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Here's the thing: I am the leading designer of a team of undergraduate architecture students and we are currently on a competition about Innovative Moon Base. Approximately 3 months ago I created a topic wanted ideas( Which is not so appropriate now that I think of it). (LINK: ) I figured out the overall design a month after that thread, but I couldn't say it does many help to our design scheme, because at that point I havn't have many clues about what we should focus on. We completed our work and submited last month. Several days earlier we got reply that we are in the finalists of 18 teams. We need to give a live presentation and Q&A to the juries about 2 weeks later. This is our first time for everything and I thought it might be good to do have a Q&A practice, which can also deepen our own understanding of our project. Here's our work of 3(or 2?) months: 2 The description inside the drawings might be hard to read, here's the simplified verson of some of the texts: ( Schem Description This scheme provided a paradigm design of lunar base, considering construction method, cost, and In-situ resource utilization. The system including: a. A modular, expandable habitat with deployable structure, consisting of rigid bone and flexible enclousure, along with multi-purpose flexible active reflector supporting structure. Enclousure enhanced with lunar-regolith bags; b. A multi-docking-ports node module; c. and a solar power tower deployed on-site with solar collector deployed in nearby ridge top. Site description Marks on the map display the location of sunlight resource, waterice resource, and gentle routes to these location. Also hillshade(provide radiation protection), and Earth visiblity. The yellow triangle icon are solar collectors located on ridge tops which are illumiate by the sun most of the time. The collectors provide high density sunbeam to its service zone(covering across the map), transmited solar energy to the active reflector on the building and then to the solar power tower. The site represented in the red box has direct visibility to Earth and is shaded from radiation and sunlight by the south pole ridge half of the lunar day. The site's slope is between 0°to 5°. The Launching&landing area close to the site and is lower than it. The regolith on the area is sinstered by pre-deploy solar collectors, which reduce the risk of debris ejection while operating, with relatively small transportation cost. The Habitat's Deployable Structure The habitat module's structure is folded to minimize volume while transport. Figure on lower right show the bone structure(blue) and reflector supporting structure(yellow) unfolding. After structure deploy,The Airlock/Node(carrying initial payload) will be installed to provide acess to the habitat. The Solar Power Tower The Solar Power Tower when receiving high density sunbeam from the solar collectors, can provide heated steam and electricity to the site, and also serve as a visual navigation beacon. The cryo tank inside can be reused as hydrogen storage after landing, and engines can be reused. Regolith Hyperadobe Enclosure Wall The lunar regolith on the landing area is rammed/sinstered by solar collectors deploy nearby before the habitat deploy. Then robot build semicircle regolith wall around the deployed habitat with regolith and bags fill with regolith using method similar to hyperadobe architecture on Earth, providing radiation protection during the lunar day. Water Sacks sew onto the flexible enclousure The water sacks are sewing onto the flexible enclousure. In the case of Micometeoroids impact causing enclousure breach, the water would quickly suck out from the sack, to the cold vacuum and freeze, provide a temporary seal. ) ps: The whole system is rather complex and I am currently trying to organized it. I would appreciate questions about the design from you, and do my best to answer them.

