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OK, I will just make it brief.
So this is costing
Castner's part of the part time cyl,
part of the part time scientists
who want to send a rover to a place
where it's very hard to do 3D printing.
So enjoy this.
Talk about 3D printing
on the moon, the future of space
exploration stepstool.
Hi.
So who have you knows about
the Google lunar takes place just
OK.
OK, it's OK. You don't have to know.
I was just checking.
OK, so we're a team
called the Part Time Scientist and
we're well funded like 2008.
So that's quite a while ago with six
people.
And as of today, we
are about 35 people that
are working
on the mission to the moon.
And of those 35
people, we have now 11 employees,
which makes the name part time scientists
to lie.
So on this on the corner of the
slide, you see the new logo.
It's a pity scientists
and yeah, well,
we don't know what the party stands for
yet, but we will figure it out
eventually.
So for those of you that have seen
our presentation last year, it was
we we did win the milestone prizes.
So we won 750000
U.S. dollars for qualifying
our rover, which is quite
nice. And we also
got a new partner, which is a bit
significant. You know,
it's it's Audi.
And, you know, we are cooperating with
what's the deal with our aims and
and various other partners to to get
this mission done.
And the Google X Prize is a competition
where you can get three million bucks for
sending robots.
So
this is very
this is our mission.
We want to send the rover to the moon and
it should somehow look like this.
This is actually what we are currently
working on. So that was.
That was me yesterday.
The lines mean everything is
fine, which is why I had no time
to present to prepare the presentation.
So I hope it's OK.
So, um,
yeah, we are working very tirelessly on
getting that done.
The cool thing is that our new rover
is actually a little bit bigger.
Again, you know, we started with like a
very small one and we figured out that
it's too small and we increase it a bit.
I mean, it's so small again.
And the last
size increase came in the form of the of
the wheels because we found
out that was small surface.
We can climb up higher
slopes and also
decreasing the weight was very helpful.
And the cool thing about the new rover
is that the wheels such as
the on the left hand side is a new
wheel and it's 200
grams lighter despite being
bigger.
And this was the we were able to do that
because the left wing is fully 3D
printed and this is
pretty darn cool. So we are a big fan of
3D printing for everything we do,
not just because we're always tight on
time. So it's also very
helpful that you can get 3D printed
stuff quickly.
It could be more organized, but well,
we have 3D printers, which is much cooler
except so 3D
printing is hard.
You probably know, especially those that
made the ones on your own.
It's
yeah, it's it's very tough to to get
it right because you the material that
you get out of the printer is not what
you actually expect
and what can be used.
But we want to do it on the moon anyway.
Um, so yeah,
this is just a nice picture that came up
from NASAA.
Was it another.
It came up and it's looking very nice.
So we want to take the picture of that
and we want to
land near Apollo 17.
So that's the tower's literally,
which is near the equator.
And we want to you want to
land like five kilometers near
it. And there is,
you know, in the one kilometer landing
ellipse. So that's hopefully the landing
area, not the impact area.
We are we are working on that.
Now, one of the dates we hopefully I
suggested for for sending
her over to the moon was to start
on the 7th December in
2017, because that's like
forty five years after Apollo 17
happened. And also we would land on
Christmas. And so if someone asked
what we would do on Christmas, that would
be like I could say, well, I made a new
crater on the moon.
So
hopefully we don't do the crater thing.
Um,
the reason why we chose Apollo 17 this
past is mostly because
it has a very interesting
geological property.
There is there was the one mission where
another say, oh, we don't do it just for
show. We actually want to do science.
And so they took a geologist with them.
And so there is some there
are some known data about the geology
of Apollo 17.
And so that's
one of the reasons we want to go there.
The other reason is the lunar rover
vehicle that you can see here.
We want to do we want to do significant
science when we go there.
And we just we don't just want to win the
Google X Prize. We want to do real
science there. And we want to one of our
science objectives, as it was
said by by NASA, is that
they want to see how
hot the stuff on the surface
after four years of exposure
is still there.
You know, whether it was
shot into little pieces or, you know,
maybe they find some other reason why
they didn't why we didn't find anything
there. But, yeah,
it's true.
