#373 Lubricating the Lunar Frontier
Engineering Matters

#373 Lubricating the Lunar Frontier

B2Upper-intermediateAugust 13, 202626 min
  • Interview
  • Technology

Returning to the Moon is the next step, but staying there is the next leap. Abrasive and electrostatically-charged dust particles cling to every surface, and find their way into every mechanism, while a radiation-blasted lunar surface swings from 130°C in the sun to a brisk -173°C in the shade. To survive and thrive in the lunar wasteland, we will need habitat modules, power plants, autonomous rovers, drilling equipment and more: a fleet of machinery that needs to survive these hostile conditions. How we design these machines will be critical, how lubricants behave in extreme te...

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Within the 50 years since the mighty Saturn V rocket last took humans across the 400,000

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Budgets are relatively more constrained, technologies, especially computing and automation, have

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0:00

Look up at the night sky, and it's impossible not to feel the pull of the moon. For millennia, it has been our quiet companion, a beacon of myth and the ultimate frontier of human imagination. Over 50 years ago, humanity took its first tentative steps on that dusty, cratered surface

0:45

during the Apollo missions. It was an era defined by monumental national effort and the sheer audacity of state-sponsored space programs. Within the 50 years since the mighty Saturn V rocket last took humans across the 400,000

1:23

kilometre gulf to land on the lunar surface, the world has changed significantly. Budgets are relatively more constrained, technologies, especially computing and automation, have improved beyond the imagination of even the most confident science fiction authors of that day, but perhaps just as significant are the new opportunities that have been identified

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