the original paper. Do we know what the “light reacting binding agent” is?

    Pivoting– there has recently been great progress in “cold sintering” techniques, where the material is processed anywhere from room-temp to 200 C., avoids hi-temp requirements and long bake times, but is just as structurally strong. Utilizes water and pressure. Works with a broad range of inorganics and ‘composites,’ which the Moon has a bit of, lying around.

  • wayne

    ah, here we go….

    Cold Sintering techniques
    Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
    https://youtu.be/dVTWq8s7y4E

  • 1% of the lunar highlands is Ni-Fe meteorite bits. Magnetically separate these, use parabolic mirrors to melt. Remove the dross. Cast & machine or 3D print. Strength should not be a problem.

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