Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

There is no specific Indigenous facet to this proposal. For the establishment of infrastructure on the Moon without prohibitive expense, it will be essential to leverage the Moon's local mineral resources to build physical assets on the Moon ranging from lunar bases to machines of production - mining rovers, mineral processing facilities, factories including 3D printers, etc. We have designed a lunar industrial ecology that imposes a sustainable approach to industrialising the Moon by eliminating reliance on an Earth-based supply chain. To embark on this ambitious goal, we must begin by demonstrating some of the fundamental technologies required. We have focussed on a common mineral on the Moon - anorthite - from which we wish to extract several useful materials including aluminium metal and fused silica glass to be 3D printed into useful products. Aluminium metal and silica glass are multifunctional materials that can be manufactured into structural, electrical, magnetic and thermal devices. As a byproduct, we yield oxygen that constitutes 7/8 of rocket propellant - this is technologically simpler and more sustainable than mining water ice at the lunar poles for rocket propellant at cryogenic temperatures without ambient solar energy access. This process constitutes the core of any industrial ecology. We propose that a small, compact "black box" package (Hephaestus) can demonstrate conversion of anorthite mineral input at one end into a representative test structure output at the other. The black box encapsulates a series of physical, (electro)chemical and 3D printing processes that add value to raw lunar material by converting into useful products. This package would be an Earth-based demonstration platform designed with a path-to-flight to the Moon. A subsequent flight version of such a technology demonstration on the Moon would reduce the technological and economic barriers to lunar industrialisation. This would give Canada a pioneering lead in technologies for building products from lunar material, enabling us to exploit our terrestrial expertise in mining, chemical processing, manufacturing and robotics. This is currently a vacant yet strategic niche that would position Canada with the leading capability in the world in strategic technologies required to open a new economic frontier on the Moon and beyond.