The Rover vehicle is made of all
kinds of things like leather and
piano, wire, fiberglass.
And it's interesting to see how that
how that works.
So this is Apollo 17.
Yeah, so
but now for the interesting part about
3D printing on the moon.
So the
the surface material of the moon
is made up of lunar Regulus,
which is made of silicon, aluminum,
titanium, Iren oxygen and
kind of other stuff.
And it's a very, very fine powder.
So
when you think about the moon, it doesn't
have any atmosphere.
So there is nothing that
could, you know, transport
the the the lunar
dust around.
So it's it's sitting there for
years and years and millions
of years.
And there are always all those tiny
micrometeorites which are bombarding
the surface and smashing the surface
into very, very, very fine powder.
And this this powder
has some very interesting properties.
So the question is,
how could you actually
use this material for doing 3D
printing on the moon?
And there are like three options.
One we like very much.
This is the microwave based
manufacturing, so the idea
behind that is that that you're
using like an ordinary
microwave or the magnetron
and you you melt
up the material because it contains
some Iren, and
then you can you can get a solid
surface of that.
The problem with that is the
the regular simulants, which are used for
for testing, for various testing of
of testing rovers or spacesuits
or anything like
they are.
Well, you can microwave them, but nothing
happens, which is
kind of bad for testing because
this makes it very difficult.
But there is one interesting property
that is at least known for
for some of the Apollo 11, Apollo 17
samples, and
this is that it contains some
Iren, you can see those
those little Iren.
This is elemental, Iren, that is enclosed
in the in the glass.
And this is
very this
absorbs the.
The microwave energy very efficiently,
and so with very little
energy, you can actually
get a liquid phase between the
particles which which then
heats up even more. And there is a
runaway. Some of the
reaction going on that so that you
get a solid material after
you are bombarded with
with microwave.
And the question is,
what can you do with it?
I mean, the microwave is not as focused
as, for example, as a laser
where you with a laser.
OK, let let me start a little early.
So if you if you want to do laser
sintering on on the earth,
you are actually anywhere.
But if you want to, do you have
you take aluminum powder and
you take a laser and you malteds.
And then you put on another layer of
of this aluminum powder and then you
build it again.
And with that process, you can actually
use three different aluminum.
And if you.
If you want to do that on the moon, you
could you can create
very fine structures, but with the
microwave, you are not such
a not so focused.
And the question is, can you still do
anything interesting?
Was that an answer to that is yes.
If you ever have a microwave,
you can actually make
a surface coating off
of the regulars.
The problem that you have when, for
example, the Apollo astronauts were
coming back into the into
the capsule, they had the problem that
the regulars are so fine that
it actually went through there.
So the spacesuits and they got
black fingers.
And so
the idea is when you are when you're
creating a surface coating by
microwaving these the surface,
then you have a solid, solid
thing where you can drive on, where you
don't generate
such as much
dust when you're landing or when you are
driving on it. And thus, if you want
to build a lunar base and
you have to go out often, then,
you know, not dealing with as much
regulars is a very nice
property you have.
Also, there is and there are some
interesting ideas that you can actually
make a radio dish
when you with that, so you take a regular
grader and you
Sofus code and you
have an almost perfect antenna or
eventually
after a few decades of book.
Um, yeah.
So
one of the theories that was proposed is
this boring lawnmower.
But we think of something cool
like this one.
So the idea is that you have that
you have the microphones on on the bottom
side and while
you're driving, you actually irradiating
the surface and
this radiation
brings the surface, the the
material to about 1200 degrees
Celsius in a very quick time.
And this starts the melting process
so that you get the nice, very nice
coating.
And because we are using microwave, this
is this is a very efficient
way of doing that.
This is also why we
we are aiming to send a little experiment
to the to the surface of the moon
with the microwave thing.
Also, it's very interesting
to do that because we
are very power constrained and our
payload opportunities that we have.
And we are also
we want to do something simple.
And if you want to build a laser
wrigglers printer, then stuff gets very
messy.
But I will show you some pictures
later on.
So if you
if you want to go into additive
manufacturing, there is
significantly more to
to building a 3D printer than
just having the ability to
mold the material.
The problem was with the Regulus is that
not all material is well suited.
