In Moon Camp Explorers each team’s mission is to 3D design a complete Moon Camp using Tinkercad. They also have to explain how they will use local resources, protect astronauts from the dangers of space and describe the living and working facilities in their Moon Camp.
LearnEX Brasov-Brasov Romania 13, 10, 9 0 / 0 English
The Moon Factory is the second part of the tale of our two astronauts that went to the moon last year. They estabilished a base and went independent from life on earth. The second part of their story is the lunar base expansion. In order to do that, they went ahead and made a factory from which they made the future parts needed for the base expansion.
In order to see the full picture of our story, as we see it, please check this link of our last year’s project: https://mooncampchallenge.org/explorers-gallery-2022/details/18279/
In order to find out more about the life beyond earth, the astronauts went ahead and started exploring life on another surface, full of mysterious challenges.
Close to the lunar poles
Since this is a second part of our story, we will mention our motives again, as we did last year. The location was selected because:
The expansion plans were debated with people on earth. In order to build the factory, the astronauts needed to work, once again, with people from earth. As they were unable to prepare everything on-site. They needed the necessary parts to build the factory and they brought these parts on the moon surface, the same way they did initially, when they built their lunar base.
From the point when the factory was done, all the astronauts needed to do was to bring (or make) the raw materials to the factory and from there, the robots and all the necessary automated stations will prepare the finished product – which is the building of the necessary parts to expand the lunar base (walls, doors, windows, etc.).
By doing so, it’s easier to bring raw materials to the lunar base, rather than building everything on earth and use more resources to transport everything on the moon surface
As stated on our first episode of our story, the camp protects the astronauts against harsh environment by making the factory fully automatic, with robots that act as workers. The astronauts are in constant communication with the factory via all the technology existent nowadays – cables, fibers, wireless sensors, etc.
The only time the astronauts have to get to the moon factory is to supply it with raw materials. The rest is being taken cared of by the machines.
The factory itself is protected by:
Regolith – covers the modules – protection against the meteorites impact;
Back-up systems – If the power fails for various reasons.
Considering that in this episode we are talking about a fully automated factory, the only basic needs are: Electricity and Power.
Electricity and power: The main power resource is considered to be from the sun. The energy is produced considering photovoltaic panels. To have a continuous source of energy, the panels are mounted on pivots to rotate them like a sun-flower after the sun. In the days with eclipse or energy production system damage, the Factory will use the energy which is stored on the batteries.
In this episode we will talk about the required skills to build and operate the factory remotely.
The astronauts will need to learn how to program and (if needed) to operate the machines.
They need to be able to do the maintenance of the machines, in case of failure.
They need to clean, replace and monitor the consumables – like cables, grippers, various parts of the conveyor belts, etc.
They have to monitor closely the supply of the factory and act promptly to change or resupply with raw materials.
