Science Report: China aims to win the space race quickly. How will the future moon base be fueled? Solar sails could be the method of cosmic propulsion in the near future

2023-04-19 16:11:00

​China aims to quickly win the space race ● How will the future lunar base be fueled? ● Solar sails could be the method of cosmic propulsion in the near future

monthly settlersFoto: GORODENKOFF PRODUCTIONS / Sciencephoto / Profimedia

China aims to win the space race quickly

The space race to build the first permanent lunar base is heating up. And China seems determined to win it, regardless of the costs and the efforts that must be made. Thus, more than 100 Chinese researchers recently met at a conference organized in the city of Wuhan, to determine how the future infrastructure on the Moon will be built, reports Reuters.

A team of specialists is already designing a robot to create bricks from lunar soil. The robot will reach the surface of the Moon in 2028, just three years after China will also obtain the first soil sample from the dark side of the Earth’s natural satellite.

Chinese officials have already announced that the base they are planning will be a permanent one, and the taikonauts who will be sent there will live on the moon for the long term. Although Russia’s role in this far-reaching project was not mentioned, both countries announced that the efforts will be joint. Recently, Venezuela was invited to join Russia and China in the lunar base project.

China has never made a secret of the fact that it wants the BRICS member countries, along with Latin American countries, to be partners in the space race. Bolivia has officially declared its interest in joining the lunar base project, while Brazil is already in talks with Chinese officials.

How will the future moon base be fueled?

As I mentioned in the previous news, the lunar base, whether American or Chinese, will be a permanent one, and the astronauts sent there will use it for a long time. But there is an economic problem. Specifically, what is the most feasible option to fuel the base? Should the fuel be brought from Earth, or produced locally, directly on the Moon?

To this end, a team of Italian researchers from Bocconi University in Milan recently published a study in the journal Acta Astronautica, in which they calculate the feasibility of a future fuel depot to power spacecraft that will travel to Mars or even beyond.

The Italian specialists took into account two scenarios and calculated how economically feasible they are in future space expeditions. The first scenario considered refueling the ships with fuel brought directly from Earth. The second envisages producing fuel on the Moon, using frozen water deposits there.

In both cases, a space fuel depot was considered, orbiting at the L1 Lagrange point, located about three-quarters of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. A warehouse that the aforementioned researchers consider indispensable in future space missions, as it will be used to refuel rockets. From the mathematical calculations carried out by Italian specialists, no matter how you turn them around, it turns out that it is much more feasible for the deposit to be fed directly from the Moon, than from Earth.

Basically, the Italians argue, this is another imperative step that competitors involved in the space race must take into account, if they want their missions not to be burdens on public or private money. But most likely, both China and the US have already done the necessary calculations.

Solar sails could be the method of cosmic propulsion in the near future

Speaking of calculations, if we only mentioned news related to the space race today, we must mention a study, even if it is in the pre-print phase, published for now only on the Arxiv platform. Signed by a considerable number of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, the study brings up an older idea, but still under the microscope of researchers, regarding future methods of propulsion in outer space. More specifically, solar sails.

As I said, the idea is not new. Solar sails have been discussed over time, but have not been seen as a viable option. At most, an interesting one to keep in mind, in case the technology evolves. In short, propulsion is given by the force that the photons exert on the sails in question. The problem is that given the advance of technology, the sails would have had to be huge, making it difficult to move through space using such an approach. Not to mention the problems that would have arisen at the distance from the sun or the objects floating through outer space that could destroy the respective sails.

What the authors of the study come up with in addition to what was already known is precisely the technological advance. They claim that there are already very light materials with considerable reflective power, but also that we have the technology to reduce sails to acceptable sizes. Based on this data, the feasibility of solar sails again comes into question.

According to the aforementioned researchers, not only do we have the technology to create an innovative propulsion system, but we will also be able to do it at much lower costs than the current ones, which involve both heavy fuels and the need for bulky engines. What’s more, they say, if NASA funded such a project, in just a few years it would have a fleet of solar sail-powered craft traversing our entire solar system. Not to mention the space race.

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