So you need to you need to
collect the material.
You need to refine it in some way.
And then you can use, for example,
a laser to melt it.
The other thing that, for example, is
are you thinking about you who, if
you know, is actually the moon village
idea of ESA.
Oh, OK, yeah,
he's a very popular, um,
I find that people know more about
another than they do about EESA
interestingly.
So what they want to do is
they want to do they want to print is
really based.
No, they want to print 3D, print a base
and they want to do it with
was a clue that they are taking with
them. And so they want to they want
to use the binding material for the
printing process.
And we think that's maybe
not the best idea.
If you if you can do it just with
energy, which you have plenty of because
you're on the moon and there is no
atmosphere, then that's
significantly better than using a binding
material.
And
yeah, so they are
either supporting the idea of using a
binding material,
but I think that the laser printing
one is the one that that we we are using
now and which is probably the most
mature.
And so that's probably pretty good.
But how do you actually
separate the materials that you
that you want to use for printing
and so not all of the material
is printable or this
is ready for sintering?
And so you want to
you want to collect material that is
small, that is
at best a fine powder, which you
have plenty, but the cost side is the
size of the particles is very
oddly shaped. So it's
a little bit difficult to
to collect the material and to process
it so that it can be useful, easier later
through printing.
And this is where this sucker comes in.
It's a lunar soil magnetic collector
or lunar soil.
Now, as it was called, and
it's basically O'Reagan in reverse.
So you you take
magnetic fields and
you you use the property that
the the regular material
or the part that you're interested in is
actually magnetic.
And so you are transporting
the material in this sucker
and it's floating in
some reservoir. And then you can 3DO
your whole 3D printing with the laser
melting and putting
layer on top of layer.
Yeah, that should
work.
Um, it's
you know, when you're when you're doing a
mission to the moon, you know, for the
first time in a in a few decades.
And you're doing it as a as a private
entity and you started as a part
time scientist.
That's not the thing you want to do on
the first try.
So we keeping the best for the
next missions.
So baby steps first,
not make an impact crater and then
microwave the
lunar soil.
Actually, someone did try
to use the lunar regular
simulants that are available and actually
build such a 3-D printer, which is easy
if you're on Earth and you have the
regular printer and you can and you're
actually sitting by the printer and you
can, you know, the Russian repair
by knocking, it's when it's failing
and.
The results are,
well, like this,
I don't know if that is good or not,
but it's something and it was already
printed.
Well, I mean, you know, so the good thing
is that in theory,
the laser based melting should
actually work. The problem was
with laser based melting.
Is that a lot of the
energy that you are?
So if you if you're building a laser,
a lot of energy that you put into it is
not converted into optical energy, which
goes out of the laser
thingy.
And then you pointed
at the material that is not black.
It is in this case, it's more likely
gray. So you're from reflectance.
And so a lot of energy is
wasted in this way when
you are using a laser.
But as such, the advantage is that you
can make very fine structures
or as fine as this
one. I actually don't know if inch or
centimeters
it's small.
It's something I
will give it a C for effort.
Yeah. I mean, if you if you know three
printers, you know, especially the the
aluminum sintering things, it's it's very
difficult to get right
with.
The problem is really printing is always
the material fit.
Right. It's it's you
have the material you have to play for
example, and you put it through the
nozzle and in theory it should work
in practice.
Well, not often or
not always.
And this is the this is
the idea as presented by
by ESA and
well, as a company, we have to
think about business cases and
the best we could come up with was,
well, we are helping them do
this. And this
is the the ESA vision
of having a 3D printed,
multi domed structure or moon
village, as they call it.
And they they are working
on it.
I don't know what the what the current
status, but they are planning to do it.
And I said they have those
they will screw based printers.
And I think printing
printing is really 3D printing.
A base is is a very good idea
because you want to use as much of the
resources that are locally available
as possible because
bringing one.
So to give you some perspective,
so we want to bring something on
the moon, which is our rover, which is
about 30 kilograms.
Actually, we want to bring a bit more.
But back to that
later. So we start with
30 tons of rocket
on earth.
And we are until
we are we are getting into the orbit.
We are down to one and a half tons
and one and a half tons.
