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

Or do both

[Ikyaat]

If you built the walls of the habitats with the magnetic coils then they would attract the dust and bury themselves, solving both the dust and the thermal regulation problems in one go.

Re:Or do both

[Rob Carr]

If you look at the equation for the temperature of a planet, it's:

Ts*(Rs/2D)^.5=Tb

where Ts is the temperature of the sun, Tb the temperature of the body you're concerned with (both temperatures in an absolute scale), Rs is the radius of the sun, and D is the distance to the sun. If you don't know what 2, ^ and .5 mean, please go away.

You'd think temperature would be inversely related to the square of the distance, but temperature based on radiation is a fourth-power function, so when you actually grind through everything, temperature is related to the inverse square root, not the square.

In other words, the Moon should have the same average temperature as the Earth. It's actually a bit lower, because Earth is warmed by radioactive decay in the Earth's interior, greenhouse gases and there's cloud effects and stuff.

The people working on the lunar habitats estimate the temperature would actually be about -22C. That's cold, but stable. Designing equipment to keep the temperature livable with the outside being a constant -22C is far easier than trying to deal with the wild fluctuations.

BTW: If you want to have some fun, assume that temperature rises on Pluto and Titan are the result of changes in solar output that are causing global warming on Earth. Plug in the numbers and ask what increase in solar temperature would correspond to that -- and then ask what the change in Earth temperature would be. Oopsie.

Moon junk?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the astronomers like a little junk in the magnetic trunk?

Just get TV up there

[Brad1138]

Mine has always collected a lot of dust.

Moonba

[Radon360]

So, will the astronauts keep their base clean using autonomous robotic, magnetic vacuum cleaners called Moonbas?

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.

Re:How the hell?

[Lord Bitman]

Presumably, and this is just my uninformed guess, but:
I don't think any seriously-considered proposals for permanent moon bases involve astronauts remaining in spacesuits the entire time. We'd probably want to pressurize [fill with air] a whole area, for example a domed area on the surface or a tunnel below the surface.

My house has its own floor, but I still track dirt in, and it travels well enough even with 1 whole g pulling it down.

Re:How the hell?

[oni]

dust on the moon falls back to the ground at the same speed as a dropped hammer

yes but you're missing an important part - the moon's gravity is so weak, you could probably throw a hammer and put it into orbit, because the speed of a dropped hammer is actually pretty low.

So the concern is that some mechanical process, maybe a fast spinning wheel or maybe the use of explosives, will actually put dust grains into orbit. It turns out, the moon already has a very thin atmosphere:

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Moon/atmosphere.htm l

composed of a few atoms that are basically in orbit. So the point is, it is possible to create a dust atmosphere on the moon. We want to be careful when we start mining or whatever. We don't want to make that atmosphere significantly worse, because that dust will gum up machines.

Re:How the hell?

[Control Group]

you could probably throw a hammer and put it into orbit, because the speed of a dropped hammer is actually pretty low

I kind of doubt it. For a circular orbit at a distance of 1km above the lunar surface, the velocity of the hammer would have to be ~1500m/s. That's more than 3,000 mph/5,400 kph. That'd be a hell of a toss.

Unless, of course, my math is wrong, which is possible - but escape velocity with respect to lunar gravity from the surface of the moon is ~2.5km/s, so the number passes the smell test.

Re:How the hell?

[mpe]

I kind of doubt it. For a circular orbit at a distance of 1km above the lunar surface, the velocity of the hammer would have to be ~1500m/s. That's more than 3,000 mph/5,400 kph. That'd be a hell of a toss.

Even if it didn't hit anything there's no way that kind of orbit would be remotley stable. Whilst The Moon does not have any appreciable atmosphere it does have mascons, which means you cannot treat it's gravity as being from a point source so close to the surface.

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*

Computers

[cyberbob2351]

Why not just build large datacenters on the moon?

Seriously, we can power it all with solar power, and host all of our websites there. The lag isn't so bad (rougly 2 seconds to get a packet back at lightspeed). The heat from the machines could be used to warm up habitable spaces in the shade.

Best yet, all those computers will just soak up the dust like a magnet. Or, perhaps they could just launch thousands of those air dust cans with the mission...

Re:Computers

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Why not just build large datacenters on the moon?

Is there a server version of Vista? If so, that'll resolve the problem of how to suck in a vacuum.

And 500,000 years ago...

[Farmer Tim]

We could not go to the savannah. Maybe focus on... problems up in the trees? Just a thought...

I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere that has a seasonal variation, large predators, and no physical contact with other primates. But really... I have never been very likely to evolve.

Never forget that the comfortable life you enjoy is possible because of the risks others have taken in the past.

Re:moon dust?

[Zeek40]

Yeah, the carpet's cheap, but shipping rates to the moon are a bit steep.

The main problem..

[guruevi]

The problem with moon dust is that it's very abrasive and erodes anything very quickly, another problem is that it's mainly electrically charged.

Prepare for an internet smackdown

[oni]

Or...
We could not go to the moon. Maybe focus on... problems on earth? Just a thought...

This cartoon illustrates the complete idiocy of that line of reasoning:

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/ 2006-12-18-why-go.html

read it and then slink away in embarrassment over your shortsighted, ultimately suicidal philosophy. People who think the way you do are basically just selfish. You demand to be made comfortable even though it means the death of your species in the long run. Do us all a favor and just DIAF. The rest of us want a brighter future.

Re:Don't Blow the Dust

[PitaBred]

Records of what, meteorite impacts? That have obscured other meteorite impacts? That as a whole, over the surface of the moon, just created a pretty much even distribution of impacts, so much so that studying one location is the same as studying almost any other location, not to mention that this is of very limited value anyway? Take a statistics course, kid.