CAST IRON IN SPACE?
July 24th, 2017
Sounds ridiculous doesn't it. It's a steampunk fancy in the wrong place. But there is nothing wrong with the concept, it just jars with 21st century space tech as we know it - highly precise, over-engineered, perfection to 10 decimal places.
There are two basic strategies for cast iron architecture:
1 - magnetic iron is used to form open frames on which to attach stuff and simple walls/enclosing tubes to simply shield stuff;
2 - we push the envelope and create pressurized environments in which humans and other organic matter can live.
The idea of building iron constructs that are habitable occurred not long after I had my eureka moment. Immediately I thought of magnetic toy construction, Geomag and Magnetix and the like, which permit geodesic-style frames, and then I considered, what if these frames were lined with plates? The plates could be welded, now there is an enclosure, a protective shell that could be combined with the developing inflatable module tech by Bigelow. Then I went a step further and wondered if the module could be omitted entirely and the enclosure simply lined with layers of space appropriate materials.
And so I swiftly went on with this enquiry - the main page shows a diagram of basic primitives, not included are wedge forms. With these now in mind, cylinders of any size could be built. The artistic rendering on the main page is simplistic, the reality would be a good deal more sophisticated. There is a substantial project here for an architect, or anyone with design skill for that matter. I will get to work on it properly when personal circumstances permit.
on welding in space
August 4th, 2017
First:- some clarifications for the main page (which I will not alter drastically for the time being). The LSE anchor-point I discovered is actually situated on the moons surface, according to the Wiki article. What I was referring to (in "What is the...?) is that location at the top of a cable (located at L1).
Second:- Cast iron construction can be done from Earth. The context in the main page is building stuff from the Moon, near the Moon, because that is how I arrived at the concept in the first place.
On to welding in space. There is precious little written about the subject. Google it, and it's a 'void' subject. But it did bring my attention to cold welding last year. Nothing about welding with Sunlight using mirrors either. A YouTube video shows some bloke basically burning up a piece of metal with a parabolic mirror. To fine weld iron 'brick' ingots? A combination of mirrored sunlight to 'warm-up' an area to be melted and a finer application of heat by a high-power laser may be the optimal approach.
The magnetism of my concept bricks raises interesting questions: molten iron, in a magnetic field, will want to follow that field, no?* On a north-south join, then fluid iron will stay where it is, generally, and some will creep into any cracks and spaces between the bricks contacting surface**. Then it cools down - in the presence of a field - and becomes magnetic again.
* Correction: I've since learned that molten iron is amorphous and not magnetic.
** Whether it can move into cracks through capillary action is unknown.
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On cold welding:- even before a molten welding technique is applied, the surface of every brick in contact with another could spontaneously join. Not completely, in a homogeneous sense, but at least where rough peaks, at the microscopic level, come into contact. Any molten iron that makes it way into the tiny spaces adjacent to a weld join might lead to further cold welding afterwards.
This post is to preempt inquiries about exactly what a Lunar Hammer is.
The reason for the secrecy about how they function is because the modifications I have made to the basic design is potentially worth a patent application. I am hedging my bets for now. If you managed to make a correct educated guess, well done.
There is something worth mentioning - I don't want to patent it, and I don't want anyone else to patent it either. It should be totally outside intellectual exclusivity and free to adopt by any agency, persons, etc , etc. This my opinion on it. Having said that, however, if a company is to be started based on this tech, investors might insist on it and I'll just have to be practical about the matter.
about the hammers
July 31st, 2017
New support blog: AEVUM FERRO. Last updated 19-9-2017.
Future entries will posted there from now on.
on the bricks
August 2nd, 2017
Magnetic orientation is simple for disks and rings from the list of basic entities. A cube is straightforward as well, since any field axis is an affine transform of the others. It gets more complicated for a rectangular block (10 x 5 x 2.5 cm), here the field axis can take three orientations: lengthwise; width wise; height wise.
Lengthwise spans distance and we get a wall 5cm for our template block. Widthwise presents the largest surface area; height-wise confers density of packing, the greatest contact area between the bricks.
I guess the pattern we use depends on how thick we want the walls to be. I favour thickness. This would seem to present the highest density of magnetic field to the external environment.
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The above is early conjectures and I will be studying possible layouts and their implications for design.