They they fly to the moon
and then they do the soft landing
pad thingy.
And then we unload
the rover.
We collect the money from Google, make a
party.
And, um,
we get about yeah.
Tops about 100 kilograms of payload
Mars to the surface, starting
from 30 tons on Earth.
So the ratio is
very bad.
And so the
you want to use as much resources as
possible, which is called in resource
utilization, which is now
a very active topic among
planetary researchers because well,
because of the rocket equation and the
ratio that I told you about.
Another very fancy idea
about how you could
actually print
something is to
make a summit
reaction so you take the material
and split it into
the right parts and then you ignited
and you should have
a thermite reaction,
which you can use for forecasting
then.
Well, it was apparently it was tested
with some simulants and it
should work
whether it really does.
Well,
I don't know.
But yeah.
I was the as the.
What is the iron and aluminum,
iron oxide and aluminum,
yeah, so you take you
take iron oxide and aluminum and you
ignited and then they start of a
runaway reaction and.
This is used for for example, for gluing
together the railways,
so it's it's very it's a very nice
reaction that goes the temperature
goes up very high,
which makes it a little bit hard to
handle.
So not on the
first try.
Yeah. So
I told you about those ideas.
We are looking for people that do help
us, for example.
And so the question is,
what are we next?
What what are we up next?
And among the
things that we are working on right now
is our ROVA.
We are very happy about it if it works
as we planned.
And the next
thing we start on with next year is to
to build actually the lender.
And so
if you are interested in building
a cold gas flying
things.
Something like this,
you're you're very invited to
to join us and
to shoot us an email, and
one of the things that they forgot
to mention, we
we also have payload opportunities.
So we we want to we are sending
actually some of the payload that we can
take to the moon. And if you if you're
interested in helping us to
to shoot microwaves at some
rate, some real, real lunar Regulus,
we're looking forward to hearing
from you. And unfortunately, because
I didn't have much time to prepare the
presentation that actually already
done. But I hope you have tons
of questions and
I hope I can I can answer
them to you. Sorry.
Thanks.
That was.
Am I on? Yes, that was a quick
and I found it very interesting
talks. So if you would
need to leave now, please do so quietly.
And if you have any questions,
please line up at the microphones
on the right or on the left
side, and
please keep the voices down
so we can hear the questions
from the microphones.
So if you want to talk, then
also leave.
That would be very nice.
So please be quiet
right now. Quiet.
Very quiet.
OK, very good.
So first question on the right side,
the front microphone.
Hello, sir.
You mentioned the rocket of about 30
tons.
Do you currently engaging with anyone
who is building these rockets or selling
them?
Yeah, we are in negotiations with
with the Indians
regarding the purchase of vehicles.
So we want to we plan to use
that one.
We are also in discussions with with
other alternatives.
Just so we are we are in discussions
about that.
OK, are there Internet questions
there are at the moment no Internet
questions. So next question from
again, the right microphone.
Hello. Can't you simply melt,
deregulate by focusing sunlight?
Oh, yeah. That's there was an alternative
that that we were also
thinking about.
The problem with with that is that
you need to have so
the target temperature that you're aiming
for is about 1200
degrees Celsius if you want to use
it. If you want to use sunlight,
you would need to connect enough to
create about 40 watts
of of heat
in a very small
area.
So you need to have a rather
large optical
thing. And if you know optical
things, those are fragile.
And launching in a rocket is the
exact opposite of, you know, of
having a chip by DHL.
Well, I don't know.
It's
I don't know who I was consulting with
that or the rockets.
But anyway,
so it's you
you can take the you
could in theory, it would be possible.
Yes. And it has been tested.
The problem is that you need to have a
mechanical constructions
for focusing and for
getting it to the moon.
And after you have done
that, you also got to do something
useful with that. So you need to
you need to just not just focus it on
a point, but you need to move
around the focus point as well.
So from a mechanical construction point
of view, that gets very difficult,
which is why we especially
like the idea about the microwaving
where you just, you know,
creates it's it's not really
3-D printing, but you're you're
showing some interesting
prospect about the regular surface.
And that is that is not
possible with the simulant.
So this is why we are preferring that.
