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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.