POLL: Importance of Water on the Moon?

[TC_sc]

From the article it also seems there are larger concentrations of water at the poles, just as had been suspected. It's only there it seems we will have enough to make any effort worthwhile. We still need to know those levels before any real debate can take place about building an outpost on the moon.

Just a little more water on the moon and we can rekindle the war...err... debate about nuclear vs solar on the moon

No need for a debate, solar only makes sense at the poles, which is where it seems the most water is. Great news for the polar bases that can be set up to mine the water and make the fuel and other necessities out of the water found there.

I'm so glad that we've finally stopped wasting time pining away at Mars. The moon is in our back yard and we've never even explored it yet. Ok so we've thrown a few rocks into our neighbors back yards, that doesn't make us able to go there yet! Putting colonies and mining industries on the moon will go a long way towards giving us the capability to continue on out of our back yard and into our strange little (1/5th of a LY across) neighborhood.
The human race's space capability is still in its infancy. With each step we take we learn more and are able to do more and go farther. But, as I've said all along, we need to do it one step at a time, starting with a base containing industry and off Earth mining on the moon or in orbit. Water is a great find, but not the only one we will make on the moon.

I agree, solar is viable at the poles. I guess now we wait for all the information to be given out and then plan a step 2. Might that be finding the best polar crater and sending a lander/rover?

Unless congress has a change of heart, Mars is out of the picture for a while. All we can do is get to the moon and work on building technologies that will eventually get us Mars. If we can develop the water on the moon, we can save a lot of money on repetitive trips to Mars from the Lunar surface.

 

[ammonyte]

I find it rather too convenient that this "discovery" is announced at the time that it is rumored that President Obama might be about to scale back or abandon NASA's return to the moon. What next a "monolith"? :shock:

 

[TC_sc]

I find it rather too convenient that this "discovery" is announced at the time that it is rumored that President Obama might be about to scale back or abandon NASA's return to the moon. What next a "monolith"? :shock:

This is not a "discovery", but scientific confirmation of things that they pretty much knew already.

 

[JonClarke]

I find it rather too convenient that this "discovery" is announced at the time that it is rumored that President Obama might be about to scale back or abandon NASA's return to the moon. What next a "monolith"? :shock:

This is not a "discovery", but scientific confirmation of things that they pretty much knew already.

Science does not work like that. Decadal scale work involving multiple international projects that lead to discoveries like this, published in independent journals are not subject to short term political issues.

Jon

 

[ammonyte]

I find it rather too convenient that this "discovery" is announced at the time that it is rumored that President Obama might be about to scale back or abandon NASA's return to the moon. What next a "monolith"? :shock:

This is not a "discovery", but scientific confirmation of things that they pretty much knew already.

Science does not work like that. Decadal scale work involving multiple international projects that lead to discoveries like this, published in independent journals are not subject to short term political issues.

Jon

Yeah Whatever. The co-incidence is still too damn convenient for the pro-moon lobby, though. And there are plenty of cases of research linked to climate-change that have been rushed through into publication to give backing to the pro-climate change lobby.

Science has long lost it's objectivity and independence, and is now heavily beholden to the pursuit of maintaining it's funding.

 

[JonClarke]

The amounts mentioned are of the order of 1000 ppm (0.1%). This is not contained in rock but the loose regolith. One tonne of regolith will yield 1 kg of water.

Assuming a generous daily water allowance of 25L and a recycling rate of 90%, an astronaut will use 2.5L of water per day. A 10-person lunar station will require 25L per day, or 25 tonnes of regolith.

Lunar regolith has a density of 2.5 so 25 tonnes is 10 cubic metres. Lunar regolith probably could be excavated by something like a Bobcat, medium-sized models of which can excavate 500 kg at a time, so 20 bucket loads. To mine a day's supply of water for a respectable lunar station would take about an hour's work each day.

You would also need a small truck to take the load, say 2 tonnes at a time. The plant to extract the water would be a simple oven, and a still with a tank. And of course a solar power array and battery to run it.

A pilot scale project to do this would be an ideal goal of the next Lunar X-Prize.

Jon

 

[xfb109]

People who say that closed-circuit water recycling negates the need for any water anyway have no idea about the operation of these systems: they will have losses and will certainly need replenishing every now and then. If lunar water can provide this resupply then cargo flights to the moon will have more room for other supplies, making it cheaper to maintain a colony.

Water is one of the heaviest things you have to bring, so if you need to bring less of it, it's that much easier and cheaper.

 

[JonClarke]

[

"Science" is not a monolithic enterprise. If you want to make specific allegations, you need to provide specific evidence. In this case cocindence is not enough. What evidence do you have that the timing of these papers, using data collected from many instruments on many spacecraft contributed by many nations over an extende period was controlled by short term political issues in the US.

And despite what you say, this is a revolutionary discovery.

