Lunar transforming buildings designed by the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

For many years, I drove every day on my way to work, a nondescript building on Berezhkovskaya embankment, which is between the third transport ring and the thermal power station. Even if I stopped and read the sign on the building - "Design Bureau of General Mechanical Engineering", it would add clarity about what is happening behind the walls of the building. Nevertheless, the building is unique - lunar cities have been developed and designed in it for over twenty years. No more and no less.

What to fly on

The design bureau began to develop a long-term base on the Moon in 1962. At that time, the task seemed no more fantastic than a manned flight into space or the manufacture of lunar rovers. By the way, a long-term orbital station was considered a much more complicated matter. The date for the settlement of the first lunar city was even set - the end of the 80s. There was also the unofficial name of the city - Barmingrad, after the name of the general designer of the design bureau, Vladimir Barmin.

According to one of the developers of the bases, Yuri Druzhinin, three options were considered as launch vehicles for delivering cargo and astronauts to the moon: UR-700 designed by Chelomey, R-56 by Yangel and N-1 by Korolev. The most realistic project was the R-56, representing a bunch of already used blocks. The most unrealistic is the royal N-1, which was to be developed from scratch. Nevertheless, the Soviet government chose as the main transport lunar spacecraft the giant N-1 launch vehicle with a starting mass of 2200 tons, capable of launching a payload of 75 tons into orbit. astronauts to the moon.

Distant base

Why did our country need a base on the moon? For the military, it is a giant launch pad for military missiles, virtually invulnerable from Earth, and a base for deploying reconnaissance equipment that monitors the United States. From a scientific point of view, the Moon was primarily interested in as an excellent astronomical base. Geologists were going to do exploration for minerals: in particular, the Earth's satellite is rich in tritium, an ideal fuel for the thermonuclear power plants of the future.

The Barminsk Design Bureau of General Machine Building was just the parent organization. In total, several thousand (!) Organizations were involved in the work on the creation of the lunar city. The work was divided into three main topics: structures, bulk transport and energy. The program also included three stages of base deployment. First, automatic vehicles were launched to the Moon, which were supposed to deliver soil samples to Earth from the place of the proposed location of the base. Then the first cylindrical module of the base, the lunar rover and the first research cosmonauts were delivered to the moon. Further, regular communication along the route Earth - Moon - Earth was established, new base modules, lunar equipment were delivered, a nuclear power plant was mounted, and the planned development of a natural satellite began. Work at the base was planned on a rotational basis for 12 people, half - space assemblers. Each shift lasts six months.

Transforming buildings

The specificity of the first stage of the development of the lunar base was that at the time of the start of work there was not only the experience of manned astronautics, but even accurate data on the structure of the lunar surface. The only thing that was clear was that special structures designed for exploring the Arctic, studying the ocean depths and for manned space flight were not suitable for operation under the conditions of the moon. To ensure a long stay of a person on the Moon, it is not enough to combine in one structure the lightness of Arctic houses, the strength of bathyscaphes and the security of spaceships. It is also necessary to make the structures work reliably for many years. A necessary requirement for the creation of stationary lunar structures was the condition for the transformation of the structure. The design must provide significantly larger working volumes in comparison with transport.

At the initial stage of development, the architects took the usual rectangular shape of the building as a basis. The chosen configuration impressed with the convenience of planning and a good combination of structural elements of a rigid frame with an inner soft shell. The ribbed power frame was compact during transportation and easily transformed. Filling the cells with foaming plastics made it possible to obtain durable and reliable lunar structures. But the cubic shape in architecture turned out to be suboptimal for the Moon. The main issue of space architecture is the determination of the rational dimensions of the premises and the organization of the internal space of the cells. The extra volume only worsened the weight characteristics of the premises.

Life in a top hat

As a result, we settled on cylindrical and spherical rooms. The interior was equipped with inflatable furniture. Taking into account the recommendations of psychologists, the cells for living were designed for two people. To counter the effect of the enclosed space, the architects selected special color combinations of interior colors and developed new types of lighting. To transmit light energy from solar concentrators, flexible and hollow light guides made of film materials were used. The efficiency of transmission of light energy for such devices reached 80%. There was no experience of long flights, and psychologists predicted a quick depression of the lunar inhabitants. Therefore, imaginary windows with painted landscapes were planned at the base, which would periodically change. On the screen in front of the exercise bike, it was proposed to project pre-shot films in order to create the effect of a trip on an ordinary Earth for the astronauts.

In fact, in the USSR, for the first time, they seriously took up the design and ergonomics of residential premises. Various technologies of transformable structures have been tested in various research institutes. For example, self-hardening inflatable buildings. Tape designs were considered. In the transport state, the structure resembled a metal cylindrical shell, only deflated and twisted into a roll. On the spot, it was filled with compressed air, inflated and subsequently retained its shape on its own. The most interesting were the structures made of bimetals - materials with thermal "memory". Finished structures made of such material were flattened in a special way, turning them into a compact cake, and transported to the moon. Under the influence of high temperature (during the day on the lunar surface + 150 ° C), the structure took on its original appearance. But all these fantastic designs have not passed the stages of prototyping tests. Barmin ended up settling on a fairly conventional cylindrical barrel module.

Underground city

A full-size prototype in full size was built at the General Engineering Bureau, and it took a long time to work out the layout of future base modules. For incomprehensible reasons, he was scrapped, and now only photographs of poor quality have survived. The very first base was to dock from nine modules (each with a length of 4.5 m), which were to be gradually delivered to the moon by transport ships.

The finished station from above had to be covered with one meter of lunar soil, which by its characteristics is an ideal heat insulator and serves as an excellent protection against radiation. In the future, it was planned to build a real lunar city - with a cinema, an observatory, a nuclear power plant, a scientific center, workshops, a gym, a canteen, a greenhouse, an artificial gravity system and garages for lunar transport. Three types of transport were planned for the lunar city - light and heavy lunar rovers and the main multifunctional machine "Ant". The development was carried out by the Leningrad VNIITransMash, better known for the creation of armored vehicles. Some of the machines were supposed to run on batteries, some on solar energy, and those that were intended for long voyages were supplied with small-sized nuclear reactors.

The development of the lunar city was in full swing when the fourth N-1 rocket crashed on November 24, 1972 at nine o'clock in the morning.

Three previous launches also ended in disaster. By this time, the Americans had been walking on the moon for three years. The leadership of the USSR decides to curtail the N-1 program - Korolev's loudest failure. And without a carrier, the project of the lunar city lost its meaning.

What for?

Many of the technologies developed for the lunar city later found their application. The philosophy of modular construction of the base, when functional blocks are completed around the main module by docking, is still alive: the Mir space station was created according to this principle and the International Space Station is being built now. Cable-stayed structures were useful in the design of radar systems. Developments in ergonomics were used by submarine designers: the current interiors of nuclear missile carriers are direct descendants of lunar dwellings. And only in our country there are people with a unique profession - architects of lunar cities. Fantasy!