OK, next question on the left
side, the front microphone that you
see, I think there is currently also a
challenge from
NASA to do 3-D printing
of Habitrail modules on Mars.
Do you have some, like,
something to say about that?
Like what's the difference as to moon
and what methods might
work?
Um.
I know about the challenge.
I think it's a very good idea.
We I didn't investigate it
too closely to I have to say,
but I think that in some
ways to the Regulus is
it's easier to handle because you have
you have those elemental
Iren that are sitting in the glass beads
and but
maybe I'm wrong.
So it's well, I have
it's both very difficult to
to really print on the moon and to
rebuild on the on the Mars.
But I cannot exactly tell you which
one is more challenging.
It's Yeah.
Sorry, but.
I could imagine that when you
when you're thinking or three, depending
on the on the math, you're
most probably not thinking about
or maybe you do.
Hmm. I was thinking how much robotic
missions, if you to think about math.
There are always people that are already
well on the moon. There's no one which is
stupid, but.
Yeah,
OK, a question from the Internet.
Yeah, the first question is, is it
possible to focus on microwaves
sharp enough to get laser quality
precision in the 3D print?
That's a very good question.
Um, in
theory, with some
antenna designs, it should
be possible, but that might be
difficult.
What do you say?
So the expert answer is it depends
on the wavelengths. Um,
yeah. No, I would say that, yeah, it's
it's definitely more challenging than
having a laser where you have the light
anyway.
So
it would be probably a bit more difficult
to, um, to
to focus that. But the
interesting thing about, you know, we
know from with a laser that
it works with the civilians and so we can
test it on Earth.
But with a microwave, it
doesn't work on the on
Earth. And so I think it's more
interesting to test that one out first,
but also it's more energy efficient.
OK, again, from the
microphone on the left side
and yeah, first of all, thanks
for your very nice presentation
and I think I kind
of imagined something completely
different from, you know, as for
fingerprinting, printing, but
you're this microwave vehicle
that you showed that basically
creates street
passes.
And if you want to
make a structure out of it, how do you
raise it up? Like how do you build
something with it?
Um.
So let me
go back with that, so
the basic idea from
the FDA is proposing is say
that you actually have
some some clue
things. So they are applying
Cloo at certain parts of
binding material to be more precise.
And and then they're using
both those kinds of things to to put on
the next of
the next layer.
And it was microwave.
You could actually do the same.
So you can you can build
one layer. Then you put it on the mixed
material on top and then you go over
it again.
The problem is the problem with that is
that, uh, we
we don't have enough samples to
to know anything about the material that
is that is deep
within the regular.
So we know that
the microwave based thing had that's been
tested with Apollo 17 dust,
about 80 grams of it
that was collected from the surface.
The problem is we don't know whether
the same properties are are
applying at material that
at a bigger depth.
So there is
there is a lot of research that that
could be done on the moon
to know about that. But that would be the
basic way of building something that you
would use a bulldozer, put up material,
you microwave it, you
put the next layer on.
This is not for printing a
gearbox or something.
This is for building structures like like
these.
OK, next question.
The right microphone on the front.
Yeah, I think my question is more for
you, Specialisterne, from that.
Who do you like intend to do to make
those microwaves on the moon.
You use my magnetron or like
yes, it's not something that is light or
light and you need a lot of power.
So actually, this is a
this is the funny thing about about the
magnetron. It's
the energy that is that you need for
for getting the material up to
up to 1200 degrees is actually
just 200 watts.
And you just need it for
what? I think it was 30 seconds
because you have to because
you have to some of the runaway reaction
going on when
with the microwave.
So that's so you don't
need much energy.
So that's one of the significant
advantages of a laser and
about the weight and the size of the
microphone. Well, yeah, that's
interesting.
But like you have like seating
for the what?
The magnetron.
Yeah. Because you're going to have like
DCP, there is no atmosphere.
So Yeah.
I mean like Vegeta or something.
Yeah.
Getting rid of heaters is always very
difficult because you don't have an
atmosphere, so you need to limit
it dissipated by infrared radiation.
But this is for example, something that
that we are doing in our rova as well.
If we need to, we need to get
rid of the heat.
