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We should be able to make concrete from regolith


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I think we should be able to use regolith to make concrete. This is a process that has already been tested and seems to work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunarcrete

This "mooncrete" would require large quantities of regolith and some sulfur. The mixture is compressed/heated (in the crusher/refinery for example) and a type of concrete is obtained that is very resistant to pressure but quite vulnerable to high temperatures (sulphur melts at 115.21°C, but given the temperature of the regolith on the surface, the melting temperature of the concrete should be higher than that for balancing reasons). Regolith and sulfur would then be useful, and this would reduce the astronomical amounts of regolith accumulating at the surface.

I see three possible uses for this material:

 - One use would be to be able to store liquids in high-pressure rooms at a lower cost than steel (assuming the indestructible doors exploit gets fixed).

 - Some people have suggested adding concrete to the bunker tiles recipe to make them higher-tier. It would give another more interesting use to this concrete.

 - And perhaps, in the distant future, outposts could be established on other asteroids at the cost of this resource. These outposts would give a bonus to a specific recource brought back by the rockets (if you want diamond for example, the outpost would increase the percentage brought back by the rockets).

And in my opinion, that would be more realistic than putting regolith in a glass forge and making glass with it, which has been suggested many times.

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Regolith in game is hot about 300C - need cool it somehow, 35% of this concrete would be sulfur, where one will get enough sulfur to make cement from hundred tons of regolith. It wont solve problem of kilotons of hot regolith.

Also it is too complex comparing to other options in game: you need to prepare 2 component mix, deal with hot regolith in open space, get sulfur, while there is easy solutions like obsidian tile, bunker tile btw not so expensive if use it wisely.

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43 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

it's still not a good regolith sink

38 minutes ago, D.L.S. said:

It wont solve problem of kilotons of hot regolith.

I know, I also thought about this problem while writing this suggestion. I proposed an idea to make regolith useful, but the devs will still have to solve this "regolithic overload" problem.

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I think concrete and other building materials other than raw rock should be added. Regular concrete should be usable earlier in the game but regolith concrete sounds like a nice idea. Maybe give it some sort of useful property for space buildings. Maybe extra insulation capabilities.

Also bunker tiles from concrete and steel would feel more "bunker". That way maybe we could make steel production easier and make concrete use the lime instead to make it a little bit closer to real life recipies.

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3 hours ago, D.L.S. said:

Regolith in game is hot about 300C - need cool it somehow

According to this article, the average temperature of the surface of a typical asteroid is -100°F or -73°C. Therefore, in my opinion, regolith should be a sustainable source of cold, not of heat.

It makes sense that the magma biome is a sustainable source of heat and that the cosmic biome is a sustainable source of cold.

Some ideas of how to make the magma biome a sustainable source of heat habe been posted in this thread.

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10 minutes ago, Tekky said:

According to this article, the average temperature of the surface of a typical asteroid is -100°F or -73°C.

Yes i know it, and devs know it i'm sure, but for some reason they add this feature of "hot ceiling". Turning kinetic energy of comet into heat on impact also realistic, just need to drop this heat back in space as in RL.

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1 hour ago, D.L.S. said:

just need to drop this heat back in space as in RL.

Yeah, once this issue and the regolith apocalypse one are solved, making mooncrete should become a viable idea... But for now it clearly isn't, I agree.

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Maybe give it some sort of useful property for space buildings. Maybe extra insulation capabilities.

I also think it should block cosmic rays (it does that in real life), if this feature is ever implemented. Bunker tiles wouldn't, or at least partially, so you would have to use mooncrete tiles to keep duplicants that are near the surface from getting their molecules brutally dismanteled (and therefore dying :p). 

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3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

That way maybe we could make steel production easier and make concrete use the lime instead to make it a little bit closer to real life recipies.

Lime is still necessary as a flux in (IRL) steel production. Without it, a large portion of the slag will remain in the steel and wreck its properties. Though ONI iron seems to be elemental, unlike IRL, where refinement to (mostly) pure iron hasn't been a part of steel industry since industrial times.

Ironically (ehehe), in ONI, steel is one of the few recipes that preserve stochiometry, which implies that the calcium (and oxide) from lime ends up in the steel. But then again, ONI iron industry is full on game logic, with oxides being reduced to pure elemental iron with with no mass loss and no need for carbon.

And back to concrete: IRL slag is often a component of cement.

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Instead of using sulfur, you could use water and lime, as that is closer to real-world concrete recipes. I like the idea of concrete, but I think it should be difficult to make. Maybe you have to deliver it in liquid form and if you take too long, it will solidify inside the pipes.

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2 hours ago, TV4Fun said:

Instead of using sulfur, you could use water and lime, as that is closer to real-world concrete recipes.

Actually I was talking about a special (and real) type of concrete that uses actual regolith and sulphur as a binding agent. No water nor lime needed. But I agree with what you and @Sasza22 said, there should also be a water/lime based concrete accessible earlier in the game. 

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On 9/24/2018 at 1:45 AM, Ainsley4ever said:

Actually I was talking about a special (and real) type of concrete that uses actual regolith and sulphur as a binding agent. No water nor lime needed. But I agree with what you and @Sasza22 said, there should also be a water/lime based concrete accessible earlier in the game. 

The sulphur is only needed to remove the need for water, and would be extracted from regolith itself. A water/lime lunarcrete would be more durable in general. If we want to make concrete a high-tier material I'd imagine the process would go something like this:
 

  1. Combine lime and clay in a rock crusher to produce cement
  2. Combine cement, steam, and regolith in a dedicated mixer to make lunarcrete
  3. Voila!

The same dedicated mixer could also produce sulphur-based lunarcrete with no resources besides regolith, and maybe a lower tier machine would use cement, water, and sand to produce concrete, which isn't as strong as lunarcrete and would be an alternative to stone.

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