Legged and Armed Lunar Construction Robot

A Lunar Construction starts from Earth. We should develop and perfect legged and armed construction robots that are also utilized on Earth mining and construction. Space Agencies are still investing on wheeled rovers and plan to send humans to assist them. Simply send legged and armed robots !

The lunar dust is very sharp and very hard. Which is not good for moving parts. Therefore I propose the use of springy joints instead of bearing based joints. All the motors would be housed inside the robot body. The sections of the legs will be controlled by carbon nanotube cables. These cables would have shield tubes covering them. Once the robot is in position it can lock the joints and use no power to maintain the posture. The arms of the robot would have similar design to that of the legs. 

The arms and legs should have redundancy, for example the leg count should be more 6 or more. The legs and arms should be removable and replaceable by the robot itself. Therefore if one limb malfunctions the robot should be able to replace it with a working one. Also depending on the task a specialized limb would be attached to improve the efficiency. This modular design should include the replaceable multi batteries as well. The robot itself should be able to replace the depleted battery with a full one by itself without effecting the operation of the other arms and legs. Battery may transfer its energy wirelessly to avoid contact problems. These batteries would also be used to store the renewable energy when they are not available.

Importance of Magnesium For The Lunar Base

A Lunar Base can be formed by a sustainable Earth to Moon Logistic rout. Additionally Lunar construction requires high electric power.

The orbiting space cargo ship I had proposed earlier can utilize magnesium hall effect thrusters. The space ship would mostly preserve its speed on the rout. Therefore the additional thrust requirement would be lower than an Earth to orbit launch. NASA has worked on developing a magnesium (Mg) Hall effect thruster system that would open the door for in situ resource utilization (ISRU)-based solar system exploration. Magnesium is light and easy to ionize. For a Mars- Earth transfer, the propellant mass savings with respect to a Xenon Hall effect thruster (HET) system are enormous. Magnesium also can be combusted in a rocket with carbon dioxide (CO₂) or water (H₂O), enabling a multimode propulsion system with propellant sharing and ISRU. In the near term, CO₂ and H₂O would be collected in situ on Mars or the moon. In the far term, Mg itself would be collected from Martian and lunar regolith (soil). (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160005357)

I recommend we should utilize magnesium-based thermoelectric generators on the lunar surface.  It is a subject scientists are researching on "High-performance magnesium-based thermoelectric materials"(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221395672200144X) The thermoelectric generators are not effected by the lunar dust like the solar panels would do. Also manufacturing them on the Moon would be much easier than a solar panel. As we generate more electric we can mine more minerals that would be used for construction and build more electric generating panels. 

A Lunar Base is more feasible if we can minimize the cargo from Earth. Most abundant useful metals on the Lunar surface are Aluminum and Magnesium. We should utilize them more. One last word, sending humans to the Moon for Lunar Base Construction would be the weakest part of such a project. Therefore please do not send humans. We should be able to utilize robots for that. Please use legged robots not wheeled ones.

Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen in a Solid Booster?

Liquid hydrogen and oxygen are among the best rocket fuels. Is it possible to store them in a solid booster?

When a rocket is reusable, than it doesn't need to be decomposable like the ones I proposed earlier, magnesium and glass rocket. Now the problem is the fuel. I thought about using liquid hydrogen and oxygen trapped in a casing with sections inside, like in the image shown.  After reading an article I decided a magnesium alloy can be used as the casing (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921509321002707). Due to low temperatures, the liquid oxygen would not react with the magnesium alloy. Therefore the encapsulated liquid fuel and the oxidizer can be stored temporarily. The inner of the booster would be a traditional rocket fuel. Once the traditional fuel is fired, it heats up the chamber and evaporates the magnesium alloy revealing the liquid fuel and the oxygen which would than react. The inner magnesium separators are used to slow down the flow of the fuel and the oxidizer. 

As a result, the goal is to use efficient liquid fuels and oxidizers in a solid booster. Enabling temporary storage of the fuel and negating the need of complex turbo pumps and fuel leaks.

