Drilling and Digging Techniques for the Early Lunar Outpost

The theme of this workshop is lunar resource assessment. Topics include identification, quantification, and location of useful elements on and below the lunar surface. The objective of this paper is to look at another side of the issue--how to remove soil from the stiff lunar-soil matrix once useful deposits are located. The goal of this paper is to cause those who think that digging or excavating on the Moon is a trivial problem to rethink the reasons for their opinions. Another goal is to encourage them to view total reliance upon terrestrial heuristics with suspicion. This paper will focus primarily upon digging.