The "Horizontalization™" (yes, it's a mouthful) is the single biggest engineering challenge in the entire construction phase.
Once we solve this, the base becomes a reality—unlocking 2,500m³ of volume for the price of one landing.
@elonmusk, we’ve proved that it’s doable. Now we just need to do it.
Let’s build #StarHab humanity’s first home on another world. 🚀 (8/8)
When we first started working on the @StarHabProject idea of converting the @SpaceX Starship HLS into a permanent habitat, we knew that putting it on its side was a high priority.
So we went back to basics with a Free Body Diagram (FBD) to see how the loads on the system will react and asked: "Is it feasible?" 🧵 (1/8)
We need to anchor three things to the ground: the pivot point, the truss, and the cable.
But we don't know (yet) if the regolith is compact and strong enough at the South Pole.
The pivot and truss only handle shear loads (easier to manage), but the cable anchor takes the heavy pull. So we drill extra helical anchors for the cables to ensure that if one fails, we have immediate redundancy. (7/8)
@FelixSchlang@NASA@Vooper3D@StarHabProject You got it!
There's a lot of unpublished content about the base.
It would be great if we could collaborate to create new animations of the entire conversion process.
@masa_0083 The updated @StarHabProject design leaves the windows exposed so that astronauts can view earth. That's important for the mental wellbeing of the crew.
Hi Madhu, yes, Rob was the chair of the TP. He did a great job at it as evidence is that the TP is still alive and kicking 4.5 years later.
Are those names of people or missions?
And I'm sure @elonmusk gets things done, we are struggling to reach him. We want to promote this concept into a reality.
@FactsChecking@elonmusk@StarHabProject@ISUnet 5. We'll grow some food. But in no way we intend to grow enough food to sustain the crew. Routine resupply missions will fly in at a cadence of 3-6 months. This will be very similar to resupply missions to the ISS and can be carried by either @SpaceX or @blueorigin .
@FactsChecking@elonmusk@StarHabProject@ISUnet 4. Water is a big issue. Yes, we will bring it from earth initially and try to reuse it as much as possible like in the ISS. So figuring out how to extract water ice from the moon is a top priority once the base is established.