Orbital Solid Booster Swapping vs Orbital Refueling

Building a Lunar Base is more economical with orbital cargo ships. A fully fueled spaceship orbiting the Earth would maneuver for lunar orbit insertion. Once the spaceship arrives the Lunar orbit, it would release its load to descent on the Moon. Than the spaceship maneuvers for earth orbit insertion. Therefore the spaceship continuous orbiting the Earth and the Moon without landing any one of them. The idea is that you don't loose the momentum you gain by landing and the fuel is conserved. This approach requires in orbit fueling and cargo transfer. 

I had proposed the use of solid boosters. How would they be refueled? By swapping the solid boosters. Like an electric car swapping its battery instead of charging it. Each solid booster pack has several solid boosters to be fired in succession to achieve longer specific impulse and a small liquid propulsion rocket for maneuvering. A rocket launched from Earth would carry the fully loaded solid boosters as the payload. The second stage of the rocket would release the payload once it reaches the orbital speed. Because the payload solid booster has a small liquid propulsion rocket, it can maneuver and attach itself to the lunar cargo ship. The empty solid boosters that also has the liquid propulsion rocket on them would maneuver and attach themselves to the second stage of the rocket which would return to the Earth. Second stage would have unused solid boosters that would be used to slow down the rocket for safe landing. 

Carrying back the empty boosters would be the inefficient part of this idea. However due to packing and stacking nature of the solid boosters in space, a space ship with huge thrust can be assembled in orbit easily. In vacuum there is no aerodynamic therefore placing tens of thrusters side by side wouldn't effect the final speed of the spaceship that much. On the other hand a liquid propulsion rocket would be limited by its tank capacity. Stacking such rockets side by side, maybe ???

Solid booster packing has the advantage of easy assembly in space. Therefore planetary traveling rockets can be assembled in orbit with a mediocre size Earth launch rockets.

Heat Assisted Wind Turbines

Most of the renewable electric generators have the problem of fluctuating outputs compared to fossil based electric generators. I thought what if we build wind turbines to the areas with constant thermal difference not utilized before. Geothermal and lava flowing volcanic areas can be a good place to build wind farms.

Vertical wind turbines can be mounted on a suspension bridge crossing the Heat Zone. Constant thermal difference would create continuous air flow which is enough for vertical wind turbines.

In lava flowing areas, the lava flow should be directed like in hydro electric plants. It can be done by blasting certain areas to assist the flow. So that lava would not damage the bridge's legs. For example Hawaii has the highest electric generation cost among all the States. After such projects they would considerable lower their cost. 

Rocket Based Reusable Stage Catcher

Due to orbital launch trajectory, rocket stages are released far east of the launch locations. The reusable first stage can return to the launch site with the expanse of using more fuel and oxidizer. The second option is to catch them at sea. Ships are modified for this purpose. The rocket stages exact point of landing can change dramatically within seconds which ships cannot respond in time. 

I propose the use of rocket based in air catching platform. The dry mass of the first stage is around 100 tones for the Spaceship (SpaceX). Which is not that heavy for a rocket lifted platform to catch it and return it to the land or ship. The distance between the catch location and the land can be around 300 km. The platform can be designed to float on water in case of emergency. The rocket based thrust power of the platform would allow stability even in some windy conditions where electric propeller based alternatives cannot handle. The second stage of a rocket can also be catched using this platform. However the platform would than take off and land from a large ship close to the estimated landing area.

Same liquid propulsion engines can be used on the platform as the ones I proposed for the modular reusable rocket. In the modular rocket design, the liquid propulsion rocket is mainly used for maneuverability and the main descent thrust comes from the solid boosters. Therefore highly pressurized hydrogen and oxygen tanks can be used for fuel and oxidizer storage. This is much easier and safer to maintain than a super cooled liquid methane and oxygen. These tanks can be filled on demand from the electrolyzed sea water either from the shore of the launch site or from the ship where the platform sits.

This platform can also catch the returning capsules from the space with a large air cushion placed on their centers. It would be a more pleasant and dry welcome for the space explorers.  

Commonwealth Townsville & St. Johns Space Portals

Space Race is heating up and polarizations are forming. Commonwealth countries can form a Space Alliance. My proposition of a much simpler reusable rocket design allows countries to catch up with the race. Commonwealth countries as a total are quite rich with raw materials and energy. With the lands, the sun never sets there are at least two key locations for  space portals. 