And the basic ways you are doing that is
that, for example, with
a solar panel, we are building a settled
area and we have the
one side of the tunnel where the
electronics are sitting in.
The rover is pointing at the blacks,
at the black stars, the
black space.
And so you have here you have
then a lot of cooling
that is going on. And radiative cooling
can be very efficient, especially when
you're when you're using
special coatings.
So I didn't know that. But it's very cool
there. There's there's a color that you
can put on something and
it only has a 10 percent solar
acceptance. So you just get 10
percent from the solar heat
in Watts. But you can still radiate 90
percent of the of the energy
that that is that's emitting.
So that's pretty cool.
OK, the next two questions
from the Internet.
Yeah, they're completely unrelated.
Started the first one.
Uh, the since the regular
simulants are not really adequate,
do you know of any robot missions that
are planned to bring some of the stuff
back?
Um, if I remember
correctly, the Chinese
mission, the last one was actually
there was a flyby and they were
testing the whole putting material back
mechanism.
And it was the next, uh, mission,
which would be CHUNGE three
or four.
They actually want to
bring material back.
So that would be the first time in a few
decades that new material from the
from the moon is coming back.
And the completely unrelated question,
what are the requirements to join the
scientists
so
well?
Well, actually, the requirement
is that that you're interested in
doing something crazy and
that you're passionate about what you are
doing, that you know,
that you want to contribute.
You know, you can you can contribute as
in part time so you don't have to quit
your job and start with us.
If you if you want to be working for us
full time, it gets a bit more
challenging.
But we also we always accepting
new new applications.
And so if you're interested in helping us
doing anything with us,
just send me an email with
with what you're interested in doing and
we'll find something.
There should be a form on the website,
which usually does not work,
where you can apply officially.
OK, we still have a few
questions.
The left hand side to the microphone,
please.
I what layer size
are we looking at of the microwaving, um,
like maybe with the rover or
thick, can you microwave?
Um.
I promise.
Mm, no, actually, actually, it's
it's quite thick, so it's it's about 20
meters, if I remember
correctly.
There is.
In the paper, what they were talking
about, three
to five centimeters, but I would have to
look it up.
There was a there was a very
nice paper ball from
from someone called Taylor
who's really into geological
things. And it's
it's very worth reading about it.
It's it's also cited in the slides.
Um.
Let me find that one.
So it's the microwave sintering of lunar
soil by Taylor,
if you Google Taylor and lunar thing,
there are multiple tailless, but they are
all doing 3D printing on the moon, which
I find very, very which I find very
interesting.
I think that that was
rather surprisingly big.
And are you going to do
it with your rover or is it just
not?
So we are not going to do it with the
rover, but most likely not.
The idea would be on our
rovers. We have we have something that's
called top container, which
are
triangular structures that are sitting
below the solar panel, and they can
actually fall on the surface of the moon
and then they deploy.
And then you have like some solar
power on the sides and you have
some experiments in the middle.
And the idea is to use one
of those drop containers for putting
the microwave experiment in
there.
So it would, you know, drop on the
surface somewhere outside our landing
area.
Thank you.
OK, the next question from the right hand
side microphone.
Hello.
So you mentioned this stepwise
procedure where you do something less
ambitious, like your first goal was to
land the rover, had you considered
applying that to the 3D printing, too,
and perhaps starting out with something
like like what was mentioned by you say
like bringing a binding agent
and trying to see if that'll
produce usable 3D prints first.
Well, yeah,
that's I mean, that would be a fair idea.
But on the other hand, microwave's so
the microwave's are you know, I'm
so so I'm a computer scientist and I like
microwaves. I don't like chemistry
chemicals.
So, yeah, it's I think that
that doing the microwave thing is
easier than
than probably the binding material thing.
And also from a scientific perspective,
it adds more value because,
you know, that was a binding material.
You can you can create structures.
And with the laser, you can you
can build things as well.
But with the microwave oven thing does
not work with the simulants, which is I
think is makes it even more interesting
to actually try it on the surfaces
on the first try.
OK, another question from that
microphone, please.
How do you plan, sir?
How do you plan to look at the
decomposing rover of Apollo 17?
Just take a picture or with the rover,
have some special device.
Um, yeah.
