Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Liquid Oxygen from Lunar Rocks

Posted by timothy on from the mine-the-moon dept.

SIInudeity writes "A South African chemical engineer has come up with a way to produce liquid oxygen from lunar rock. Oosthuizen is a co-inventor of the Ilmenox process, named after the process' ability to produce oxygen from the lunar mineral ilmenite. The process extracts oxygen from moonrock, which are metal-oxides that may contain up to 30 or 40% oxygen. By means of electro-chemical equipment, which has now been patented, the oxygen and the metal in the moonrock are split."

1 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great news by artifex2004 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think I speak for everyone when I say that terraforming the moon has to be a major priority if we're to, erm, get away from this planet.


    No, you don't. While it may be useful and even practical to develop industry on Luna, I can't think of a real reason to terraform it. Mars, on the other hand, is a much better candidate for terraforming, or at least modifying to create some atmosphere and agriculture sufficient to meet population demands.

    Besides, the primary reason to get off the planet is preservation of the species. Terraforming Luna, which due to its proximity would very possibly be catastrophically affected by any major cataclysm of extra-terrestrial origin affecting Earth, really does not meet this goal.