Solar power

Is there enough metal in lunar material for conductors?

i thought up a potential idea: nano arc furnace...
a small solar panel where molecules complete the circuit and absorb the electrical energy in the process. hence you might be able to break the silicate apart by scattering these little bots around and letting them do their job.

I would say so

And breaking silicon dioxide into silicon good enough for solar cells is the problem.

Pic related though it shits solar cells. Still requires silicon though.

I'm a bit loopy right now so I'll post more later
~7% of the Moon's mass is probably good enough for conductors.
Fuck no. Photosynthesis is inefficient as fuck. Not to mention the Moon has basically no carbon.
What the fuck are you smoking?

i fail to see how the efficiency of the little car you posted here compares to molecular machinery.

if anything it could be a reagent component in such a shuttle.

dont be so dismissive, its not a bad idea.

>I'm a bit loopy right now so I'll post more later
OK, but we are on page 8 now.

>Photosynthesis is inefficient
It is cheap and scales well on Earth. It can be further improved using separate layers for the various colours. Clorophyll absorbs red and blue, while rhodopsin absorbs green. Together it absorbs most of the visible light.

Bump

Bumping with some quick references on how to make solar cells on the moon:
cam.uh.edu/projects/space-materials

I fail to see what you posted is supposed to be doing and how it is even supposed to work at all

The rover just melts the regolith and evaporates crap onto it to make a solar cell. Pic related. It's hard to get much simpler than that.

slideserve.com/vaughan-graves/nanotechnology-space-and-energy-for-the-world-alex-ignatiev-and-alex-freundlich

Now we're getting somewhere.
similar selfsustaining rombas to sweep dust off the track periodically would help.

Op here, thank you

its a solar bead/ incomplete circuit.
material that goes close to the spines complete the circuit to drain the capacitance state.

think of it like how big gears can be turned by little gears.

You have explained absolutely nothing. Next time try forming sentences that actually mean something.

And how are you going to transfer all this power from the moon to the earth?

With power lines you fucking incel Jesus Christ just fucking end your life

>Asteroid hits powerline
>Moon pulled into earth
Thanks, asshole

>not just using chad radioisotope thermoelectric generator

It will be delivered in the form of kinetic energy by mass driver launched projectiles.

Bump

>I would like a sticky on the board for spreading knowledge of solar power.
This is coming from an electrical engineer.
Solar energy is a horrendous meme, it's probably the worst way to generate energy. I'm too lazy to fully explain, but here is a list of cons.
-It doesn't generate during no-sun light hours, a.k.a. most of the time.
-The conversion efficiency is horrendous, the most technological panels convert at a pitiful rate of like 20% efficiency
-It not even ""solar energy"", the energy actually comes from minerals with battery-like properties, the """solar""" part is only a trigger to unleash the energy within the mineral.
-You need shitloads of sqr2 meters of have a decent input
-You need shitloads of batteries which die fast fast because they are constantly being charged
-Solar panels are not recyclable, they last like 20 years and quickly degrade the power output.
Solar energy is great for low voltage applications like electronics, but aside that it's utter shit.

No don't you see, this is magic self replicating moon solar.

no you are not an elitcrical engineer, you are a smug possum who is very very very stupid, and also pays an exhorbitant amount of money to be a mentally retarded power slave, while flashing a meaningless piece of paper claiming nonsense. you have a job doing bullshit regurgitation labor. your energy bill is coming soon, and if you dont be a good possum for your power massa you get no juice. now shut the fuck up and pay your bill possum, or ill turn off your tv and oven and let you burn in the cold . lead is eternal water is eternal the sun is eternal, but you slave possum will die thinking you know what electricity is. back to work bitch your car says go to pay

I think I just lost a few brain cells reading this.

Tiny bit off topic but would like to know. Could we mine and refine resources on the Moon to create entire spacecraft from the Moon? The benefit being able to create huge as fuck spacecraft due to 1/6th gravity and lack of atmosphere.

It's possible, but it isn't cost effective at all unless you want to build a fucking interplanetary empire and need to launch hundreds of thousands of ships

>unless you want to build a fucking interplanetary empire
My reasons do not concern you...yet.

Biofag here, just curious since I haven't spoken to many electrical engineers, but what would you think of a partially biosynthesized solar array? To me, it doesn't seem too terribly impossible to simulate photosynthesis, albeit at a much more optimized level, by designing genes that create much more compact/energy efficient electron excitement arrays (synthetic chloroplasts).

I don't really know however whether this is a viable method, since if the output would be less than a traditional solar panel in terms of energy gathering density, it's pretty pointless (Except that they could feasibly be mass produced, since it's just a matter of transcription + translation of DNA to create the synthetic chloroplasts).

Mind explaining how they work? I'm guessing it's similar to how plants do it, and what you said about it being battery like gives me a bit of a clue on the mechanism, but I'm not sure on what materials are used.

bump

Yes. There is even a name for this: massless space exploration. spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?p=523
The problem with the Moon is that there is fuck all in the way of volatile elements like hydrogen and carbon. Things that require plastics require getting creative.

>>by designing genes that create much more compact/energy efficient electron excitement arrays
that sounds extremely difficult. Solar cells require semiconductors, the semiconductors that we know of tend to not be soluble in water or tend to be toxic to living things. But viruses have been used to make interesting nanoparticles
news.mit.edu/2011/solar-virus-0425
nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1635.php

that being said, there are a number of approaches that could yield ridiculously cheap solar cells. Polymer(almost all organic,cheap processing costs), perovskite(really common elements, processing is basically paint it on), nanoantenna(patterned metal on plastic, IE a fancy potatochip bag) based solar cells could become very cheap.

What if we put a belt of solar sails on the moon so it'll catch the solar winds and spin like planetoid sized anemometer. What effects would changing it's RMP (revolutions per month) have?

that has been proposed, they would need to be incredibly large. It would be far easier to build stirling engines and solar concentrators to harness solar energy

Pure nonsense

lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf

Bump

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