Posted on 11/15/2021 11:10:42 AM PST by Red Badger
Alongside advances in space exploration, we’ve recently seen much time and money invested into technologies that could allow effective space resource utilization. And at the forefront of these efforts has been a laser-sharp focus on finding the best way to produce oxygen on the Moon.
In October, the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the Moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the Moon.
Although the Moon does have an atmosphere, it’s very thin and composed mostly of hydrogen, neon, and argon. It’s not the sort of gaseous mixture that could sustain oxygen-dependent mammals such as humans.
That said, there is actually plenty of oxygen on the Moon. It just isn’t in a gaseous form. Instead, it’s trapped inside regolith — the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the Moon’s surface. If we could extract oxygen from regolith, would it be enough to support human life on the Moon?
The breadth of oxygen Oxygen can be found in many of the minerals in the ground around us. And the Moon is mostly made of the same rocks you’ll find on Earth (although with a slightly greater amount of material that came from meteors).
Minerals such as silica, aluminum, and iron and magnesium oxides dominate the Moon’s landscape. All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form our lungs can access.
On the Moon these minerals exist in a few different forms including hard rock, dust, gravel, and stones covering the surface. This material has resulted from the impacts of meteorites crashing into the lunar surface over countless millennia.
Some people call the Moon’s surface layer lunar “soil,” but as a soil scientist, I’m hesitant to use this term. Soil as we know it is pretty magical stuff that only occurs on Earth. It has been created by a vast array of organisms working on the soil’s parent material — regolith, derived from hard rock — over millions of years.
The result is a matrix of minerals that were not present in the original rocks. Earth’s soil is imbued with remarkable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Meanwhile, the materials on the Moon’s surface is basically regolith in its original, untouched form.
One substance goes in, two come out
The Moon’s regolith is made up of approximately 45% oxygen. But that oxygen is tightly bound into the minerals mentioned above. In order to break apart those strong bonds, we need to put in energy.
You might be familiar with this if you know about electrolysis. On Earth this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminum. An electrical current is passed through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly called alumina) via electrodes, to separate the aluminum from the oxygen.
In this case, the oxygen is produced as a byproduct. On the Moon, the oxygen would be the main product and the aluminum (or other metal) extracted would be a potentially useful byproduct.
Alumina (aluminum oxide) refinery.
Aluminum is produced in two stages. Before pure aluminum can be released using electrolysis (in what is known as the Hall-Heroult process), alumina refineries must first refine naturally occurring bauxite ore to extract the alumina (from which pure aluminum is later retrieved).
It’s a pretty straightforward process, but there is a catch: it’s very energy hungry. To be sustainable, it would need to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.
Extracting oxygen from regolith would also require substantial industrial equipment. We’d need to first convert solid metal oxide into liquid form, either by applying heat, or heat combined with solvents or electrolytes. We have the technology to do this on Earth, but moving this apparatus to the Moon – and generating enough energy to run it – will be a mighty challenge.
Earlier this year, Belgium-based startup Space Applications Services announced it was building three experimental reactors to improve the process of making oxygen via electrolysis. They expect to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the European Space Agency’s In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) mission.
How much oxygen could the Moon provide?
That said, when we do manage to pull it off, how much oxygen might the Moon actually deliver? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.
If we ignore oxygen tied up in the Moon’s deeper hard rock material — and just consider regolith which is easily accessible on the surface — we can come up with some estimates.
Each cubic meter of lunar regolith contains 1.4 tonnes of minerals on average, including about 630 kilograms of oxygen. NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen a day to survive. So 630kg oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years (or just over).
Now let’s assume the average depth of regolith on the Moon is about ten meters, and that we can extract all of the oxygen from this. That means the top ten meters of the Moon’s surface would provide enough oxygen to support all eight billion people on Earth for somewhere around 100,000 years.
This would also depend on how effectively we managed to extract and use the oxygen. Regardless, this figure is pretty amazing!
Having said that, we do have it pretty good here on Earth. And we should do everything we can to protect the blue planet — and its soil in particular — which continues to support all terrestrial life without us even trying.
The Moon is a [Not So] Harsh Mistress!............
Don’t store any nuclear waste.
Good. A fresh start! Just what I need! The further I can get from these commie bastards the better.
Wonder how many will get the reference?
but there is a catch: it’s very energy hungry
For a small fee at least
Nuclear waste should be launched into the Sun..........................
Put Dems in charge of it and there'll be a shortage by Thursday.
I can think of a great number of pols, leftists, and crony capitalists, who should be sent there to establish an ‘Earth colony’. XiJinBiden can be pResident of the colony. Two Veeps: Komie-la Heels-up Haris and Justin(e) True-dolt. Positions that suit their specialized talents.
Every square meter of the Moon’s surface get about 1.2 kW of energy fairly constantly..................
The circa 2040 EPA will find Neil Armstrong’s foot prints and claim the moon is a habit of an endangered species and so surface strip mining is not allowed.
The Spaceballs will be along shortly.
“Commence Operation....Vacu-Suck!”
But where are we going to find that many people who live that long?
We should all move there immediately.
100,000 years to flatten the curve.
That would be the common sense answer.
I guess Gerry needed something to sell it to the suits.
The Big Finish audio dramas of 1999 address some of those plot problems.
Aliens........................
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.