At the moment Scotland and Australia has several small launch sites. I propose Space Centers like the ones in USA. Townsville, Queensland of Australia is a good location for space launches aiming the Equators. Townsville is closer to the Equator than Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It has railway connectivity, a harbor and an airport. The Pacific Ocean is in the East direction. It would be used for Geosynchronous Satellite launches and LEO satellites orbiting the Equator. 

As for the satellites orbiting the poles for LEO communication, they can be launched from St. John,  Newfoundland and Labrador of Canada. It has a harbor and an airport. Atlantic Ocean is in the East direction. It would be used for polar orbiting satellite launches.

Arctic Drift

Arctic Drift is a thriller by Clive and Dirk Cussler published in 2008. The main theme is about the Northwest Passage.

The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, near the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The global warming keeps this route clear from ice for a longer duration of time. It is an alternative route between Far East Asia, American West Coast and Europe. It's a passage Canada can promote alternative to Panama Canal.

Modular Hybrid Reusable Rocket

Making rockets single use only may not be that eco friendly and cheap. Therefore I am updating my proposal. My new proposal is a modular hybrid design. Every stage is reusable. Depending on the mission, the stages are formed by combining the solid ascent boosters, solid descent boosters and a liquid propulsion rocket. 

I explain it on an example. First stage has 6 heavy solid ascent boosters + 2 small solid descent boosters and a small liquid propulsion rocket. Second stage has 2 heavy solid ascent boosters + 1 small solid descent booster and a small liquid propulsion rocket. and so on.

Initially 4 of the heavy boosters are fired to give 100% of the ascent thrust. Once they are depleted the remaining 2 of the heavy boosters are fired. Once they are depleted the first stage is released. The stage starts falling and at calculated point the solid descent boosters are fired to slow down the rocket. Once they are depleted the liquid propulsion rocket fires and grounds the first stage safely on the platform. Same process repeats for the second stage. Small solid boosters effectively slow down the stage. A fully loaded liquid propulsion rocket would then maneuvers the whole stage for safe landing. As a result rockets are only fired once. There is no start and stop in any one of the rockets. This may simplify some of the problems.

Depending on the mission the configuration can be changed.

Horizontal and Vertical Integration

Most of us think that success in achieving big goals lie in solving engineering problems, especially in Space industry. I state that the solution lies on organization and management not on engineering.

If a country or a union (EU) want to be among the leaders in space, they should form a Horizontally and Vertically integrated company to lead the way. Space industry is so complicated and resource hungry that cannot be conquered by small entities. The leading major company should have units flexible like startups and have enough resources to develop most of its own parts. Imagine like a human body. Skeleton keeps the body firm like a big corporation. The fingers are flexible like startups which are attached to the body and move in coordination with the body. Without the body, the startups are like the walking hand (Thing) in the Addams Family. 

Mandatory orientation within the company allow people to look at the problem from different points of view. You cannot innovate with people who are too much focused, help them expand their vision by temporary rotations. Try to merge the requirements to maximize the outcome from the limited resources. Try to achieve the same goals using less satellite and less mass on the orbit.

Don't forget some space related solutions have a complementary solution on Earth, such as utilization of balloons. Don't ignore such solutions. They are a part of Aerospace !

Don't loose your hope for the future by looking at the numbers (number of launches) now. The goals are more important than the numbers. You can win the World Cup by a single goal.

Mesospheric Rendezvous for Reusable Rockets

Designing rockets takes years, consume a lot of budget and manufacturing them is expensive and take time. Therefore reusing them is the current norm. Ariane 6 family of rockets are the latest rockets for ESA and their re-launchable versions would take years to be developed. How about catching the empty first stage up in the air and safely ground it with another rocket. Empty first stage of Ariane64 catched by an Ariane62 in the air, Mesospheric Rendezvous. It can be accomplished when the empty stage's speed is close to zero while falling. This idea can be tested on smaller rockets first.

Sustainable Greening of Sahara

Greening the Sahara Desert can only be possible with low finance requiring steps. Additionally, each step should generate revenue quickly to trigger the next one. Big projects require momentum to be successful. The strategy including its Plan B should keep up the momentum. I see humans and fuel as the slowing factors in big construction projects. Therefore, I try to utilize swarm robots with renewable energy sources on site. As a result much less logistic is required in the harsh project area. Treat the Sahara project like a construction project in Mars. You would design it with minimum human resources and minimum logistics from Earth. You would try to maximize the local energy sources and raw materials. Now apply it on Sahara (or Suez and Panama Canals). 

