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Fabrication Capabilities Utilizing In Situ Materials

Author
McLemore, Carole A.
Published
September 09, 2008.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Darby, Charles A., Gilley, Scott D., Fikes, John C., and Good, James E.
Online Version

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Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
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Summary
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a Space Exploration Policy that lays out a plan that far exceeds the earlier Apollo goals where landing on the moon and taking those first historic steps fulfilled the mission. The policy states that we will set roots on the moon by establishing an outpost. This outpost will be used as a test bed for residing in more distant locales, such as Mars. In order to become self-sufficient, the occupants must have the capability to fabricate component parts in situ. Additionally, in situ materials must be used to minimize valuable mission upmass and to be as efficient as possible. In situ materials can be found from various sources such as raw lunar regolith whereby specific constituents can be extracted from the regolith (such as aluminum, titanium, or iron), and existing hardware already residing on the moon from past Apollo missions. The Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process lends itself well to fabricating parts, tools, and other necessary items using in situ materials and will be discussed further in this paper.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 20090014085.
MSFC-2083.
AIAA Space 2008 Conference; 9-11 Sep. 2008; San Diego, CA; United States.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Copyright, Distribution as joint owner in the copyright.
View MARC record | catkey: 15997738