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What will it take to get us back tothe Moon?

By Jekan Thanga

It took 40 years for us to get back to the surfaceof the Moon. The adventures of China's lateJade Rabbit rover ended an absence that wouldhave been unthinkable to families clusteredaround their TV sets in the 1960s, watching theincredible achievements of the ApolloProgram. Where did we get o� track? JekanThanga from ASU's School of Earth and SpaceExploration, explains the science and politicsbehind Cory Doctorow's new novella, "The ManWho Sold the Moon."

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One answer is that we stopped imagining what we could do onthe Lunar surface, at least in a way that captured public interestand government funding. This is exactly the problem that theanthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future,which will be released on September 9, tackles: how can wereignite our ambitions to do Big Stu�? "The Man Who Sold theMoon," Cory Doctorow's contribution to the book, is not just aninspiring narrative but also timely and relevant for Lunar andspace exploration.

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One of Cory's observations is that the political landscape isshi�ing. There are notable private e�orts being propelled bythe Google Lunar XPRIZE to land crowdfunded landers androvers that will beam HD images and surface video. Inaddition, several commercial entities such as PlanetaryResources and Deep Space Industries plan to mine resources inspace, with a particular focus on asteroids.

Our mindset about how to achieve a lunar mission has alsoevolved. We no longer expect to bring everything we mightneed for a mission with us on an expensive ride through theEarth's atmosphere -- there have been signi�cant ongoinge�orts to utilize Lunar resources to build a permanent humanhabitat. "The Man Who Sold the Moon" centers on the idea ofusing robots and 3D printing techniques to create structuresfrom moondust... which is not as science �ctional as you mightimagine.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has conducted researchon metal 3D printers and sintering of titanium since the late1990s. Their e�orts have produced titanium based �xtures andtools that could one day be created from Lunar ilmenite. In2008, Lockheed Martin demonstrated the extraction of oxygenfrom samples comparable in quality and composition to theilmenite found on the Moon (more technical documentationavailable here and here). These breakthroughs will be the basisfor big things to come. Such work would �ll critical needs tomake a permanent human habitat a reality, enabling humanexplorers and scientists to build tools and widgets in situwithout having to travel back to Earth. Beyond just buildingproducts, tools, and replacement parts, Doctorow's story hintsat a vision of the Moon as a service center and a manufacturingdepot for NASA's "Massless Space Architectures." Thesearchitectures shoot for reduced mass or minimal launch massof feedstock from Earth that would kick-start productionprocesses utilizing resources in space or on the Moon to create

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buildings, entire spacecra�, and more. As "The Man Who Soldthe Moon" highlights, such architectures would be trulyrevolutionary and have the potential to minimize the cost ofbuilding, assembling, and testing next generation o�-worldstructures, and even spacecra�.

However, the low gravity conditions on the Moon and themicrogravity conditions in space remain a daunting obstacle.These conditions pose major challenges to all of our knownmanufacturing techniques because of the need to e�cientlydissipate heat, transport �uids and particles from one locationto another, and produce such simple things as ingots into a setshape. This is extremely critical for metallurgy. Our technologyhas evolved over thousands of years, exploiting the Earth'sgravity as a helpful and generative force. Thus one promisinge�ort to apply our vast manufacturing knowledge to the o�-world lunar environment is to produce arti�cial gravity.

Arti�cial gravity using a centrifuge (ironically, an idea that oneof Cory's characters roundly rejects in the story) is a plausiblesolution to overcome the many di�culties posed by the Moon'slow gravity. However, to date we have yet to test a largecentrifuge in space. E�orts led by the Japanese AerospaceExploration Agency ( JAXA) and NASA's Johnson Space Centerproposed developing a centrifuge big enough to perform lifescience experiments and human habitation experiments (inthat order, naturally) on the space station. However, the rest ofthe space station was to remain stationary. It turns out thathaving one portion of the space station rotate while the restremains stationary is quite a tricky technical problem. Suchchallenges substantially increased the cost of both admirablee�orts into the billions and resulted in eventual projectcancellations.

At Arizona State University, we have been exploring low-costapproaches to tackling this problem of producing arti�cialgravity in space. One of our proposed concepts under Privacy - Terms

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development is the Asteroid Origins Satellite (AOSAT), aspinning 3U (30 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm) cubesat that will producethe required centripetal forces to produce arti�cial gravity aslow as 0.01G or 0.001G. The AOSAT will simulate asteroidsurface conditions by spinning while carrying crushedmeteorite dust. This will be a low cost alternative alternative tosending a spacecra� to an actual asteroid, and will help to re�neasteroid landing and mobility technologies. Landing onasteroid composed of rubble piles is considered one of themajor challenges in space robotics. AOSAT will also beperforming experiments on dust accretion to physicallydetermine how star dust "collects" to form rocks and asteroids.

Our next step is to build a large 6U cubesat that would achieveto 0.5 to 1 G for life science experiments. The concept utilizeso� the shelf space components that are relatively low cost and�ight proven.

Manufacturing without gravity, although more challenging, iswithin sight for certain materials such as plastic. Plans areunderway to deliver a 3D printer that would produce parts onthe International Space Station, particularly simple �ttings forhoses, tools, and racks that would in theory reduce the amountof �nished products that would need to be delivered fromEarth. E�orts by small businesses such as Made In Space, whichhave been �own on "Vomit Comet" parabolic �ights to simulatemicrogravity, have shown promising results, with eventualdeployment on the space station planned.

But for all these technical achievements, the most excitingdevelopment in space exploration for me is that it is becominga more democratized, inclusive endeavor. Hackers and makers,crowdfunders and citizen scientists, a vast array of privatecompanies and startups, and even groups of artists like theMexican Space Collective are trying new things and viewingspace as a place for experimentation and play, not just an arenafor economic development and geopolitical jostling. It’s Privacy - Terms

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perfectly plausible that the next big thing we send to the Mooncomes out of Kickstarter, rather than a national space agency.Ad astra!

-Jekan Thanga

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