Greetings all fellow space nerds and Kerbonauts, I am a passionate lover of all space related topics. From Astronomy of our local group of stars, until deep space Cosmology, since I was a kid I dreamed of participating in this amazing field of science. For that regard, I have dived into an Engineering career, specifically in electronics, having one year ago relocated myself to Belgium to work for a French aerospace company. Finally achieving my long-lasting goal, I feel now professionally fulfilled. But... (there is always a but...) Since now I have been integrated in the European space industry, instead of just being a spectator from the outside, I have come to understand a few issues with it. My background I am currently a Power Electronics design engineer and my responsibilities are to design analog and power electronic circuits to be used in space. For those not familiar with electronic design for space I can summarize it in four main activities: 1) Conceptualize a circuit given a certain set of specifications (not space specific); 2) Perform all kinds of analysis (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Part Stress Analysis, Reliability Analysis, Worst Case Analysis, Corner Analysis, and the list goes on and on) (space specific) 3) Writing a plethora documentation that justifies every design decision taken (space specific) 4) Build, test and qualify your electronic module (not space specific) You probably begin to imagine that 2) and 3) takes up most of my time. For example, in the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, given a circuit with thousands of components, I am in charge of analyzing the effect of a failure of one of those components in the whole circuit. And yes, this is done component-by-component. Of course, I don't mind doing this, as I am so in love with my job that time does really fly. The reputation However, even though all this analyzing effort, in the end we can still watch multiple times European made satellites and space probes fail, like for example: - Ariane 5 maiden flight, guidance software failure due to reuse of Ariane 4 design; - Beagle 2, failed to deploy solar panels; - Schiaparelli, failed to land; - Philae, landing harpoons failed and the thruster designed to keep it on the comet's surface failed to fire; - Galileo, multiple clock failures. You name it... To the point My point is: even though most of the time of a designer's job is to write justification documents - that few people read, and performing many detailed analysis - that no one will review, stuff still fails. I don't judge failures! Not at all. I admire and applaud Elon Musk and SpaceX, for going all-in with their launchers and trying things that many said were impossible. But looking at Europe what I am skeptic about is the over bureaucratization and conservationism of the European space industry. While SpaceX is taking huge risks, yet showing amazing progress, in the old continent I feel that space is a decaying over expensive failure fest, with no incredible life changing achievements. Ariane 6, for example, a rocket in development by Airbus was this week made redundant by the reusable Falcon 9 first stage. The pillars of the problem I have come to think of the problem more deeply and I have come to realize four factors that are slowing down space development in Europe: 1) Bureaucratic culture. Too much documentation and paper work. Designers should spend more time testing and trying new stuff, rather than writing boring documents and thinking about every possible failure, when in practice the failure will happen from something that theoretically is not predictable. 2) Conservative approach. Any reuse of an already used design in the past is broadly well received. Innovation is repressed and slowed down in order for the progress steps to be as small but "controllable" as possible. 3) Lack of Entrepreneurial mindset. For the general public and politicians, space is seen as a money sink and not as an opportunity to grow, explore and innovate. 4) Outdated standardization. Yes, I am looking at you “ECSS”. The consequences The consequences are obvious: - The technology used in space is largely outdated when compared to ground applications. This disincentives engineers to work in space due to the feeling of “working in the past”. - Some engineers frustrated with the innovation repressing culture do not feel motivated to have a career in the sector. - The bureaucratic nature of the performed work drives away the smartest engineers out of the sector. - With each failure, the credibility of the industry is little by little being degraded. Even if the culture of the industry would change, public and political opinion is still remarkably indifferent regarding space. Solutions Now the question must be asked: what can Europe, ESA and to a further extent the EU, should do to reverse this trend? TLDR Europe has endured a lot of failures despite efforts to standardize space design. Bureaucratic and conservative culture is repressing innovation in the sector and disincentivizing engineers to dedicate their careers. Politicians and the general public are indifferent to space. What should be done to reverse this trend

The Vomit drive, so called due to the unfortunate side effect of having the main section rotate out of sync with the rest of the craft, inducing travel sickness. As far as I know it is the first of its kind (and may be the last!). The craft works only by using angular momentum. The sas unit is on a bearing with allows it to spin, which in turn rotates the crafts main section through angular momentum. No drive parts are connected to each other. Shortly after creating the vomit drive, Kerbins finest engineers called the drive pointless, before calling it the work of the Kraken as well since it seemed to work by magic. Eventually its creator, Erasmusguy Kerman was banished to Eeloo! https://kerbalx.com/erasmusguy/vomit-drive-warning-might-make-you-feel-sick for the craft file.