NASA Challenge: Pull Oxygen from Moon Dirt, Win $250,000

space.com ^ | 05/19/05 | Tarig Malik

[KevinDavis]

NASA has promised a cool $250,000 for the first team capable of pulling breathable oxygen from mock moon dirt, the latest award in the space agency’s Centennial Challenges program.

[KevinDavis]

[handy old one]

On earth possible oxygen in air around dirt. In space vacuum no oxygen real hard.

[King Prout]

um. do we have enough moon-dirt here on which to do trials? or are they going to do trials on simulacra made here? or what?

[hadaclueonce]

call me an old fart, and I probably am, but when you can suck O2 out of a rock, I missed that in school a billion years ago.

[King Prout]

IIUC, they mean along the lines of cracking the molecules to liberate free oxyden.

[jbwbubba]

use a really big straw

[hadaclueonce]

NASA budget up for funding by any chance?

[Xenophon450]

You could theoretically make Ovygen from anything....it would just take LOTS of energy i dont know how they will extract it from Rock easily using less energy... I remember there was a time nasa would solve these problems by themselves.

[Xenophon450]

Ovygen is good but Oxygen is even better...

[King Prout]

common sand is silicon dioxide, IIRC...

yeah: SiO2

[Brilliant]

Most earth based rock is made out of quartz in one way or another. Sand, for example, is quartz, and sandstone is made out of sand.

Quartz is silicon dioxide. So the trick, I guess, is to separate the oxygen atom from the silicon. That seems like it would take a lot of energy.

And of course, that's assuming that there is quartz on the moon.

[NonValueAdded]

Start with the He³ that's up there and maybe you have your power source. What is the composition of the crust, SiO₂? other oxides?

[r9etb]

I remember a symposium many years ago, some guy had an idea for this. Apparently moon dirt contains a lot of iron oxide. Use a solar concentrator to melt the iron oxide -- thus liberating oxygen, and as a byproduct producing iron, which could be used to make additional concentrators....

No idea if it's realistic, but it sounds awfully interesting.

[Frohickey]

Going to need energy to get oxygen from rocks. When are they planning on sending nuclear power plants up there?

[Useless_eater_on_steroids]

Me thinks NASA should CHALLANGE themselves to replace that Russian POS oxygen generator the prematurely failed on the Space Station before they run out of emergency oxygen in the next 150 days.

[RoseofTexas]

Oh c'mon, can this be done?... or are they pulling our leg? Just curious!

[hadaclueonce]

I assume there must be. I also assume it must be budget time for NASA.

[randog]

Extract oyxgen from rocks? Piece of cake; you start with a tank oxygen...

[flashbunny]

That's what I thought too - the He3 would make the ideal power source for however they decide to do this.