I propose deep water tunnels from the Mediterranean Sea to the inners of the Sahar desert. As the water is consumed from the land, more sea water would be pushed from the sea. The filters placed under the sea would make most of the filtering by the help of the water pressure, reducing the operational cost. Farming areas would be formed starting from the shore. This would increase the investment return rate even before reaching the desert. Most of the farming will be done using robots that use electric, no diesel tractors. The electric would be generated partially by sun concentrators (solar panels are not ideal in deserts) and piezo film wind electric generators (classic wind turbines are not ideal due to sand storms damaging the moving parts). 

The remaining salt on the filters would be either sold as table salt or used as MagNa rocket fuel. Additionally desert sand is rich with Uranium and some other minerals which would be sold to further finance the project. Local workers would work in cities where they would build the required infrastructure in factories. Electric operating mono rail trains would transfer the crops and ores from the desert to the port and carry the infrastructure to the desert. Almost no men in desert !

Building such an infrastructure may look expensive but once they are build they would have much lower operating cost and less on site maintenance. Cheaper alternatives preferred initially become exponentially difficult problems to be solved later which slows and even stops such mega projects.

Self Defending Undersea Fiber Alternative

I had previously shared my idea of balloon relays to be a back of the undersea fiberoptic. Defending the whole fiberoptic network is almost impossible and even partial patrolling is quite expensive. Using hydrogen filled balloons at high altitudes is a feasible alternative. Around 20km altitude the wind speeds are low. The balloons would utilize electric motors for positioning which would be charged from the solar panels. The laser absorption is also lower at these altitudes making the point to point high speed laser communication possible. These relays would provide comparable bandwidths to undersea fiber and networks can be extended like a tree which is difficult for an undersea fiber.

More importantly these balloons can defend themselves like the bombers of the WW2. They can have laser anti missile units on them which would be charged from the sun. Lower laser absorption at high altitudes would make them more effective. This idea requires much less patrolling, much lower operating cost, faster and cheaper deployment compared to other alternatives.

Environmental Friendly Mining Blasting

I had previously wrote about my robot mining idea. I want to add a detail to that idea. Blasting rocks is a common practice in mining to speed the excavation. My robot mining idea required a wind turbine farm to be build in the mining site. Once you have electric supply, the explosives can be manufactured on site. If water is available in the mining area. Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. Which later can be used as explosive with no hazardous by product. If water is not available, atmospheric nitrogen can be liquified and ignited by the oxygen generated from the atmosphere. Again the resulting blast would have no hazardous by product. This idea also contribute to the goal of minimum logistic supply to the mine site. These approaches are important for rural mining locations and future space mining where material supply is limited.

Mini Pulsar on Earth Orbit

After reading Jocelyn Bell Burnell's discovery of Pulsar, an idea came to my mind. Can we deploy a ferrite ball that can be spinned using varying magnetic fields? Metal ball would be spinned using two satellites that are in the same orbit. The magnetic fields produced by the satellites keep the metal ball from escaping and alternating fields would spin it almost indefinitely. Can we achieve relativistic speeds on the spinning ball before it explodes due to centrifugal forces? This experiment can be conducted in special labs, but high altitude orbit with no air drag, zero gravity and continuous power supply from the sun would make it easier to conduct it in space. As the metal balls strength is improved, a hollow ball filled with deuterium and tritium can also be tested for a fusion reaction.

If we want to explore the universe, we should be able to travel fast. We should start experimenting the large masses reaction in relativistic speeds. E = mc²  :)

MagNa Rocket

I further enhanced my all Magnesium (Mg) rocket design. Sodium (Na) metal can be sandwiched between the Magnesium outer and inner shells of the rocket. This method would increase the cost of production of the rocket compared to a direct extrusion based manufacturing of all Magnesium rocket. However Sodium is lighter and has higher vapor pressure than Magnesium at a given temperature. Sodium needs to be sealed in Magnesium casing to prevent it to be reacting with the humid air. Once the rocket is ignited the inner Magnesium layer would evaporate and Sodium would be revealed.

