Moon BRICCSS
Moon Blocks Using Regolith ISRU with Corbelled Construction for Sustainable Shielding
For sustained human habitation on the Moon, a significant amount of radiation protection will be required around lunar habitats to mitigate exposure to ionizing radiation and protect astronauts' long-term health. In addition, habitats will need protection from micrometeoroids and the extreme temperature swings characteristic of the lunar environment. The utilization of local resources (ISRU) for construction and shielding on the Moon would considerably reduce launch mass from Earth and is a key enabling technology for a scalable human presence.
Moon BRICCSS is a proposal for the manufacturing and construction of a highly durable and scalable radiation, thermal, plume, and micrometeoroid protection structure compatible with different habitat configurations. Molten regolith is cast into hollow, hexagonal prism bricks, filled with aggregate regolith and robotically assembled into a corbelled structure.
Key innovations include:
Uses Casting, a simple and industrially scalable manufacturing method
Hexagonal brick design for compatibility with casting, energy minimization, and structural stability
Hollow masonry units filled with loose regolith to reduce energy demands and annealing time
Uses corbelling technique, provides a stable structure without the need for metal supports, mortar, or other binders that would need to be sourced from Earth, enabling the construction materials to be derived entirely from un-beneficiated lunar regolith
The resulting structure is made out of Moon BRICCSS that are 1 meter tall and 3 meters long, capable of being handled by expected robotic technology. We performed:
analysis of expected brick thermal expansion
structural stability of a corbelled arch
technology demo for manufacturing a scaled brick unit
technology demo for the robotic assembly procedure
Read our publication about this work here.
