LUNAR Tunnel Habitats
Why tunnel habitats? Why am I looking at this?
NASA's Artemis Missions may build small lunar habitats in the short term...
But this will get expensive for taxpayers.
Scenario A
Scenario B
2030
2030
Launch new habitat
Launch one LTBM
2031
Launch new habitat
2032
Launch new habitat
etc...
* years are hypothetical
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Our graduate team is studying sintering
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Our undergraduate team designed and built a small-scale LTBM model
RING STRUCTURE
Sintered with 2 heating modules
Earth TBMs assemble rings using pre-cast concrete slabs. This would be prohibitive to either transport from Earth or even cast locally.
Lunar regolith has a low dielectric loss at room temp. But when heated to 200°C, the soil absorbs microwaves well and heats up quickly.
Loss tangents:
Water: 0.15
Lunar Mare: 0.015
Lunar Highlands: 0.006
POWER
Supplied by radioisotopic thermoelectric generator
Terrestrial TBMs are fully electric and typically connected to the grid. The cutterhead itself consumes 2,200 kW for a total of 3,400 kW! Americium-241 may be a desired alternative to Plutonium-238, because as a byproduct, it is much cheaper.
MOVEMENT
Uses inch-worm maneuver
The cycle:
1) Forward pads grip
2) Contraction
3) Aft pads grip
4) Forward pads ungrip
5) Expansion
Repeat
Here is the hypothetical concept:
CUTTERHEAD
Excavates varying rock densities
Anorthosite rock (Hardness 6 Mohs) is made of agglutinate, plagioclase feldspar, breccia, and basalt. These contain:
47% SiO2
17% AlO3
10% CaO
9% FeO
+Other minerals.
The commonly dug granite and basalt by hard-rock TBMs on Earth have a Moh hardness of 6-7, and limestone and schist are 3-4.
This website illustrates the research that our two RIT teams performed, 2025-continuing.
This lunar tunneling concept seeks to offer a long-term solution that reduces the number of Earth launches to the Moon, the largest cost of lunar exploration and development.
The assembly-line characteristic of a TBM allows for drastically lower marginal cost for each unit of pressurized space. Aka, once the LTBM is on the Moon, every additional meter excavated costs very little. Unlike an inflatable, metallic capsule, or brick-sintered surface structure, where every additional cubic meter requires extensive and complex setup, equipment performing a variety of operations, and/or the enormous cost of transporting mass from Earth.
An LTBM would be able to produce not just a low cost per unit (per cubic meter), but a huge quantity! TBMs on Earth usually operate 24/7 and excavate 15 meters per day through hard-rock in the 6-meter-diameter category.
Habitat on the Moon
Establishing a human presence on the Moon that SCALES, will requires tunnels. Our design focuses on the deployment of autonomous boring prototypes capable of navigating regolith density variations. We aim to study the feasibiltiy of an LTBM as a means to create a lunar habitat.