Lunar Transport 1 - Rails On The Moon

Not if, but when should we build steel railways on the Moon?
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Written, Produced & Narrated by Ian Long

Sources:

Music Credits:

[mikeharris]

A few of points:
1. Railroad will need a wide gauge. Stability in determined in part by gravity and on the moon you have a lot less gravity. Another component is center of mass. Passenger cars on the moon will have a much higher center of mass compared to earth cars due to, shielding requirements from the top amongst other considerations.
2. You should also look at labor per ton of cargo. Trains are very labor efficient, and people will be very resource intensive, minimizing man hours will be critical.
3. The day/night temp swing is huge, thermal contraction will be a major issue and needs to be addressed.

[Cozieskrma]

I bet this guy's factorio saves look insane

[jblob]

Peak autism, I mean anthrofuturism 😂😂

[NotjustRian]

Trains on the moon would literally save my mental state

[richardpavlov]

Lol. Just imagine for a second a horse in a spacesuit on the Moon pulling one of these

[BrianStewart]

We're railers on the moon.
We work all afternoon.
But there ain't no rails
So we tell tall tales
And sing this railin' tune.

[tjorven]

I didnt know using 1909 data on horse drawn carriages to calculate the viability of lunar railways was something I needed to see, but I did.

very underrated video, glad the algorithm decided to lead me here

[miniminerx]

YES, I've of my goals is to 3d print a rail track than can place pieces itself for a small scale demo of self building factory tech

[Ragnoar]

Western Pacific more like Lunar Concentric

[Rxke]

@ 37:20 so compacted gravel roads would indeed be a significant bonus if they were built *while* roaming magnetic separation ore harvesting machines do their thing? You'd be able to build a power efficient road network while harvesting, and if you later wanted tracks to certain locations, tadaam, most of the groundwork already done.

[roanoake]

I love how every video you just continue the case for a steampunk moon society

[avishalomlm]

0:10- You *gotta* tell me what was written on those trains. I could tell there was some kind of writing/pictures but it was all a blur no matter how I slowed the video.

[FrickinMoses]

This knocked me TF out for 6 hour. Subscribed.

[EvilStevilTheKenevilPEN]

The motion blur makes it kinda hard to make out the details, but judging by the bulgy side vents and the old school hi-hood, the locomotive in the opening shot appears to be an EMD GP9. In real life the GP9s were built between 1954 and 1963, so if they were to somehow get one running on the moon it would actually be _older_ than any of the Apollo lunar modules.

[guythewise]

On ties:
Surprisingly, there are also metal ties made. Not sure how effective they are, but I imagine they are a suitable stand-in for wooden ties in high-speed applications. concrete ties would be harder to make for switches, partly due to how specialized they would have to be. Though part of the spacing is not just compression, but supporting the rails themselves. While heavier rail is more rigid, it would still be a bit of a nasty surprise to hit sagging rail at speed. More ties also means faster speeds or heavier trains from what I remember.
A bit surprised you didn't touch on ballasting; you don't want the track to sway while or after a train runs over it, but I guess the actual design/material wouldn't matter much on the Moon. No need to worry about drainage, so compacting regolith would probably work good and be very cheap. The compacted regolith ballast/roadbed could also serve dual purpose as roadways as long as the flangeways are carved out for the trains, _which basically means street-running on the Moon everywhere._

[Teodzero]

There's another consideration I didn't hear you mention, that makes rails better than pavement. Lunar dust is incredibly abrasive. So a paved regolith will induce significantly more wear on everything traveling by it. And not just on wheels - the dust will be kicked up and end up everywhere. Clean rails won't have that problem.

[GoodTIMeMoviesNL]

13:08 because of the self steering nature of the rails(cone on cilinder) no matter how wide the wheels are, there will still be a small contact spot. But the hardness of the outer layer of the contacting surfaces does matter. As well as the polar moment of inertia for both cross sections. These can be increased without adding proportional amounts of mass.

[skenzyme]

A major rail challenge on the moon will be thermal expansion. Temperatures near the Moon's equator can spike to 250°F (121°C) in daylight, then plummet after nightfall to -208°F (-133°C). This 254°C range works out to 33cm of expansion per 100m of steel using the most basic linear calculation.

Thermite welds will require MUCH more stress to be distributed to the ties. Alternatively, larger and more frequent spacing could be used to accommodate expansion, at the cost of lower rolling efficiency and increased wear.

The thermal cycling will do a number on the rails. It might be worth calculating the cost of covering the railroad with solar shade to maintain constant low temperature. But permanent shade means the rails will fall to cryogenic temperatures which will make them much more brittle. 🥶

Another option is to use TUNNELS for all railroads. This would also grant the benefit of radiation shielding for passengers. We can expect automated tunneling to be a HUGE part of lunar infrastructure for the radiation and thermal protection benefits alone.

Great video!!!

[dakarpsi]

Well.. it would have to be electric since there's no oxygen

[nnamdihill]

Needed this to continue building my lego set