...... You win the NO BELL PRIZE!...................
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.
I would at least like to have had the Eagle transport.
I've thought that also for a very long time. It should at least be studied.
Ive thought that too. My understanding is that its not necessarily a bad thing to dispose of it that way, the problem is the failed rockets/atmospheric distribution of the material that would quickly be considered a problem.
According to my thought experiments, which are damned exhausting for my 87.97-year-old brain, the numbers, depending on the tides, are:
The Moon’s Top Layer Has Enough Oxygen To Sustain 89,503 People for 726 Years...☠
This result is "hockey stick" supported...👌
This should, finally, get me the Nobel I was cheated out of 46-years ago...
“The Moon’s Top Layer Has Enough Oxygen To Sustain 8 Billion People for 100,000 Years“
So what happened? -Man-made Lunar Warming???
Funny how the moon is so rich, but our earth is SOOOOOOOO fragile! ( and I don’t mean Italian)
This is good.
Can cotton also be grown there?
I remember a math teacher asking us to figure out how old we would be in 2000. I remember thinking how incredibly old I would be. I hope 2000 never gets here, Then Ill have to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
I suppose there’s not much chance of getting a congressional delegation led by Pelosi to go investigate further?
Lava tubes........................
...... You win the NO BELL PRIZE!...................
Every square meter of the Moon’s surface get about 1.2 kW of energy fairly constantly..................
Lets look at the whole system, What is the total analysis?
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/how-to-harvest-terawatts-of-solar-power-on-the-moon
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/32-foot-vertical-solar-panels-to-power-nasa-moon-base-158789.html
“Energy is free”
What kind of statement is that? Energy is AVAILABLE, not free. Boulder at the top of a ridge is potential energy, not ‘free’ energy.
Fortunately, the Sun shines on the Moon. Thus the energy is both AVAILABLE and it is RENEWABLE. Not free.
There is a whole bunch of electrical energy generated by the iron core of the Earth rotating within the magnetic field of the magnetosphere too. We COULD harvest that, and we see it as lightning, but we choose not to.
Shimizu took off with the idea in 2013 in the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 Fukishima accident, which produced a political climate demanding alternatives to nuclear power plants. Shimizu’s plans call for beginning construction of a lunar solar power base as early as 2035. The solar array would be 250 miles wide and span the lunar circumference of 6,800 miles. They’re calling it the Luna Ring.
We COULD harvest that
We could have global warming, so lets take action. There are a lot of things that could happen.
However choices get in the way. If you chose one thing, you can’t choose the other.
Problem definition is important. Think what would have happened had we measured auto pollution as per mile instead of out the tail pipe at idle.
I like science fiction more than most, but it is science fiction.
My point is look at the SYSTEM. It has no application today. Don’t just look at the shiny thing.
Harvesting available electrostatic field energy and converting it to AC is not a stretch. Tesla BUILT it. The issue with that is if renewable electrical energy is free and can be harvested, even transmitted over the air, then you can’t meter it.
It’s why diseases don’t get cures. There’s no money in cures.
If you want to put a Moon base on the moon, you could harvest oxygen and energy from the Moon’s surface, but now you are giving away the store.
Can’t have that. The Moon, apparently, can wait.
😁😂🤣
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