So the thing is, our rover,
um, as you
saw.
OK, so the question was
how we are actually going to analyze the
raw material, and the thing is that
as you can see in the rover, we have
yeah, we have you have three
cameras and two of which
are color sensors,
which are wide-angle.
So those are used for driving.
And the middle one is
a satellite lens with a black and white
sensor. And in front of the sensor
there is there is a color filter so that
you can look at different wavelengths.
And with that, we can do some
some analysis about
about the material that and
how it is behaving.
The problem actually would be to
drive up to the rover and bump into
it or something like this, because there
are some some guidelines on
on how to approach the Apollo landing
sites. And there are some protections,
areas where we are not allowed to
to land and there are productive areas
where we are not allowed to drive in.
And fortunately,
at Apollo 17, the
balloon rover, the that they use
for driving is actually standing outside
of the protection area for driving by.
I don't know if that is intentional
or a mishap.
So we would not be violating
it by bumping into it. But we are not
trying to.
OK, I'm looking at the Sigmundur
does the Internet have any questions?
The Internet is very happy about the
questions that are being asked right
here. So the real left microphone
there, please. The next question.
Beside lasers and
microwaves.
Have you?
Someone have got a really
good vacuum, like
an old old school cathode ray tube
and.
Have the possibility to use
electron beam
cannon on on on
the regular.
So
so, I mean, in theory, you can use
you can use any heat source
is able to to get
the temperature of the regulars to
a certain degree of.
So
maybe
I don't know if anyone tried.
So I don't know.
Sorry.
OK.
OK, the next question from
the right hand side, front microphone,
have you thought of printing
parts of the ruble at the moon
because then you wouldn't have to
send up so much math and
of for example, you
could send up a
robot with little just
so you can
drive to a better place for printing
bigger. Yes,
I know what you mean.
Yes. Have you actually used a 3-D
printer?
Yes, I have.
So the problem is,
you know, in theory, yes, I was
I was at a presentation and that
was very funny. There was there was some
guy who said, OK, my next startup is
about making
a solving a problem with
the printing industry.
And that is that the data
files that you are transmitting to the
printer are not encrypted.
And so I will I will
I will ensure that that that was consent
to the 3D printing files,
two and three printer on an
airport. And so they can replace a part
on an airplane just in time.
If he used a 3D printer, you know, that
is very far from how everything
goes, you know, it's
the even with
I mean, if you look at
the aluminum
wheel that they can see here, you still
have those those rings.
And they are coming from
from the fact that the material is
contracting while you're printing it.
And that's why this
is a very known problem when
you're using
what you call Giesen,
when you're using casting techniques.
And the software can compensate for that.
But in 3-D printing, this is
still unknown.
And so, you know.
It would be nice to to print something
useful, but
I think we are far from
from that.
So baby steps first on the moon, softly
collect the money and
print something.
OK, very good.
We have a question on the left hand side.
Front microphone and sorry,
I'm still kind of stuck with the
building structure thing.
And I you know, I probably
know that you can't answer all these
questions and there are still, well,
answers to find.
But and if you have the
rover that runs over the surface
and then and, you know, beams,
microwaves at the ground and then let you
have the bulldozer to put new
soil dust, whatever, onto the
microwave that form, and
then again, have to let the rover go
onto it again.
If you go up like, I don't know, two
meters high or so, at some
point, you probably have problems
climbing that wall, wouldn't it?
And sorry.
And so my question
is, how far away from
the soil do you have to be
to microwave it? Like, can you build
a satellite that I don't know.
So, um,
the energy the energy is
is lost by the radius square.
So if you want to deposit,
like if you want to deposit
50 watts into the lunar surface
and your 3000 kilometers away,
which is like on a good orbit for
lunar satellite.
Just do the math, you know,
that's a lot
you would you would need a really
big SITILIDES
and then then I would probably use lasers
because lasers and.
But the basic idea about
the first question is actually,
well, you defined the slopes to be
in such a way that you can actually drive
them up. And you also see that
they are using those what
you call them, the Caterpillar thing.
Well, that's a bad idea.
So this is an artist rendering.
You know, it's a it's a good idea, but
the practical problems still lay ahead
a lot.