Sodium can be extracted from the salty Mediterranean near the Space Base. Sodium, like Magnesium is environmental friendly.

Environmental Friendly Hybrid Magnesium Rocket

I had previous proposed an all Magnesium Solid Rocket. Now I am improving on that idea. I propose the use deionized water or hydrogen peroxide as the oxidizer. The solid fuel is pure magnesium. Magnesium when heated reacts violently with water (check videos in internet). Water can be stored in either liquid or ice form. Water may contain some hydrogen peroxide to improve the performance. Magnesium is a light weight and strong material. It can be extruded to form the stage with the fuel itself. It would withstand the rocket combustion pressure without needing another material. All magnesium solid booster stages would have short specific impulse times so more than 2 stages would be used in the rocket. 

Magnesium melts at 650° Celsius which lowers the cost of extrusion of the stage. Therefore the rocket should slowly accelerate not to have a high surface temperature. Magnesium is also a poor heat conductor and only heated magnesium reacts with water. Therefore the casing covering the water or ice can also be made from magnesium. For the stages that throttling is not that critical ice can be used. For other stages water can be pumped to adjust the throttle. An all magnesium stage would be released before its casing cannot withstand the inner pressure. The left over stage would than keep burning  including its casing using the oxidizers in the atmosphere. The stages that are released in space would heat up during entry into the atmosphere and burn before reaching the ground. Therefore only he nozzle sections of the stages would be left over. Because the nozzles withstand high temperatures they need to be shattered into small pieces before hitting the ground. A mechanism should be created to accomplish this task. Magnesium water reaction yields Magnesium hydroxide which doesn't have negative effect on soil and sea water given that they would be scattered in large areas. If the nozzle is made mostly out of Graphite, the overall space debris impact on the environmental would be close to zero.

Le Barcarès Space Base I proposed is close to Spain which has Magnesium reserves. Therefore the rocket can be build with minimum carbon footprint. The energy required to build it can be generated from the wind farm located in the sea. 

The result is a low cost, minimum carbon footprint, environmental friendly (compared to other technologies), minimum exported raw material requiring Space Rocket.

A small version could be easily designed and tested !

All Stages Solid Rocket and Le Barcarès Space Base

I keep updating my space travel ideas as I learn more. However key parts remain the same. I keep insisting on all stages solid propellent rockets for space satellite deployment. The last stage would have ion thrusters for fine adjustments but all thrust will come from solid boosters. The first stage would have tubular propellant geometry that has increasing thrust. This allows slow acceleration from the ground level. As a result the rocket experiences less drag and heat from the dense atmosphere. As the atmosphere thins, more thrust producing stages would be activated to accelerate the rocket. The goal being less heat generation from air drag and not requiring expensive heat shields. All rocket stages would be single use. Therefore they need to be low cost. I had proposed tempered glass. If that is not possible, an environmental friendly low cost casing would be used.

Liquid propulsion rockets are very delegate due to their complex turbo pumps, cooling systems and most importantly their ultra low temperature fuel and oxidizer tanks. The tanks and pipes leak now and then and we see the catastrophe. Solid rockets are much more stable in that sense. There is immense pressure inside a solid rocket chamber and micro cracks form after they are used. Therefore recycling them is risky. Designing the casing for single use would be cheaper if low cost materials used in the design. That's why I try to eliminate the heat from the equation which requires expensive shields. Gradual acceleration from the ground, slower speeds until the atmosphere is thin enough than the maximum thrusting stages can be utilized for orbital speeds.

For satellite launching the goal is to reach the required orbital speed which is usually more than 25000 km/h. If a rocket is launched in East direction, the Earth's rotation contributes positive to the final speed. Therefore I propose a launch site for Europe, Le Barcarès. It is close to the French Spain border. It has a port, connection to the railway and a small airport nearby. The Mediterranean is in the East direction.

Space Mafia

Lack of Transparency of the private Space Companies made me think some of them will be Space Mafia working for their government doing the dirty work in Space where the government agencies are more transparent and cannot do everything.

