Lunar Hammer, Part Five - Applications

With the last few entries I have described the basics of the Hammer technology. Now to cover what it can be used for, and also present its potential for investment. Unfortunately we are stuck in a civilisation where nearly everything is defined in monetary terms.

Lunar Hammer
The Hammer on the Moon concept has to remain a very long term goal, but I'll summarise what it can be used for. The first and best use of Hammer is to kick stuff off the Moon, to shift resources over long distances. Set in an appropriate infrastructure, it can deliver magnetic cast iron for building large-scale structures that break the current paradigm for space habitats. This is what the Next Iron Age is all about, and I'll be going into more detail with a series of blogs about Islands in the Sky. Alternatively it can slug projectiles of other useful metals found on the Moon, a simple conveyor rather than the crux of a 3D printing system of a radical kind.

Skylance
On the Projects page at the main site, I sketch an idea called Project Skylance. Now that I have let the cat out the bag, I can describe it more generally. Essentially, Skylance could result if the Hammer system can be dialled up to 11 and more. In other words, try to achieve velocities well in excess of 2.4km/s. This is very much subject to what we can get from material science. Iron has a speed of sound over 5km/s, so the instantaneous force/velocity can approach this value until we get into a mechanical shock situation. But, working backwards, the Stack below needs to have suitable properties otherwise a Transmitter might/could/will disintegrate. Also, to get an artificial meteor, the projectile needs to burn up. This should be easier to achieve as launches will be more or less at sea-level.

Skylance is the first opportunity to gain investment for the Hammer system. The best way to use it is as a celestial work of art, perhaps located on the Greenwich Meridian. It's no good looking at it as some amped-up firework, it will be much too brief. Nevertheless, a sea-level-to-sky meteor trail will be a spectacular sight. The system will be small and portable, easily carried by a van, and I think it probable that a single technician could set it up. To end on a crazier note, I have imagined a 'meteor-in-a-bottle', wherein a thick glass tube runs up the inside of a tall building, and at the bottom there is a Hammer.

There is a serious science application to be gained from this venture. Meteors on demand, and at close proximity, means the trails can be studied in detail.


The Experimental Physics Experiment
In Part One in this series, I wrote a little about how Escape Velocity is somehow independent of the angle of launch of a projectile. This consequence still bothers me, and there is no experimental proof for this; it is a mathematical derivation. Since every means of escape from both Earth and Moon has only ever been achieved by rocket propulsion, it remains an abstract result. So how about an experiment to prove it? It needs to be conducted on the Moon, of course; we need a vacuum. A model scale Hammer can generate a range of velocities up to and including escape, and can project at angles. By far the trickiest part is the measurement, we have to be able to track a small projectile for tens-of-thousands of kilometres. We can limit this to a beginning and end. The beginning of a trajectory can be measured with radar and/or laser; the end can be predicted, and a satellite at a stable point, which obviously implies L1, can track with radar reflection the passing projectile. It will be travelling slowly by the time it reaches L1. Will it keep rising, or will it fall back to the Moon?


The Educational Science Display
I conducted a series of site visits at various public science venues in 2016. The Galilean Cannon has the makings for a good presensation of fundamental physics (arguably the Astroblaster already does this). In fact, it was while I was working on a sci-art installation that the project now titled Lunar Hammer came back to the fore in my mind, and I envisioned it in a similar way. So imagine, a small Hammer, consisting of maybe five or six elements in its Stack, launching a ball - at an angle - the entire length of the Turbine Hall at the Science Museum. Kids would probably care less about the science.