Better than the Prototype Aquarius Resistojet Propulsion System.As if there wasn't enough wild stuff happening around the moon lately, one of Japan's cubesats that hitched a ride on Orion uses steam powered propulsion. It's reckoned that since water is much less volatile than traditional propulsion fuel, tiny low-powered space things like cubesats can make use of it to keep fuel-based failures to a miminum (and I dare to surmise water is a lot cheaper than rocket fuel too).
This is so neat that I won't even complain about the improper acronym assembly.
One with the whole family:
$60m doesn't sound like a lot to develop a technology like that. But i guess that once they have the technology it would likely become the de facto building method for extra terrestrial structures.
I would reckon that since they've already got the groundwork on the machinery done with Vulcan, much of that money is going to go towards figuring out how to modify it for the extreme conditions it has to operate under and how to make usable building material out of lunar regolith. The latter will probably be more difficult than the former, since the resulting product has to be able to withstand radiation, low gravity and getting smacked by micrometeroids and such.
It's such a different environment that it's tough to say from the outside what the hardest part will be. I know that cosmic rays require a fair amount of software resiliency due to random bit flips, but that seems more important for orbital spacecraft than for tools on the lunar surface. A lot of spacecraft have to deal with radiation and cosmic rays, so it's not exactly new territory for the industry.
I'll be honest, it's an exciting time and all but that's just a little too much info.