Piezo Film Electric Generation

One of the problems with wind traditional electric generators is the noise they make. Therefore they cannot be placed close to the residential areas. I thought of using tethered balloons that generate electricity from the swinging of the floating balloon. The piezo films at the ground would generate the electricity with minimum moving parts and noise. Piezo films require much less mechanical parts than a motor generator and piezo igniter based generators. They may even mounted on top of the buildings. Due to balloons lifting effect, piezo film wind generator's net weight on the roof would be low. I recommend carbon nanotube (CNT) strands to be used as the tether due to their strength and low weight. Carbon Nanotube strands can be produced as long as 250m. High altitude would allow higher electric generation efficiency compared to short tower based generators. More importantly with much less noise.  This design makes the wind electric generation a possibility at deserts. The desert wind storms damages the bearings of the traditional wind turbines in short time. Additionally the piezo wind electric generators would require less maintenance, only balloon refilling when required. Piezo films do not produce huge powers compared to large electric dynamos. However their more deployment area possibility is a big bonus for the renewable electric generation ecosystem. 

Finally the piezo films can be laid under the road anti skidding surfaces to generate electricity from the slowing vehicles. They don't require mechanical systems like the other piezo electric generating systems.

Next Generation - Air Force

Air Forces will be the major force within the new Army. They will have the highest firing power and mobility. They will be turbofan powered VTOL Cargo Planes. They may be like an X-Wing and during take off and landing the soldiers would sit vertical like in a space rocket launch. They will be either human or self operated. Depending on the task they are assigned they will carry; the air defense missiles, air to ground attack missiles, fighter drones, armored robot army, robot submarines. Their VTOL capability will allow them to deploy and retrieve the ground forces and the mini submarines in almost any location. VTOLs will also be used for logistics to supply the ammunition, the fuel and the food to ground and navy units. VTOLs require almost 10 times more powerful engines compared to traditional planes. These powerful motors would help the plane to climb and fly at much higher altitudes than almost all fighter planes. Also they can break the sound barrier using so much fuel. These possibilities improve their survival against the enemy attacks.

More important, these VTOLs will be used for construction, disaster avoidance and recovery in piece times. Helping the economy unlike a fighter jet.

Next Generation - Navy

The major objective for the new navy is to achieve high mobility with most effectiveness using minimum resources like the ground forces. All navy ships should be submersible. The depth would vary. The major navy force will be small submarine robots. Either human or self operated. Imagine them like a small whale with armored body like a knight.

Inside the robot submarine will be self sustained (eating, resting, toilet) like in a Mercury Space Capsule. Operator soldier should be able survive without a resupply for several days. Less burden on the logistics. Living space parts and know how would be transferable between the space industry.

The robot submarine in its smallest form should be able to fit in a half container for easy transport. The robots would be deployed in groups. A human operated one would control the autonomous ones. Due to limited wireless connectivity underwater, they may need to be in close proximity depending on the task.

Compared to a large submarine attacking, attacking with multiple small ones is advantageous. With this strategy the number of firing points and targets increase for the enemy. The autonomous ones would not have a human living space therefore can have more torpedo and fuel in them. More important is you allocate only one human for multiple firing points. Their attack to a battle ship or aircraft carrier would be like the attack of piranha fishes to a buffalo.

Robot submarine's small size and light weight allow them to be air deployable therefore increasing mobility.

Next Generation - Army (Ground Forces)

The major objective for the new army is to achieve high mobility with most effectiveness using minimum resources. In my idea I tried to minimize the logistics requirement to the battle field and made the units more independent to increase the mobility of the forces.

The major ground fighting force will be armored, legged robots. Either human or self operated. Imagine them like a mixture of crocodile and a spider with armored body like a knight.  These robots will be based on the autonomous swarm construction robots. Therefore most parts and know how would be transferable both directions. Leg and foot is a must while the tracks and wheels stuck in mud, cannot climb rocky areas and are effected by barriers. The robot would accommodate a single operator soldier.

Inside the robot will be self sustained (eating, resting, toilet) like in a Mercury Space Capsule. Operator soldier should be able survive without a resupply for several days. Less burden on the logistics. Living space parts and know how would be transferable between the space industry. The robot in its smallest form should be able to fit in a half container for easy transport. It would use missiles with no gun barrel. At its top there would be a robotic sniper gun for close range defense. The robots would be deployed in groups. A human operated one would control the autonomous ones. 