Jon

 

[TC_sc]

People who say that closed-circuit water recycling negates the need for any water anyway have no idea about the operation of these systems: they will have losses and will certainly need replenishing every now and then. If lunar water can provide this resupply then cargo flights to the moon will have more room for other supplies, making it cheaper to maintain a colony.

Water is one of the heaviest things you have to bring, so if you need to bring less of it, it's that much easier and cheaper.

I want to add that with human water recycling is not as simple as one liter in and one liter out.

Water in a spacecraft is not an issue since you should have an ample supply of hydrogen in which to make water. You do need to conserve the hydrogen for sure.

 

[StarRider1701]

The amounts mentioned are of the order of 1000 ppm (0.1%). This is not contained in rock but the loose regolith. One tonne of regolith will yield 1 kg of water.

Assuming a generous daily water allowance of 25L and a recycling rate of 90%, an astronaut will use 2.5L of water per day. A 10-person lunar station will require 25L per day, or 25 tonnes of regolith.

Lunar regolith has a density of 2.5 so 25 tonnes is 10 cubic metres. Lunar regolith probably could be excavated by something like a Bobcat, medium-sized models of which can excavate 500 kg at a time, so 20 bucket loads. To mine a day's supply of water for a respectable lunar station would take about an hour's work each day.

You would also need a small truck to take the load, say 2 tonnes at a time. The plant to extract the water would be a simple oven, and a still with a tank. And of course a solar power array and battery to run it.

A pilot scale project to do this would be an ideal goal of the next Lunar X-Prize.

Such a project might not provide enough water to be the sole source of water for such a base, but it could easily provide a recycling system with enough water to compensate for the daily losses. And even be expanded to cover the water needs as base personnel is increased.

Water is heavy and any water(ice) that we can find and use that doesn't get blasted up from Earth is well worth the human effort to extract it.

 

[mark_d_s]

One thing that never gets mentioned is that the act of 'mining' water is a very useful skill to aquire - a skill which will be essential if a long term sustainable outpost is to be built.

Who knows, but a demonstration of the viability of 'off world' resource collection could be the trigger that sets up the commercialisation of the moon - an when that happens, everything changes!

Forget Mars for now. We need to go to the Moon first. And stay there.

 

[EarthlingX]

This is a great news, but not so surprising. A course of action would now probably be to send in ground robots to most promising locations, develop ISRU tech for extraction based on the finds, and start building the base with teleoperated robots.
Let's just hope this idea will fly despite possible ground-hugging excuses.
Nuclear might be a bit problematic, because there is so much talk these days about non-nuclear world, and i can only hope that peaceful utilization can get a go ahead. If not, there are many recent advances in solar and fuel-cell tech that can enable power production at required levels.

 

[kelvinzero]

Before the big moon/mars punch-up begins, everyone should take a moment to appreciate that we dont really know what we have yet, it is a bit of a 'wtf' moment.

For this reason I cannot answer yes to (1): we just dont know. However it is very promising that there may actually be significant ice trapped in certain cold locations.
(2) is definitely wrong. This day-time/night-time change is news to me. Is the water actually migrating? or is it a chemical change? Or a serious boo-boo in their interpretation?
(3) is just silly.

 

[MarkStanaway]

If they need to excavate say 25 tonnes of regolith to extract enough water to support a modestly sized lunar base its not going to be long before that there is a massive tailings pile around the base. Multiply this by numerous bases and a few decades there will be large areas of trashed lunar landscape rather like areas that have been strip mined on earth. There will need to be some strict environmental guidelines in place to prevent this. If the solar wind hydrogen ion theory of continuous hydroxl and water production stacks up some form of sustainable water harvesting may be an option.

 

[nimbus]

There'll be other uses for that left-over material once the water-extraction system is done with it. E.G. walls and rooves, astronomy mirrors, and so on.

 

[JonClarke]

If they need to excavate say 25 tonnes of regolith to extract enough water to support a modestly sized lunar base its not going to be long before that there is a massive tailings pile around the base. Multiply this by numerous bases and a few decades there will be large areas of trashed lunar landscape rather like areas that have been strip mined on earth. There will need to be some strict environmental guidelines in place to prevent this. If the solar wind hydrogen ion theory of continuous hydroxl and water production stacks up some form of sustainable water harvesting may be an option.

Not really. Twenty five tonnes a year is miniscule in earth moving terms, it is 10 cubic metres. Excavate to a depth of only 10 cm and it is still an area of only 100 metres square, about a sixth the size of a reasonable suburban house block. After 100 years that would be an area 100 m on a side. Any lunar settlement is going to need earth moving anyway, for radiation protection, road construction, preparation of landing sites, etc. Compare that to large scale terrestrial mining which can shift millions of tonnes a year. Ten cubic metres is one reasonable sized face shovel full. A thousand cubic metres is about two Haulpac loads.

Jon

 

[hcm1955]

At 10,000 per pound to GEO, and probably $25,000 per pound to the Lunar surface. This means a gallon of water will cost $200,000 dollars to transport from earth to the moon

Based on this I believe finding water on the moon is a big deal. Scrapping of a fraction of an inch of moon dirt at 1/6 gravity and using solar energy to cook out the water may make sense.


