Magnetic Trunk Could Collect Moon Dust

Matthew Sparkes writes "Astronauts living on the Moon will need lots of water, oxygen and other resources that can be extracted from the lunar soil. Collecting this in a mechanical way could throw up lots of dust that could harm equipment and astronauts health, as well as ruining the view. The answer may be to create a flexible tube with magnetic coils spaced at regular intervals along its length that could suck up the iron-heavy dust. The research was presented on Thursday at the Lunar and Planetary Society Conference in Houston, Texas. Another study suggests burying lunar habitats with packaged moon dust could help regulate their temperature. On the airless Moon, the surface bakes to over 100 Celsius during the day and plunges to a frigid -150 C at night."

Comments

How the hell?

[Thaelon]

Collecting this in a mechanical way could throw up lots of dust that could harm equipment and astronauts health, as well as ruining the view.

How the hell is this going to be a problem - especially the part about ruining the view - when dust on the moon falls back to the ground at the same speed as a dropped hammer.

Pave the moon!

[Tim the Gecko]

There's an interesting story on the BBC site. Apparently you can microwave the lunar dust and get it to fuse together. Robots could prepare the surface before the humans arrive and make it safer.

Re:Or...

[Mizled]

We could not go to the moon.

Have you been living under a rock or are you just completely retarded?

AFAIK We've been to the moon...several times...Whoever modded you "Interesting" is a moron. I would much rather see us spend money on things like this than billions of dollars invading other countries for oil. *cough* Iraq War *cough*