[time-nuts] Re: constructing a moon base

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

Road building and graders sort of implies moving large amounts of “stuff” 
onto the lunar surface. While a “road to nowhere” on earth might happen,
I’d bet you only build one on the moon to connect inhabited installations 
to other full blown (inhabited or not) sites of some sort. 

Unless I’ve been dozing off yet again, that sort of intensity is well past the 
10 year or even “several decades” threshold. Would I bet on a date? Nope …
Yes this overlooks the construction phase of the first installation. I’d assume
“old school” techniques would do fine for that. 

If the “whatever” is going on the far side, some sort of redundant coms 
would be a requirement. I can’t see putting folks there without a really 
good way to stay in contact with them. Having a system is not “optional”.
It’s only a question of what sort of system. These days digital with a time
stream …. yup ….

The same math that makes it expensive to get things to the surface can 
make it slightly less expensive to put it in lunar orbit. If you can do a task 
(like comms) either way .. cheaper usually wins out in the end. Yes, there
are a *lot* of grubby details to dig into before you really would know if
in orbit comes out the winner. I’d still bet it does. 

Do you put clocks on the moon? I think it’s a pretty good bet that the 
sort of science that you would want to do early on needs them. Having
a couple masers up there well before the road graders arrive seems 
very likely. Just how you link up all the bits and pieces …. eventually
we’ll see. 

Bob

> On Sep 29, 2021, at 11:40 AM, Lux, Jim <jim at luxfamily.com> wrote:
> 
> On 9/29/21 8:13 AM, Joseph B. Fitzgerald wrote:
>> By the time we get to road building, a pretty robust communications system will be in place.   Given the synchronization requirements of modern digital networks, accurate time will be available just as it is in terrestrial cell phone networks.
> 
> 
> Actually, I wouldn't assume this, at least in the next 10 years. There are national security and commercial forces at play on Earth that lead to robust PNT being available. At the Moon, not so much. No need to do midcourse targeting of ICBMs for precision munitions delivery (one reason for original GPS).  And there's nothing saying that one would move existing cell phone networks (and their timing/frequency requirements) to the Moon (the density of cells vs users, for instance).
> 
> Pretty much everyone starts out thinking "we'll just take COTS system X to the Moon" (be it WiFi, WiMax, Cell phones, or whatever).  The justification is usually that you'll reduce development costs because you have an existing base of designs and parts.
> 
> However, you'll find that there are inevitably, some aspects of being in Space or at the Moon that "break" some assumption of the existing protocol.  And that's before you get into the need to build this stuff with something that can tolerate single event effects, both transient and permanent. So all of a sudden, you're not "taking existing commercial parts and flying them", so now you're doing some new design, which might drive you to simpler approaches (since they're cheaper).
> 
> The other problem is that for the foreseeable future, the Moon won't be an environment where you can design protocols and features for a 1 or 2 year life like we do for cellphones, with refreshes of technology as needed. It's incredibly expensive to put things on the Moon (and even if Elon's wildest dreams come to reality, it's still going to be expensive - it's just a mass fraction issue) So you won't have nearly the rapid evolution we do with terrestrial systems, or, if we do, there will need to be significant backward compatibility.  We won't be able to do the Apple approach of "Well, the app doesn't support that old iOS any more, buy a new iPad"
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