Comment by ACCount36
1 day ago
"Just burying your wires in lunar regolith" is another proposed option for long range transmission lines, yes!
We don't know how well that would work in practice though, because there's still a few unknowns about how properties of lunar regolith change across distance.
Some wire applications do require isolation though. For example, motor wiring and other coils.
It would be extremely challenging to make usable coils out of glass coated magnet wire - but it's not like there's oil on the Moon waiting to be made into polymer coatings.
Bury? I was thinking just leave it exposed on the surface. Two chonky lines 2-3 meters apart, double use as a railway.
You make a good point about the other uses of insulation, and ISRU, on the moon.
Would ceramics work for transformers?
I see no reason why they wouldn't.
PCB-based transformers exist, and so do ceramic substrate PCBs. If you combine the two, and find a process to weld the ceramic/glass substrate plates together instead of gluing them together, it could work as a transformer.