Analysis and Evaluation of an In-Situ Resource Utilization Based Structure of a Lunar Greenhouse

Kurzfassung

Future lunar space missions may include the presence of humans on the moon. EDEN NG is a project elaborating a design of a lunar greenhouse which is added to the lunar habitat. It has the capability to provide fresh food and can work as a biogenerative life support system. The thesis analyses and evaluates an in-situ resources utilization based structure of a lunar greenhouse to investigate the mitigation of transport costs. Laser sintering performed best in a trade-off with five other manufacturing methods. The components of the laser sintering method are estimated to have a mass of 2,199 kg. The primary structure is composed of an inflatable and a sintered regolith shielding. The inflatable is a horizontal cylinder with a length of 6 m and a diameter of 4.2 m. One end is connected to an adapter ring for connection to the habitat and the other end is closed by a half-sphere with a diameter of 4.2 m. It sits in the regolith shielding which has a minimal thickness of 1 m. A FEM analysis showed that the sintered regolith needs to have a tensile strength of minimum 1.05 MPa, a compressive strength of minimum 0.311 MPa and a minimum shear strength of 0.67 MPa which includes a safety factor of 3.0. The first greenhouse module requires a transport mass of 12,825 kg. Only considering the mass, this approach is cheaper than the EDEN NG approach.