Lunar Electron Farm

Most unfortunate feature of the moon's climate is its airlessness, which will always be hard on humans who try to colonize the moon. Last week Dr. Peter A. Cas-truccio, director of Westinghouse Electric Corp.'s newly formed Astronautics Institute, pointed out one way to turn the moon's lack of atmosphere into an asset. Manufacturers of electronic tubes, he said, go to pains to pump air out of them so that the air will not interfere with the electrons. On the moon this is not necessary. The whole moon has a better vacuum than any manmade vacuum tube.

One of the major needs of a lunar colony will be electric power. Importing chemical fuel would be prohibitively expensive. Even a nuclear power plant would be an almost impossible cargo for earth-moon transportation. But the moon's vacuum, says Dr. Castruccio, makes conventional power plants unnecessary. The essential parts of a photoelectric tube, which on earth must be enclosed in vacuum-tight glass, can be laid out on the moon's airless surface, where they will produce electricity whenever sunlight hits them.

Castruccio's lunar power plant (which he calls an "electron farm") is nothing but a thin plastic sheet coated with cesium or some other material that gives off electrons when struck by light. On earth these electrons would get nowhere; they would be captured immediately by atmospheric atoms. On the airless moon the electrons could be collected by a wire mesh. Flowing out of the mesh, they would form a direct electric current.

According to Dr. Castruccio, a one-acre electron farm will produce 1,200 kilowatts, enough to run 20,000 60-watt light bulbs. The plant will weigh 1.7 Ibs. per kw. and cost (on earth) $3.50 per kw. Since the farm can have any desired acreage, Dr. Castruccio feels that power supply should not be a principal problem for a lunar colony.

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