New Method Discovered For Making Telescopes On the Moon

NASA scientists have discovered a way to craft very large mirrors using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust. They say the technique will allow the construction of massive telescopes on the moon without the expense and risk of transporting the mirrors from Earth. Douglas Rabin of the Goddard Space Flight Center is quoted saying, "Our method could be scaled-up on the moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 meters in diameter." While this breakthrough was relatively cheap, NASA is currently offering up to $10 million for other good lunar research projects.

dustbuster

so .. after the mirrors are finished. how do they propose to keep the mirrors dustfree ?

Re:First time using extraterrestrial materials?

Not really. [wikipedia.org]

Re:First time using extraterrestrial materials?

More accurately, it would appear to be the first time that we (humans) have manufactured something off-planet with native resources. As noted, we've used extra-terrestrial materials before in the form of meteor/asteroid material. It *is* pretty exciting, if just for the proof-of-concept that we can "live off the land" (so to speak) off-world.

MacGyver-scope

using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust Is there anything he can't do?

He still needs paperclips

They'll still need to shuttle boxes of paper clips and rubber bands to the moon so they can make most of the items they need. Thankfully, both are relatively light weight, durable, and don't take up much space.

Aluminum?

From the article:

"After that, all we needed to do was coat the mirror blank with a small amount of aluminum, and voilÃ, we had a highly reflective telescope mirror," says Rabin.

.....I DO hope that they'll use their tinfoil hat instead of mine!!!!!!

Re:Aluminum?

Aluminum is a form of Aluminium found only in North America.

Forget your stupid observatory!

Forget your stupid observatory! I'm gonna make my own! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the observatory!

Oh great More Outsourcing

Taking away good American mirror grinding jobs and sending them to the moon (probably to be made by illegal aliens) while depriving FedEx of the shipping revenue!
Somebody contact Lou Dobbs!

Re:Oh great More Outsourcing

If Americans were willing to grind mirrors for fifty cents an hour in hard vacuum, we wouldn't need to use lunar immigrants for the jobs.

I, for one...

...cannot wait to see some mad scientist use this technology to turn the moon into one giant magnifying mirror and having a nice game of "ants on the sidewalk." (And of course, the obligatory welcome to our new super-reflective overlords. Sigh.)

What's the old method ...

... for making telescopes on the moon?

Re:What's the old method ...

the old method was liquid mirrors http://inventorspot.com/articles/liquid_lunar_telescope_5345 [inventorspot.com]

Ikea

So, Ikea has an astronomy equipment division?

Yes, their biggest seller is called Skope, but you can also get the Refraktor or Kassegrain.

Ingenious

using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust.

Heck, the first thing that came to my mind was "When did NASA hire MacGyver?" :-) Anyway, the process sounds quite reasonable. And Moon would make a wonderful observatory. I have been dreaming about lunar observatories since I was a kid quarter a century ago (at that time, I stumbled upon books written by a well-known local popular science writer).

No atmosphere, sixth the gravity, little need for compensating the structure deformations? Sounds good. The question is how heavy the manufacturing equipment would be. And there might more problems at least with optical telescopers - I recently stumbled upon a nice article [space.com] on this topic.

Re:Ingenious..But

What "elements" are you protecting the fabrication facility from?

The solid ones that leave craters.

I want a degree in...

How cool would it be to design and build huge projects in 1/6 gravity? There would have to be some incredible designs that would just be too fragile to stand up under Earth atmosphere and gravity, and the range of materials you could use would seem limitless. Maybe a nest of lasers to give a long-term boost to an interstellar probe?

There's got to be huge advantages to building in a lunar environment, with raw materials available right there, and the chance to create living space just by drilling and sealing instead of fabricating from scratch.

Overheard on comm channel:

"They headed towards the dish on that large space station...."

"That's no space station. It's a moon!"

One of those "next" steps seems hard

Sure transporting carbon nano-tubes and some expoxy and aluminum to the moon might not be to bad, but did anyone think of the "next" step?

They next applied additional layers of epoxy and spun the material at room temperature.

Getting a large enough volume at room temperature (assuming you need some air pressure too) on the moon to mix it with epoxy and spin it (also presumably at room temperature) might be pretty hard to do without some bulky equipment. Although vacuum coating the mirror blank might seem easier on the moon, as other commentors noted, how do you keep it dust free?

So to summarize...

1. Bring epoxy, carbon nanotubes, aluminum and big spinner to the moon
2. ???
3. Coat resulting lunar dust blank with aluminum to make a mirror
4. Profit?!? (until it's covered with dust)

Re:One of those "next" steps seems hard

The footprints the first astronauts left on the moon 39 years ago is still preserved.
The moon lacking an atmosphere, and there as such being no weather, the moon dust is quite stable.
It only shifts when something (like an astronaut's boot or a meteorite) pushes it, so the odds of a mirror staying largely dust-free are pretty good.
As to spinning stuff in room temperature on the moon... That part sounds harder :p

Lunar mirror fab means big manufacturing changes

Astronomical telescope mirror manufacturing is a labor intensive, hands-on, non-automated process. And the culture of aerospace is highly risk averse: this comes from the very customers, like the good people at NASA Goddard.

Lunar telescope manufacturing would require some exciting scientific, engineer, and processing improvements that would also pay off for terrestrial manufacturing.

First, assuming they're not planning to house and employ a standard aerospace company, with 1000 engineers, technicians, and managers on the moon, this would be fully automated. Mirror making is anything but automated. The development of highly automated methods for processing and testing mirrors would be quite a move forward. It would also have direct benefits for conventional manufacturing.

Second, making a mirror on the moon would seem to require a tolerance of risk currently not accepted. Every time a mirror is moved, a crew of people must oversee the affair, sign the (physical) paperwork, and manually inspect the mirror afterwards. For lunar construction, this would have to become an assembly line that ran without that direct oversight, paperwork, or crews. Enabling more efficient methods would certainly benefit normal processes as well.

Moreover, the task of creating such a facility would keep many, many aerospace workers employed for years :)

As strong as concrete...

Just reading TFA and thinking that, after reading the sentence "When they mixed small amounts of carbon nanotubes and epoxies (glue-like materials) with crushed rock that has the same composition and grain size as lunar dust, they discovered to their surprise that they had created a very strong material with the consistency of concrete.", wouldn't building living (and other) structures on the moon using this material be a better application of this technology?

myke

Re:Slow process

It takes forever to count out 6857 grains of salt as well. I suspect they'll just write down "one cup of nanotubes" and be done with it.

Re:Slow process

they'll prolly mix it up and end up exploding.

Re:Practical applications

We're whalers on the moon
We carry a harpoon
But their ain't no whales so we tell tall tales
And sing this whaling tune

        Brett