There will be a lot of PhD thesis about
this stuff.
OK, we actually still have time
for Q&A, so there are questions
from the Internet,
get us one more question from the
Internet and there's still not quite over
that regolith simulant thing.
So the question is, why are the
regulators simulant so bad?
Um, so
let me find that slides.
So, um,
the thing that when you are usually
when you have Iren on on
earth bound things, it's usually in
oxide
and those oxides don't
react as well to
to the to the microwave
as an elemental
and oxidized Iren.
And the interesting thing about, uh,
about the lunar surface is that
with the bombardment of the of the
micrometeorites, there are some there
are those class beads which are
which are actually forming.
And with the radiation, some
iron oxides actually
degenerate into this elemental
iron and usually
regular simulants are done
by the ingredients.
So you look at
you look at the regulars that you
collected on the moon and
you you then
you've taken all the materials so that
when you're doing a spectrum respectless,
then you're only analyzing the
ingredients.
You you get the same bit
of materials to say and
you'd only look at the grain size and you
make it make it fit like this.
And that's about the state
of the regular simulants.
They they are not exposed
to to the radiation
from the, uh, from the sun that you have.
They are not they are not in a vacuum.
They usually don't have those
those glass beads forming.
They are not shot at with
micrometeorites.
So in
this way, you have the
most regulars don't actually have those
nano phosphate
nano face iron in
them.
That's the whole point of it.
OK, so that's another question
on the left hand side of your microphone,
please.
Yeah, that's you.
Have you ever investigated and researched
the idea of making something like
bricks by just compacting
the lunar dust or something like that?
Yes, there have been there have been
tests with with
some of the material, but it was found
that it's because of the shape of
the material. Yeah, it's it's very
it's very cause it has very rough edges.
And because
of that, it's
it's not very well compressible
to say it like this.
Um, I don't know if that actually makes
a good building material for
something like this or not.
Hmm, yeah, so so the answer is,
I don't know, because I know we didn't
try,
but I would say that the density
you can't compress it enough.
You will always have some air or
some vacuum trapped in it.
And it might be difficult.
OK.
OK, same microphone, please.
Have you looked at the solar center
project, the what
the solar center project
that was the guy was the biggest
thing about the meter?
I think. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So that's really cool.
But as I said earlier, the question is
that the problem with was bringing
the bigger but as you know,
lens to the moon is bringing it
there and also the weight.
This weighs a lot.
And then you still need to have
the mechanicals to
to to move it and
to do something with it.
So it's a really cool project.
I like that, but it's very difficult to
do on the moon.
OK.
OK, so on the right and that
front microphone, please.
It's just a follow up to that Brix idea.
Maybe we could, uh, put some
lunar dust together and microwave it into
the brick and then use the robot
to put the bricks together and microwave
them together.
Yeah,
that would be cool.
Oh, yeah.
Baby steps for us.
OK, a question from the Internet, please.
Yeah. There's one more question from the
Internet.
Why don't you just take
caves to build houses
or build a cube,
build a cube with microwaved regolith and
dig a hole in it?
Milita Sorry.
What what was the first part?
The first part was why don't you just dig
a cave and build houses.
Oh yeah.
So you don't actually have to dig a cave.
There are already caves that you can use
that are ready to move in.
So
this is where
you put yourself to put in something
there. But um, like
interior design.
But this.
So this is this is one of the ideas that
is actually actively talked about, so the
cool thing about the lunar surface is
that you actually have something that's
called lava tubes and
some of those lava
tubes have
openings where you can actually drive
into. And I think this
is a this is a very interesting idea to
to build a settlement
by, you know, becoming lunar
cavemen again.
But this is not us.
So also is a user wants
to do a 3D printing and, you know,
whoever pays us, we will deliver.
And the second part of the part of the
question was a build a cube
with microwaved regolith and
dig a hole in it or mill in it.
Yeah, um.
So.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, sort of
rough from there.
Are there many areas that are ranging
from from something we should do in our
first mission in something that
maybe someone, someone, someone
should do?
I would put it here,
OK, I see the
microphones are empty right now.
The Internet is apparently
satisfied also.
That's a great thing. That was a great
talk and a great Q&A session
especially. So, thank you.