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Closer to Deducing the Origin of the Moon
eldavojohn writes "A giant explosion on the sun in January of 2005 allowed SMART-1 (a European spacecraft orbiting the moon) to detect what elements the moon is made up of based on the X-rays from the sun's explosion. This allows scientists to speculate on the moon's origins while seeing data from all over the moon as opposed to the core samples we have collected and returned in the past. From the article: 'Scientists responsible for the D-CIXS instrument on SMART-1 are also announcing that they have detected aluminium, magnesium and silicon. "We have good maps of iron across the lunar surface. Now we can look forward to making maps of the other elements." said SMART-1's Principal Investigator.'"
12 oz. per lb. Precious metals are mesured in troy oz, not avoirdupois.
No. The only unique property of moon ore is that it isn't inside such a big gravity well, so it is less expensive to move up into space. And unless something fantastically rare and useful can be found there, even the most prized minerals would only be attractive in massive amounts because you would first have to more the necessary equipment up there, not to mention transport capacity to get the stuff to any buyer.
Only tourism and science are likely to be viable there in the foreseeable future. Big exception: if we unexpectedly manage to get automated construction from raw minerals to work, this could make industry on the moon so cheap it could become viable to start mining and export there. However, this isn't going to happen anytime soon, and when it does it will end capitalism as we know it anyway, so it is nothing you could base a business model on.
blow your mind already
Here's a few more details about this Impact Theory:
s tions/question38.html
"The basic idea is this: about 4.45 billion years ago, a young planet Earth -- a mere 50 million years old at the time and not the solid object we know today-- experienced the largest impact event of its history. Another planetary body with roughly the mass of Mars had formed nearby with an orbit that placed it on a collision course with Earth. When young Earth and this rogue body collided, the energy involved was 100 million times larger than the much later event believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The early giant collision destroyed the rogue body, likely vaporized the upper layers of Earth's mantle, and ejected large amounts of debris into Earth orbit. Our Moon formed from this debris."
Plus, this page has a really cool rendering of the Impact:
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/que
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