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Lunar Dust: A Major Worry for Moon Visitors
smooth wombat writes "Wired has a story which talks about a danger to possible future inhabitants of the Moon that is rarely brought up: the highly abrasive lunar dust. Unlike Earth, the Moon has no erosive capabilities to smooth the edges of rocks or dust. As a result the lunar dust has arms that stick out, like Velcro, and sticks to everything. As the astronauts who walked on the moon found out, the dust scratched lenses and corroded seals within hours. Some of the particles are only microns across which means once they get into your lungs, they stay there. This could cause a lung disease similar to silicosis."
sounds like moon dust has similar properties to asbestos. So small that it gets stuck in lungs and such...I have no idea if it's as resilient as asbestos is though...any clues?
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Worth mentioning is that lunar dust has not been in contact with the common gases we simply breathe as humans. Nor with the fluids & matter of our lungs.
As well as not being ground down by the action of air and water like dust on earth is, many of these particles could contain practically any mix of extremely reactive substances, substances that have not been oxidised for example, by the actions of an air atmosphere.
RST
Toner cartridges carry a distribution of particle sizes that are considered 'safe' for you to inhale because they can't stick in your lungs.
;P
You can also make toner with such a small particle size distribution it is actually taken into the blood stream and excreted, well, normally.
You get into trouble, however, when you get into particle sizes between the two of those ranges (Which escape me ATM).
That sized dust goes into the lung and stays there- too large to get absorbed, too small to get exhaled out.
It will also exhibit most of the properties of statically charged nano-particulates: It gets everywhere, fast.
There may be a 'clean room' to disengage the suits, but no matter how you adjust for the problem (save going underwater in an ultrasonic scrubber) that dust will move with you.
Maybe installation of those 'ion-breeze' units from SharperImage will fix it....
This is such a stupid concern. As for breathing it, do the same thing moms have done for 2000 years, don't let people wear dirty stuff inside.
There is no reason you would need to expose the INSIDE of the structure you live in to the OUTSIDE of the suit. Design the suit so that getting into the suit is the same as leaving the dust-free area. That means sort of 'docking' it. That way you are only exposed to the inside of the suit, never the outside.
Obviously you will have to repair and maintain the suit. When this comes up you'll have to clean it before bringing it in. At least you won't have to clean it after every use, and you won't need complicated (heavy, thus expensive) equipment to dedust people who go outside for 10 minutes to check something. Plus, no deduster means no failing deduster, which means you won't have to let dusty ass people inside because the vaccum broke.
The real question is why do you have a suit. It will only be necessary to go outside very rarely I would imagine, so the dust becomes less of an issue. Just suck it off anybody coming in and forget about it. You will have to be running some serious hepa/ultraviolet air cleaners anyway, because dust from human skin and abrasion between objects will just build up without limit otherwise. You'll have to ultraviolet the air somehow, or you risk things like legionairs disease, and nitrous oxide buildup.
I would be more worried about wear due to abrasion. Unless parts can be fashioned easily on the moon this could be a serious problem. Perhaps parts exposed to dust could be made out of a polymer that can be melted and remolded, so that the only loss is the small amount of plastic that is actually abraded off, instead of the entire part being ruined.
I wonder how this compares to Mars dust. Does the wind there grind off the micro-spikes?
Table-ized A.I.
For example see this picture of Gene Cernan after a lunar EVA.