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LitLitten t1_j60kx56 wrote

Reply to comment by codesnik in Mycotecture — the use of mushrooms and other fungal substances for architectural purposes — could be key to building affordable, fire-resistant, insulated habitats on the Moon and Mars. NASA aims to experiment with the technique on the Moon in 2025. by clayt6

I wonder if inevitably the best approach will end up being taking advantage to some of the darkest craters and outfitting them as nuclear reactor heat sinks.

Could feasibly (?) bore a surface-subsurface tunnel for management from within the crater for necessary lab and maintenance habitation. Connect to other craters in this manner for production and so forth.

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codesnik t1_j643y7o wrote

I see zero reason to use darkest anything for heatsinks. You don't have (external) convection on the Moon, so you have a) radiation, b) direct heat transfer. Radiation doesn't care, just protect radiators from the incoming radiation. Just rotating radiators 90 to the sunlight direction into the sky is enough. Direct transfer would satiate stone around it pretty quickly even if it was in the dark for million of years. If you go under the surface with some kind of pipes, it again doesn't matter, if it's in a crater or on a moon plain on a moon noon.

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LitLitten t1_j647756 wrote

Ah my apologies.

I falsely assumed that the regolith of impact areas would be pliable enough to serve as a heat sink, but you’re right—sand, gravel et al. are awful conductors.

Are there feasible methods for keeping lunar dust from magnetically clumping to radiators? I recall it was a concern for grounded solar arrays.

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codesnik t1_j656mfa wrote

electrostatically, you probably mean? I have no idea, but I'd think that charging their surface with the same sign would work.

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