Slashdot Mirror
NASA Offers Reward for Extracting O2 from Moondust
DoubleWhopper writes "Break out the duct tape and paper clips. NASA has announced a $250,000 reward to the "first team of scientists to invent a way to extract breathable oxygen from lunar soil". Wired reports, "Inventors who attempt the Moon Regolith Oxygen (or MoonROx) challenge will have just eight hours to extract at least 11 pounds of breathable oxygen from a simulated form of lunar soil.""
Isn't that a bit of a weak prize? This would seem to be a cornerstone achievement in the progression of off planet science.
So, is that 11 pounds on earth, or on the moon? And if you can do this, why accept just $250,000 for what could be the biggest invention in human history?
We won't need to keep an atmosphere around the planet if people live in structures on the moon only.
Extracting 11 pounds of oxygen on Earth is a lot different from getting your setup to the Moon at a cost of thousands per pound, having it produce enough oxygen to support human life, making enough nitrogen/argon/(other inert gas) to mix with it to prevent fires and lung damage, setting up highly-efficient water- and biomass-recycling and food-production systems (remember that your operating cost goes up ridiculously with the amount you have to import), and doing it all when one mistake will kill everyone and waste half your work. Yeah, it'll be a while.
I was thinking the same thing. The process would have to be electric; if it is, they have an unlimited supply of virtually atmosphere-unimpeded solar energy.
Uh, isn't your post sorta like saying we should never try space travel because we'd have to fill the universe with breathable oxygen?
Really? I know how to manufacture a quiche, but I don't think I could get just the eggs back out of it.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
The question is not how to get it out, but how to get it out quickly, efficiently and without external chemicals or supplies. As someone already said above, it's not interesting to extract 5 kg of anything by using up 10 kg of something else that is equally unavailable on the Moon.
And this is like the zillionth time I've said that patent "experts" have completely missed the point about complaints about the US Patent system.
Try to understand: The patent statutes could've been put together by the tooth fairy. It simply doesn't matter. Either what they say or where they came from.
What's relevant are the results. And the results are TRASH, as even a cursory examination of recent software patents shows.
The USPTO have been complicit in promoting these bogus statutes and are largely responsible for the current mess, despite their typical public service finger pointing effort "it's not my fault". Bullshit. They could've done one hell of a lot more than they are doing to fix the problem.
Like a lot of government departments they've been captured by industry interests and forgotten the fact that they are public servants.
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.