8. 1 CHAPTER VI II CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE VIII.l: INTRODUCTION As flowcharted in Figure 8.1, the construction of the colony can be broken down into four broad steps: 1. Refining of lunar material into ingots. 2. Manufacture of stock parts and hardware from the ingots. 3. Fabrication of subsections of the colony out of stock parts. 4. Final onsite assembly of these sections to form the colony. The availability and requirements for materials are discussed in Section VIII.2. Section VIII.3 describes the refining process used to produce iron, oxygen, silicon, other metals, and slag. Section VIII.4 traces the one-ton steel ingots produced through a cascade of rolling mills, shears, and machine tools. The resulting hardware is fabricated into inner and outer hull sections and interhull bulkheads, as described in Section VIII.5. Section VIII.6 deals with the work environment and summarizes the masses of equipment needed for the above processes. The procedures and hardware required for assembly of the hull sections and bulkheads are covered in Section VIII.7. This completes the construction of the colony. The testing, inspection, and repair essential to maintaining the integrity of the completed structure are described in Section VIII.8. Section VIII.9 covers requirements for manpower, mass of equipment, and electrical power for the construction of the colony. Finally, Section VIII.10 presents conclusions and recommendations. VIII.2: MATERIALS VIII.2.1: Materials Availability: It is assumed that most structural materials required for the prototype come from the Moon. No
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