The Transport Tipping Point

Giant rockets and giant rocket explosions have been all the buzz for the last few weeks. It has gotten me thinking how little conversation there really is about the future being pursued here. There is lots of analysis of the market and the technology, but not of where we are headed. Sure, the viability of colonizing Mars is discussed, and the reasons for pursuing space settlement in general. But there is no sense of how scale affects the whole thing, and changes the whole panorama.

Nice Even Temperatures Through the Magic of Thermal Mass

An entry came in on the website forum about the extreme temperature swings between day and night on the Moon, and the difficulty of keeping temperatures even because of this. The poster, Sam D, mentioned in another post how lava tubes help with this, and that is indeed one reason why the idea of just sealing one up and using it as a hab is popular. I haven't ever properly explained why the habs we've designed will have very stable temperatures, so, now i am. (There is a different version of this on the forum more tailored to the asker, here i'm rearranging it a bit.)

If you have enough mass within the whole gallery space, then heat regulation is easy. Just make sure that enough heat leaves over the night to balance what came in during the day. That will mostly happen through the rock of the gallery floor and lower walls. If anything, the windows won't be enough for that and very minimal radiators would need to run every now and then at night.