Lunar 'Lawnmower' Devised for Moon Colonists

moon_unit_alpha writes "Future Moon residents may have to mow the lunar lawn. New Scientist Space reports that a planetary geologist has come up with a way to prevent Moon dust from sticking to space suits, getting into seals and damaging electronic and mechanical equipment - the lunar lawnmower. The mower could be hauled behind a lunar rover, generating microwaves that cause iron particles in the dust to clump together."

Comments

Only a few small problems to overcome..

[Ancient_Hacker]

Only a few glitches:

• A lunar rover is going to move at several feet per second.
• To melt together the surface grains at the speed of a lunar rover is going to require several megawatts of continuous power.
• A continuous megawatt is going to require a honkin big magnetron. Like 1000 times bigger than the one in a microwave oven.
• There's no air up there they say, so it's going to be hard to cool the magnetron. A megawatt radiator/heatsink is going to be mighty big too.
• Where you gonna get that much power? A megawatt is over 1000 horsepower. Hard to imagine us lugging a big nitro-fueled hemi all that way.
• Hard to compete with the cleaning power of a low-tech damp rag.