Cost to GEO
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301

Cost to Lunar Surface
http://science.howstuffworks.com/living ... /printable

 

[astronyc]

I dont think the moon is a safe enough place.

I dont think they will find life on the moon or mars, and if they did I dont think they will let anyone know about it.
For years exploration has been covered by secrecy. One will never know the real truth about Mars.

To me.. going back to the moon is a big waste of taxpayer money.

Humans should fix the place they are destroying ("Earth") before worrying about other moon's and planets to destroy next.

 

[kert]

Aviationweek, Nov 15, 2005:

RLEP 2 has two major technical goals - to search for water ice or other usable resources in a permanently shadowed lunar crater, and to demonstrate precision landing and hazard avoidance at the lunar poles.

MSNBC Sci&Tech, April 16, 2007:

Canceling the lander mission would save NASA $105.8 million this year, according to the operating plan.
..NASA wants to cancel the lander in part to help absorb a nearly $700 million shortfall in its exploration systems budget without having to delay near-term work on the Ares 1 rocket and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

This is tantamount to asking: Importance of oases in the Sahara Desert?

 

[Rudee]

I dont think the moon is a safe enough place.

I dont think they will find life on the moon or mars, and if they did I dont think they will let anyone know about it.
For years exploration has been covered by secrecy. One will never know the real truth about Mars.

To me.. going back to the moon is a big waste of taxpayer money.

Humans should fix the place they are destroying ("Earth") before worrying about other moon's and planets to destroy next.

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DITTO.

 

[JonClarke]

I dont think the moon is a safe enough place.

Safe enough for what? Not safe enough compared to what?

I dont think they will find life on the moon or mars...

Agreed, the chance for life on indigenous life on the Moon. Mars is a different story. It is marginally habitable now and was almost certianly much more habitable in the past. Whether or t was or not is a very interesting question, and well worth investigating.

...and if they did I dont think they will let anyone know about it.

What evidence do you have for this?

For years exploration has been covered by secrecy.

What secrecy? All data from US and Eurpean missions freely available? tens of thousands of published papers?

One will never know the real truth about Mars.

Since the data is freely available we actually do know all there is to presently know about Mars. There is always more to learn.

To me.. going back to the moon is a big waste of taxpayer money.

If it is a waste it is hardly a big waste of money, going back will cost less than half a pecent of government spending.

And a great many people don't think expanding human presence in space a waste of money but building for the future.

Humans should fix the place they are destroying ("Earth") before worrying about other moon's and planets to destroy next.

Who says going to the Moon and planets is not incompatible with fixing Earth's problems? You are aware that space exploration has already helped us deal with many of Earth's problems? Better space weather, remote sensing, better atmospheric and climate models, communications, emergency support, navigation to name a few.

 

[nimbus]

To me.. going back to the moon is a big waste of taxpayer money.

If it is a waste it is hardly a big waste of money, going back will cost less than half a pecent of government spending.

An idea of the proportions here: taking 1% from social programs' budget dwarfs NASA's budget.

 

[kelvinzero]

Who says going to the Moon and planets is not incompatible with fixing Earth's problems? You are aware that space exploration has already helped us deal with many of Earth's problems? Better space weather, remote sensing, better atmospheric and climate models, communications, emergency support, navigation to name a few.

Plus my own hobby-horse: If you can keep a handful of people alive on the moon in a recycling environment, then you have aced all the major enviromental hurdles facing us today on earth. That would be a trillion dollars VERY well spent.

*Fresh water recycling.
*Sewage recycling.
*Food production.
*Surviving without petroleum.
** Reliance on the middle east
*Global warming. (throwing away CO2 on the moon would be like throwing away gold bricks)
*Clean air. (obviously)
*Solar energy.

And all these things bound together in a way that must actually work, with all the i's dotted and all the t's crossed. You cant cheat mother nature on the moon.

Just think where we would be by now with all these technologies if we had been maintaining a small moon-base since the apollo missions.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

What does finding life on the Moon have to do with going back to the Moon? Whoever said that our motivation for going back to the Moon is because it might harbor life? What in the hell does that improbability have to do with anything?

For that matter, what does the possibility of life on Mars REALLY have to do with us expending the resources to actually mount manned missions to the Red Planet?

Visionaries who imagine humans colonizing Mars might want to pray that we DON'T find indigenous life there. Because if we do find indigenous Martian life-even if they are extremophile microbes- I can guarantee that the collective morality of Man won't allow any kind of permanent settlement, and for good reason. (Think Antarctica.)

If life is found on Mars, we will spend centuries studying and investigating that life. Civic settlement and industrial exploitation will be off-limits, taboo, PROHIBITED! Otherwise, we would contaminate the independent Martian life before we even understand what we are destroying. (Similar to what we are doing right now on Earth, especially the rain forests and oceans of Earth.)