Compared to a large armored vehicle attacking, attacking with multiple small ones is advantageous. With this strategy the number of firing points and targets increase for the enemy. The autonomous ones would not have a human living space therefore can have more missiles and fuel in them. Due to their close proximity from the operator, the communication can be achieved with minimum disturbance. More important is you allocate only one human for multiple firing points. Humans require more resupply material than robots. Therefore less human means less resupply material to the battle field and improved mobility. Light weight armor of the robot would allow them to be air deployable. Their compact closed design will be waterproof up to a certain depth that allow the robots to cross rivers and shallow lakes by walking on the sea floor. They may even swim like crocodiles using their legs depending on their weight.

They would operate by electricity. Fuel cells, turbine electric generators or nuclear batteries can be used.

Next Generation Military Roadmap

Due to geopolitical conditions, military expenditures are increasing. Based on my research and past experience as a communications officer (2005-2006) I came up with the idea of a new generation of army.

The major military strength of a country comes from its economy, industrial infrastructure and qualified work force. My idea while improving the basis, robotizes the army in a roadmap.

Improving the basis requires more mining, recycling and energy production. Because the future lies in technology, the country applying this strategy should develop their own processor family and operating system. Relying on exported processors and OS is a major weakness. Mining, recycling and energy infrastructure should be build using autonomous swarm robots. These robots form the basis for the robot army. The development of these construction robots improve the countries economy in speed. The correlation between the civil and military robots decreases the military R&D costs. Additionally military robots should be usable in civilian tasks (ex: disaster times) with slight modifications.

I will explain Next Generation Army (Ground Forces), Navy and Air Force in separate articles.

Undersea Fiberoptic Alternative for the West

Undersea fiber optic network is one of the weakness of the West world. Defending them against sabotage is very difficult. Alternatives have been proposed to be the Satellites. However there is a much cheaper alternative, the balloons. We can deploy telecommunication relay balloons over the sea. The balloons would be filled with hydrogen generated from the sea water using the off shore wind farms. The altitude of the balloons would be around 20 to 25 km where the wind speed is minimum. At that altitude high speed laser communication would be possible among the relay balloons. Therefore much higher communication speeds can be achieved compared to satellites. Deploying balloons is much cheaper and faster compared to satellites and new ones can be deployed in short notice. Trans Atlantic relays can be deployed from ships. These balloons would also be used for Earth observations and scientific research. They would be powered by solar cells.

Eiffel like Stacked Wind Farms

At the moment  most wind turbines are vertical based (using large blades) and they eat up a lot of land space. (The Footprint of Energy: Land use of U.S. electricity production https://docs.wind-watch.org/US-footprints-Strata-2017.pdf). I propose we design wind energy farms like thermal power plants. A single large wind power plant to power a city instead of erecting thousands of them around. The advantage of wind is it gets more efficient as you go up. Therefore the plant would be more vertical than it is horizontal. The wind electric plants would be constructed like the Eiffel tower to be able to reach higher altitudes. I also propose we use horizontal wind turbines stacked on each other. With this method we start generating electricity as we build it. As always I propose we build them with only electric powered construction robots and drones. The plant would be connected to the grid which would supply electricity to the construction robots during construction. As the wind turbine sections added, it will supply the electricity for its own construction. As the stacking continuous it will start supplying to the grid as well. At the moment wind turbines are constructed using gasoline powered equipment and a lot of human power on site which have a lot of carbon foot print. Additionally the ground section of the plant can be used as power distribution center. As a result the land is used more effectively.

Please invest more on autonomous swarm electric construction robots and drones Than on space rockets and missiles. They will build your cities greener, cheaper and help you in case of natural disasters.

Space Construction Hub

Advancement in space requires manufacturability in space. The parts that can be put to orbit are limited in size even with folding them. I propose a Space Construction Hub like ISS but fully automated (all robots no humans). Large structures will be manufactured using open space manufacturing. Most of the manufacturing area will have no closed structure and open to Space. Only docking hub and control systems will be in  confined modules.

