Experiment Station
Sarbajit Banerjee, PhD
Davidson Chair Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry
Notes by Paul Fischer
Regulith adaptive modification systems
Tame the regolith so it does not go flying into plumes on spacecraft
Build up the infrastructure on planetary bodies
Chemistry to make steel and advanced alloys with rgulith along with load bearing dense silicate structures
Microcapsule technologies to position these chemistries at any location
What we had dreamed up in any measure
Hard weight-bearing structures
Delivered thought microcapsules released payload upon impact
Changing infrastructure and how it is built on planetary bodies
Exothermic thermite reactions
Heat thermic reactions
Companion and termal sintering
Make use of source materials for use in the construction of various structures
Built of small razor sharp particles
Pyroxenes iron nickel etc used to make the alloys
Abundant in certain areas across the lunar surface, mapped
The lunar regulith can be combusted using nano molecules
By transitioning magnesium particles and can be brought to the surface to form magnesium oxide as a by product
Thermite reactions can be made and in essence to be burning metal in a small scale thermal reaction against magnesium
Metal oxide provides its own source of oxygen, the light weight and relative reactivity results in a solid chunk of solid regolith possibly accounting for the small strings and the lunar regolith, illmunite could be useful for carrying out thermite to that carries out high strength alloys
A subsurface structure can be performed
As the microcapsules rupture, a series of chemical matrices can be created
Three different precursors have been allowed to fully homogenize and rapidly solidify the mixture Ito a single material and can be pressed into 3d printers or used
Careful preparation of the regolith, microcapsule jetting can be useful for precursor delivery
The custom micro encapsulation system can be velocity dependent delivery and they can be ruptrred and deposited deeper in the precursors
The initial exothermic reaction can be …
Consolidation can be achieved with high strength alloy on top or by creation of slabs
Q: mgO is a common by-product, are there any uses for that?
A: yes you can set up a cycle to recapture the mg again, and this is a resource we will b e able to recover or use for this chemistry, this is something that has been used in parallel, and deal with electro deposition and mg precursors can be made in some sort of an environment with precisely modulated geometries through the thermite reactions
Q: what range of depth would be used for the laser to ignite the reaction?
A: the laser is one method, also with fuel or shock methods. Depending on how deep you want it to go, we have looked at simulated regolith and depending on projection velocity with which we project the microsimulants into the …
Q: wil the thermite reactions react in the same ways?
A: on other planetary bodies and other pesky issues that we have here, but going to space is the way to take this research further. Remember the oxygen is coming form the regulith itself. A fair degree of control over the microstructure and an example of the microstructure itself
Q: findings on thermite?
A: one of the reasons to use this approach, we have worked for years on micro encapsulation which are being loaded by the train carload, and the purpose is to use thermite chemistry in. A safe way, that is the type of microstructure that we want and has the weight bearing properties that we are looking for
Q: martian material sources and how can you know what to look at and where to land?
A: We worked with primarily lunar simulates and we have been very successful with al and ni found, we have had success looking at other types of
Q: can the released oxygen be used to make thermite?
A: exactly the right way to think about it, using solar power to do electrolysis, and a lead compound…
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