Water on the Moon?

[Experiment Garden]

Its official--a fairly major amount of water has been found on the moon:

 

SPACE.com -- It's Official: Water Found on the Moon

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html

 

According to the article Anthony Colaprete said:

 

“And we didn’t find just a little bit. We found a significant amount.”

 

Apparently a "significant amount" means 26 gallons. The article hinted that this makes the moon a much more interesting place. How do you think this discovery will do in the long run? Will it really make a space base feasible?

[Moontanman]

Its official--a fairly major amount of water has been found on the moon:

 

SPACE.com -- It's Official: Water Found on the Moon

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html

 

According to the article Anthony Colaprete said:

 

“And we didn’t find just a little bit. We found a significant amount.”

 

Apparently a "significant amount" means 26 gallons. The article hinted that this makes the moon a much more interesting place. How do you think this discovery will do in the long run? Will it really make a space base feasible?

 

26 gallons, could you be any more disingenuous? According the the estimates there is quite a but more than 26 gallons of water on the moon, 32 ounces per ton of surface material and yes this does indeed make a space base feasible and the making of rocket fuel. 26 gallons was the amount kicked up by the impact.

[TheBigDog]

So we are talking about frozen moon mud. It is very cool, but will present a challenge to make it usable. The craters where it is located are always very very very cold. If you raise the temp too much it will evaporate. I am not sure what the boiling point is in zero atmosphere, but it must be low. I am eager to see the scientific proposals for utilizing this newly confirmed natural resource.

 

Bill

[Experiment Garden]

26 gallons was the amount kicked up by the impact.

 

Sorry, I should have specified that in my original post. Didn't mean to mislead you.

[CraigD]

So we are talking about frozen moon mud. It is very cool, but will present a challenge to make it usable.

I agree. However, I think these discoveries suggest the possibility of much more practical sources of lunar water.

 

I’ve not found much mention of it in the recent news about on the subject, but from previous speculation, I believe these findings are less important to future engineering on the moon in showing that a small amount (compared to Earth) of water is present in the moon’s surface dirt than it is in refining scenarios for the Moon’s formation.

 

There are two important physical means for water to have formed on the Moon: having been deposited there during its formation, as it was with Earth and other planets, and having formed on its surface when high-energy solar wind protons freeing and compounding with oxygen in moon soil.

 

If the second means is dominant, the Moon should be drier, and more significantly, its wetness should vary strongly between shadowed and lit areas. If the first is, the Moon should be wetter, and its wetness less determined by sunlight.

 

If the great majority of the Moon’s water was deposited there during its formation, there should be much greater amounts of it fairly evenly distributed deep beneath the surface than near it. If this is the case, it may be practical – with considerable engineering – to drill deep wells, and get water much more easily and efficiently than extracting it from very dry soil. Some have speculated (imaginatively, and mostly in the context of hard SF) that, with massive engineering, despite the Moon’s small mass, it might be possible to actually create a thin but sufficiently dense water vapor lunar atmosphere that plants and animals could exist exposed on its surface. Even if such an extreme project is impossible, the availability of large quantities of welled water would make almost all imagined lunar engineering projects much more feasible.

[Buffy]

It's certainly going to start as mud, but "practicality" has everything to do with cost. I heard some space guy (I don't think it was NASA, but a prof or something) saying that it costs $50,000 to put a pound of anything on the moon. So if we're going to spend enough time there to make wanting to have water there useful, it may take a very expensive Rube Goldberg invention to convert the mud to potable water, but it'll still be cheaper than shipping it there....

 

Lessee, they found 25 gallons, at 8.35 pounds per gallon that's...$10 million...

 

Or similarly, $50,000 per pound is $3,125/oz which is about 3 times the current market price for gold....

 

The proportion between the velocity with which men or animals move, and the weights they carry, is a matter of considerable importance, particularly in military affairs, :)

Buffy

[SpiderLegs]

Hello all,

 

I just found your forum. Looks very interesting.

 

I don't find it surprising that h2o was found on the moon, considering that the moon is actually a chunk of the earth, as well as part of the planet that collided with earth.

 

G'day,

 

Spider Legs