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?

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?

[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.

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: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.