China's Space Program News Thread

[sunnymaxi]

Latest -

Scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology are proposing to use lunar soil to make buildings at the moon. The egg-shaped design provides a living area on top and a work area below. The team produced the first model using 3D printing technique recently.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Latest -

Scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology are proposing to use lunar soil to make buildings at the moon. The egg-shaped design provides a living area on top and a work area below. The team produced the first model using 3D printing technique recently.

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Why egg shape? It is more fragile and harder to make than a simple cylinder with thickened ends which is also more pressure resistant. You can extrude cylinders too, which is far easier than 3D printing.

 

[kbecks]

Why egg shape? It is more fragile and harder to make than a simple cylinder with thickened ends which is also more pressure resistant. You can extrude cylinders too, which is far easier than 3D printing.

Because a flat top and/or sharp corners is bad for pressure, so if you used a cylinder you'd likely want a rounded top. And then if you're going that route, you realize you don't need all that diameter near the top so maybe you start tapering the cylinder into the rounded dome. And at that point, you essentially have an egg....or it just looks really really phallic...

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Because a flat top and/or sharp corners is bad for pressure, so if you used a cylinder you'd likely want a rounded top. And then if you're going that route, you realize you don't need all that diameter near the top so maybe you start tapering the cylinder into the rounded dome. And at that point, you essentially have an egg....or it just looks really really phallic...

Actual vacuum chambers which have the same pressure resistance requirements are tube sections with either a rounded or flat and thickened top.

The rounded section is useless for storage and does not maximize the relevant parameter of a space structure, which is volume.

The image shown is that of a spacecraft thermal vacuum chamber used for aerospace testing.

 

[escobar]

Space leaders and scholars stretching from Kyiv to London, along with a powerful U.S. senator, are urging ESA to swiftly suspend its collaboration with the increasingly threatening People’s Republic of China.

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[taxiya]

Actual vacuum chambers which have the same pressure resistance requirements are tube sections with either a rounded or flat and thickened top.

The rounded section is useless for storage and does not maximize the relevant parameter of a space structure, which is volume.

The image shown is that of a spacecraft thermal vacuum chamber used for aerospace testing.

Are you sure? The outer structure with the dome shaped hatch/door is the pressure resistant structure. The inner cylindrical struct is only for mounting the instrument. You can see that there is no air seal to the inner structure, meaning no pressure difference between the outer and inner struct, both zero in a vacuum chamber.

Another example is the submarine pressure hull all have domes at both end.

 

[taxiya]

Latest -

Scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology are proposing to use lunar soil to make buildings at the moon. The egg-shaped design provides a living area on top and a work area below. The team produced the first model using 3D printing technique recently.

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would like to see them doing a demonstration in the desert.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Latest -

Scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology are proposing to use lunar soil to make buildings at the moon. The egg-shaped design provides a living area on top and a work area below. The team produced the first model using 3D printing technique recently.

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Does it provide enough radiation shielding? I still think it is better to have the living area under the lunar surface.

 

[kbecks]

Actual vacuum chambers which have the same pressure resistance requirements are tube sections with either a rounded or flat and thickened top.

Keep in mind that in space, you are dealing with internal pressure which places the pressure vessel into tension - something that concrete is NOT good at. This means that while a conventional pressure vessel design works on earth when made out of high tensile strength steel, it likely won't be good enough when using lunar concrete. I'm sure they will use micro-fibers in the mix to increase tensile strength, but even that isn't going to get you near the performance of steel.

The real problem here is

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- a spherical pressure vessel will outperform cylindrical all day every day and is why high pressure COPV's in space applications are ALWAYS round. Sure they have some that are cylindrical, but those aren't the highest pressure ones (and again carbon overwrap has way more tensile strength than lunar concrete).

Egg shape gets you somewhere in between a spherical and a cylindrical pressure vessel and reduces stress and therefore needed wall thickness and safety factors. Many are researching using this shape for similar applications with minimal safety margin, for example

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.

 

[Bellum_Romanum]

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Spoken like a true Queen