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One Small Breath For Man
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on a new technique that may allow Oxygen to be wrung from the soil on the moon. This may pave the way for a moonbase, and allow permanent habitation on Earth's only natural satellite." From the article: "Lunar soil brought back to Earth is in short supply and highly prized, so Nasa researchers have been using matter with the same composition for its tests. The soil contains about 45 per cent oxygen by weight, but it is mostly 'trapped' in the form of silicon dioxide ... At the moment, all oxygen supplies would have to be brought from Earth, which is so expensive and energy-inefficient that it effectively rules out a permanent Moon base. "
I predict that if hydrogen can be extracted from regolith close to the surface, then a lot of that oxygen will be burnt down to make water. During the apollo missions oxygen had to be carried but more often than not water for cooling was the limiting factor for stays on the surface.
Its nice to see that people are working directly on this, even if it will be at least 15 years before anybody walks on the moon again.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Excuse me, sand contains Silicon Dioxide, or SiO2. Breathable Oxygen is O2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
There is no fusion reactor that generates more power than it consumes yet on Earth. If it is every built, the first one will be *very* large and expensive, and require a huge neighboring infrstructure to build. Maybe that will exist in hundreds of years on the moon, but it's not a place to plan to start. The critical fuel is also no deuterium, it's tritium (another hydrogen isotop). D-T tokomaks burn the two together. Deuterium is common, tritium is manufactured from lithium by neutron bombardment.
Current nuclear plants are fission based, and require either Uranium-235 or plutonium. They typically run a couple of years on a full fuel load. Still quite heavy, and no one has ever run one in space.
These are all problems with solutions, but right now they are still very big problems on the scales required for a moonbase.
A significant problem facing any thermal nuclear reactor (either of the above) is cooling. Basically all of the power output is in fast neutron, which are captured by a working fluid of some sort, and that heat is used to drive a turbine. The fluid is then cooled and fed back into the reactor heat up, expand again, and push the turbine again.
You need some way to cool the working fluid. Nearly all modern reactors use a supply of water, and either re-release that water into the source (naval reactors), or into the atmosphere (cooling towers). There no water on the moon, and not even any are to try air cooling with.
Basically, a lot of work has to happen to have "limitless" nuclear power on the moon. People will need to breathe while that work is going on. Breaking the SiO2 bonds is enormously energy intensive (rocks do not vaporize and then ionize easily), and then you still have hot stuff that you have to cool.
TFA doesn't go into it, but the major use of a lunar oxygen plant would be as fuel, rather than breathing. For return trips to earth, or hopefully to orbit, asteroids, Mars.... Of course, they'd also need hydrogen, but even if that can't be found easily on the Moon, it's a lot lighter than oxygen to haul up.
I propose a subtle change to your experiment: ...)
1) Take one human.
2) Place human in oxygen free environment.
3) Wait 10 minutes, and measure rate of carbon dioxide production.
(... 4) Profit?
The OP seemed to be suggesting that merely having plants would solve the problem. Plants generating oxygen and humans in turn generating carbon dioxide is all well and good, but you cant avoid the fact that neither gas just happens to be lying about the place on the moon. To start this nice ecosystem some quantity of either gas must either be transported there or produced there.
It's not a soil. It's ground. Calling it soil implies idea that there are some living organisms there. which is incorrect.
root of all...
Fine, let's stripmine the moon for oxygen and small amounts of water using equipment transported from Earth at immense expense just to prove we can place a few gravity-maimed individuals on a Moon base or "colony" there.
The moon is a desert. It it a desert like no desert on the face of the Earth. We know that. Let's not engage in senseless activities just because we can. Let's not rape the public purse to satisfy bored scientists or political ego.
E Proelio Veritas.
Mining, interplanetary and asteroid-mining rocket bases, drop-off point for stuff intended for trans-shipment to earth, solar collection for energy, vacuum and low-G manufacturing, comms, dangerous science, nuclear power plants and intensive farming. Those are just off the top of my head.
So build a dome. Haven't you ever watched any sci-fi? ;)
Living on the moon would give us another basket to put humans into. The moon is a good logical first step. Gravity is lower, meaning the moon could be a nice jumping off point for the rest of the solar system.
We either learn how to live on other bodies, or we die.
Grandparent's calculation also failed to point out that human respiration does not consume 100% of the oxygen in the air. Dry air contains about 20% oxygen, and exhaled (consumed) air contains about 16% oxygen. To make the air breathable again, you only need to replace the 4% consumption. Assuming that you can remove the CO2 in a reasonable speed, the 20L of breathable air (flow) can easily be turned to 100L of breathable air (flow).
Why settle America? What's the point? I'm sure there are some things you can do there that you can't do in Europe, but they aren't *really* important.
Socialists hate it when people want to leave.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.