Funny, looks fixed to me.
Posted on 09/21/2009 5:27:18 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Reliable sources report that there will be a press conference at NASA HQ at 2:00 pm this Thursday featuring lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University.
The topic of the press briefing will be a paper that will appear in this week's issue of Science magazine wherein results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 will be revealed.
The take home message: there is a lot of water on the Moon.
Stay tuned.
It is working...
Silicon is the second most abundant element (after oxygen) in the Earth's crust, making up 25.7% of the crust by mass.
Space ping!
I have... Several times, in fact, and recommend it to all Freepers who have not. We may well need the things he outlined within the pages of that book, in the days ahead...
the infowarrior
It means that lunar colonization is possible and (relatively) affordable.
Hauling materials up the gravity well from Earth to the Moon is expensive, in terms of money and fuel. The most important materials we would have to haul would be air (which is rather light, and can be compressed) and water (which is heavy, and cannot be compressed). With water already on the Moon, we can haul up seeds and tubing, and thereby grow foodstuffs; with foodstuffs, the lunar colonists can feed themselves; if we had to constantly haul water up, we'd exhaust our terrestrial patience and resources.
We'll have to haul up the initial makings for solar cells and ore mining, but with the nigh-unlimited sunlight, the colony should be able to generate plenty of power, and contribute resources for building satellites and spaceships, necessary for mining the Asteroid Belt.
The idea of building spaceships at the bottom of a gravity well is insane. Better to build such things in Lunar orbit.
Rah, rah, RAH!!!
Yep. The limitation on the proposed Mars mission that would make it one-way is in large part the fact that it has to escape from the Earth.
Plus the ships wouldn't have to have beer transported to them from the Earth. They'd only have to worry about food and other inessentials.
Yes, please add me also to the space ping list!
The stock market will rally again tomorrow because of this news (it seems to go up on any fluff these days)...
My, aren’t we bitter! Did an astronaut pee in your Post Toasties when you were a small child?
Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us all on the source of your “scientific” certainty that there is no water on the moon...
I believe that the presence of water would mean that the colonists would be able to generate their own oxygen and fuel (H2), due to the pretty much unlimited solar energy available for hydrolysis (sp?)... not to mention the billion-year-old bottled drinking water market revenue ;-)
It would appear that you are inhaling copious quantities of the helium surrounding you. Did you miss your college chemistry class on isotopes? Or did you skip chemistry completely?
Helium 4 is abundant on earth, most of it trapped in the oil that is pumped out of the ground. It is so light (He has a molecular weight of 4, air is ~80% nitrogen-2 with a molecular weight of 14) that it rises up through the atmosphere an becomes “one with the universe.”
Helium 4 is not a reactant in any fusion reaction; helium 3 is. Helium 3 can be used to produce power.
The universe is made up of the same elements found on earth. The proportion of these elements varies with their position in the universe. Everything needed to produce anything can be found beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Water exists everywhere, it is only a question of density; the amount of water per square centimeter.
Generally: lots of water - good; not a lot of water - not so good.
One day we’ll get their in spite of the efforts of neo-Luddites like you.
They’d only have to worry about food and other inessentials.
Right, freeze dried Beer and nachos.
Funny, looks fixed to me.
Bottle it, give it a fancy name, and the Yuppies will throw their money at you. “Moonwalk”—the drink that refreshes.
Thank the lord, you were not around to inspire the Wright Brothers
Must be a sad 2 dimensional life, as a flat lander.
You do know the Earth is not flat or the Earth is not the center of the universe..
>> With all due respect , the Flash Gordon stuff is a pipe dream. The only thing we actually got out of the space program (don’t give me that computer lie) was Tang and nobody drinks it anymore.
Thank the lord, you were not around to inspire the Wright Brothers
Must be a sad 2 dimensional life, as a flat lander. <<
It must freak him waaaay out when someone from the 3rd dimension visits him.
>> Right about the water but otherwise there is ice!
Here is the lunar soil as analyzed by Sen Harrison Schmidt with whom I spoke about the resources.
Mine the moon and you have silicon for solar cells! Iron which can be made into steel. Aluminum and the list goes on. <<
The best way to mine the moon is to use “Self-Replicating Clanking Replicators to use solar energy to smelt and mine materials and then use the material to make a replica of the same factory a KM away and then repeat the process, work in a line around the equator of the moon that way you can power the factories on the dark side with light from the sunny side.
Build a giant “Belt of Industry” around the moons equator and you would have enough resources at your disposal to build Giant Multi-Generational Starships!!!! Not to mention colonizing the solar system and building giant space habitats.
Plus the Equator is a good place to launch cargo into Lunar orbit using EM-rail launchers.
Robert A. Heinlein would be so proud (read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—
One of my favorite SF books... of course I consider Asimov’s Foundation saga a single book.
“The only thing we actually got out of the space program (don’t give me that computer lie) was Tang and nobody drinks it anymore.”
Sorry, thats just ignorant.
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