"Fantastical idea" NASA is planning to build a train on the moon!

NASA has put forward a “seemingly fantastical” idea aimed at building a “train on the moon,” as part of 6 science fiction-like concepts, funded by the “Advanced Innovative Concepts Program.”

Flexible Levitation on Trajectory Technology, or FLOAT, plans to use magnetic robots in the air to transport about 100 tons of material to the lunar surface per day, providing a reliable and autonomous way to transport resources extracted from the moon. (Levitation: the phenomenon of a body rising above the surface).

“A robust, long-lasting robotic transportation system will be important for the day-to-day operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s,” says project leader Ethan Shayler, a robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In a post on NASA's blog , Schiller wrote: "We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous and efficient cargo transportation on the Moon."

The team explained that, unlike railways on Earth, the lunar transportation network would not use fixed rails, as Schiller proposed creating lengths of flexible track that could be “unrolled” directly on the moon’s surface with the aim of reducing construction time in the event of a change in the location of the moon base, as the tracks could be folded. And move it to another place.

The plan is to launch a series of "unpowered magnetic robots" that fly above the surface of the track and generate electromagnetic momentum to propel the robots to their destination.

Schiller claims that each robot will be able to move loads of various shapes and sizes at speeds of about 1.61 km/hour.

It is worth noting that NASA plans to explore the south pole of the moon, which is believed to contain ice inside its craters, as part of the “Artemis” missions.

Although NASA postponed the date for its crew to land on the moon, its ambitions for humans to colonize the moon remain.