From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: Fission waste  --> solar power only halftime
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3325
Posted: Fri Sep 17 04:48:42 1982
Received: Tue Sep 21 09:00:05 1982

From: Robert Elton Maas 
It's not necessary to run our remote-mining-robots around the  clock.
It's hard to get good lighting at night (ever try to work under a car
at night using artificial light?), so why not use solar energy for
both energy and lighting, and shut down things 2 weeks out of each
month? It's not like humans who will die if they don't get fresh
oxygen at least once every 3 minutes, and thus have to (on the moon)
have their CO2-->O2 devices running even at night. The 2-week rest will
give us time to plan the next 2-week "day" of activities. Later when
we get ourself bootstrapped to have some source other than solar power
we might try running at night if it's cost-effective to provide
artificial light and non-solar electricity.