ADVANCES IN FORCE FIELD TAILORING FOR CONSTRUCTION IN SPACE

摘要

Long-term human habitation in space requires the ability to use extraterrestrial materials to build massive radiation-shielded artificial-gravity stations. The technology of Tailored Force Fields promises to enable formation of desired shapes from multidisperse construction material in microgravity. This paper reports the status of adapting this new technology to a mission plan to build a 5-module, 1-G radiation-shielded station. Theory and experiments using acoustic, optic and microwave fields have been used to generalize this observation into a unified general force field fabrication technology. Engineering estimation showed that the solar energy requirements to form rubble in space into cylindrical habitat modules are quite within reach. Long wavelength radio waves would be appropriate for this application. A 50m diameter, 50m high cylindrical module, shielded to 2m depth, was selected as an extreme test case. Preliminary design estimates show that the input power needed to a radio-wave resonator in order to form such a module within a few hours from a cloud of 20cm-diameter rocks, could be provided by 2 square-kilometers of solar collection with 10% conversion efficiency.