Necklace of Selene 2

Almost a year ago, I proposed the Necklace of Selene which outlined a series of flexible, wire-shaped solar sections circling the lunar poles. It utilized the Moon's rotation and axial geometry to ensure a 7/24 energy supply through a high-voltage, low-current system with bypass circuitry for shadowed segments. I would like to improve on that idea further to make it more feasible.

The primary competitor for lunar power, the NASA Fission Surface Power (FSP) project, faces significant feasibility hurdles. A 40 kW electrical reactor requires roughly 160 kW to 200 kW of thermal generation due to 20-25 percent efficiency. In the lunar vacuum, heat dissipation is limited to radiation governed by the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Without convection, this necessitates immobile radiator panels exceeding 100 square meters that are prone to mechanical failure during deployment and localized damage.

The refined Necklace of Selene architecture replaces this immobile, single-point-of-failure reactor with a 16-node distributed mesh grid. Each station provides approximately 1 kW, ensuring a constant 8 kW to 9 kW across the polar region. This is roughly 10 times the 110 W provided to Mars rovers like Perseverance, allowing for high-speed robotic mobility and active thermal management over a much larger lunar surface area.

The technical backbone of the grid is a three-tier composite cable. The core consists of a single-mode silica fiber optic strand providing a terabit-scale data link and a 6 GPa tensile backbone. Electrical conduction is handled by aluminum strands helically wrapped around the core. This helical geometry acts as a mechanical spring to manage the Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) mismatch between aluminum and silica over 300 K temperature swings. Aluminum is utilized instead of copper due to its twice the electrical performance per kilogram. The outer layer is a stranded carbon fiber overwrap that provides armor against abrasive regolith and serves as a high-emissivity thermal radiator.

Deployment utilizes a kinetic energy recovery method. Instead of sacrificing fuel to bleed off all momentum, the lander performs a constant-altitude deceleration burn while unspooling the cable at a relative low ground speed. The tension of the laid cable acts as a passive anchor to stabilize the trajectory.

The grid operates on High-Voltage DC to minimize line losses. The 16 stations form a self-healing ring main where power flows bi-directionally. This mesh topology ensures that if one segment is severed, energy from the sun-facing side is rerouted through the alternate path. This infrastructure uses power-bootstrapping, where existing nodes provide energy to accelerate the deployment and connection of subsequent missions, creating a scalable, self-expanding lunar utility.