I had the inspiration from Ford F3T in 2013 and a decade later Machine Labs sheet metal forming robots. (videos below). Cold processing of metal sheets allow an open space manufacturing. Large structures will be put into shape from rolled sheet metal and will be attached to each other by riveting. The goal is to have the minimum temperature dependency during the shaping and assembly.

The Space Construction Hub will orbit above the space debris region but close to Earth to lower transportation costs. All hubs will be designed for robots only lowering the cost. If a repair is needed first option will be using robots to do the task and the last will be sanding humans on a special hub. If don't force our designs to be fully automated (including problem solving) we can never achieve the goal of Space colonization. 

Once the hub is ready, I propose it to build giant sun reflectors. Current solar panels are delegate and loose considerable power when struck by space junk. A reflector deforming would have minimal effect because the electric will be generated using concentrated sun light.

Tesla Ion Thruster

The catastrophic failure of rockets made me think of a less aggressive propulsion method. Coupled with the news of China planning to construct a massive solar power plant in space that will use microwaves to continuously send energy back to Earth. I came with the following idea.

Wirelessly transmit electric power from space to a rocket that uses ion thrusters. If we can build Ion thrusters that can exceed the gravity it can be viable. Lower acceleration would be more comfortable for the humans and the satellites travelling to space. Also decreases the possibility of a catastrophe. My Stage Zero idea would also help. Raising the rocket to a higher altitude increases the wireless power transfer efficiency due to lack of clouds and thick atmosphere.

Space Sustainability - Problems and Solutions

16th of January 2025 SpaceX Starship disintegrated over the Caribbean Sea. This reminded the problem of space debris and environmental hazard on EARTH to explore the rest of the Universe. It is funny to make Earth uninhabitable (for humans) just to send a handful of people to extremely uninhabitable extraterrestrial objects. We cannot nix out Space Exploration all together. We have to come up with solutions to problems and discuss them.

1. Spaceships should be more reliable and their failure rates should be reduced. (Look at aviation)

My solution is to use more reliable solid boosters which are simpler and have low failure rate. For sometime forget the idea of reusability of rocket stages. Except for the Stage Zero I proposed earlier.

2. In case of failure, disintegrating rocket stages should have minimal impact on people and environment.

My solution is to use glass rocket casing which would disintegrate into small pieces (tempered glass). Also glass is environmental friendly.

Hope more people start developing and discussing ideas. Problems are not solved by complaining but discussing solutions.

The Poles are The New Straits

A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the Earth.

More and more satellites are utilizing this orbit such as Starlink, Iridium and GPS satellites (not all satellites use this orbit but some) making the arctic circles critical regions for satellite security like a strait for the navy. Increasing the importance of Alaska, Canada and Scandinavian countries.

Solar Parachute and Atmospheric Skipping

Space Capsules returning to Earth have very high speeds.  Capsules slow down using the atmospheric drag which heats them up to very high temperatures. I recommend we use Solar Sails to slow down the capsules like a parachute.  Solar sails utilize radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. Coupled with the atmospheric skip maneuver the capsules would experience much less heat, less g-force and much higher accuracy in the landing location. (You may check Orion Skip Maneuver)

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2022/orion-skip-maneuver.html

Nine Men's Morris against Nikola Tesla

Nine Men's Morris using Wireless Led pieces. I designed and created to play it against Nikola Tesla. He would have loved that.

Robot Built Modular Piezo Wind Electric Generator

All my construction ideas are based on automated swarm robots powered by wind turbines. Current wind turbines are designed to be manually constructed by cranes and human workers. I propose a new generation of wind turbines that is build using smaller parts that can fit in a container. Their connectors would be designed such that the automated robots can easily construct them. The construction should be from inside out. The construction robot would move inside the hallow shaft of the tower and built it like LEGO tiles. One important feature of these wind electric generators is that they will generate electric using leaves attached to piezo electric generators. The movement of the leaves will generate electricity. This design allows the wind electric generator to be build in small modules compared to giant blades and dynamos and gears. The wind harvesting area can be increased using branches like in a tree. The electric will be generated during the construction. Therefore the tower can be build in stages depending on the power need. The lack of bearings and gears is also beneficial in desert areas where fine sand particles from sand storms wear out them fast.

The main goal of this idea is to come up with a design that can be fully robot build using smaller parts.