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Extracting Water From the Moon With Basic Home Appliances
by Nancy Atkinson on October 6, 2008

http://www.universetoday.com/19244/extracting-water-from-the-moon-with-basic-home-appliances/


2 posted on 05/28/2015 4:04:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: BenLurkin
Extracting Water From the Moon With Basic Home Appliances

It might be a cool science experiment. However it is noticeably expensive to even pump liquid water out of a well from several hundred feet under the surface of Earth. It would be nearly prohibitive, energy-wise, to sublimate the water that resides deep under the surface as super-cold ice. It would require either a nuclear reactor (not going to happen any time soon) or a huge solar array. Cost of that water would be extreme; you'd be paying several kWh of power for every drop of water. The collection equipment is also something to have in mind... the plastic sheet from Home Depot won't really work in vacuum. You'd have to heat the entire block of soil, tens of feet deep, from -100C to 0C if you want gaseous water on the surface. I don't think we can do it even on Earth.

All in all, these attempts to set up a base on the Moon or Mars are probably not going to work. The technology is just not there yet, and the practical need is nowhere in sight. Colonization of another planet will require combined resources of the whole Earth and, outside of one-way trips, won't become realistic for another 100 years. Key factors in that timeline will be the new physics, new propulsion methods, and much cheaper spaceflight.

11 posted on 05/28/2015 4:23:22 PM PDT by Greysard
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