NASA Explores the Moon's Water/Oxygen Deposits

destinyland writes "NASA's LCross mission will now test whether the moon's hydrogen and oxygen deposits could be converted into air, water, and even fuel. A dramatic crash by the rocket's upper stage will blast 200 tons of moon rock up 10 kilometers from a dark crater — where its constitution can be measured by LCross's instruments. (NASA predicts 'a number of different ways that we'll be able to create water from whatever form of lunar hydrogen we find' on the moon, noting recent missions have already confirmed the presence of oxygen in moon rocks, while the sun delivers a constant stream of hydrogen.) Carrying water to the moon costs $100,000 a kilogram, so these experiments could be a crucial step to getting more people on the moon."

Comments

Cost of Water

[Linker3000]

"Carrying water to the moon costs $100,000 a kilogram"

Yes, that's what happens when you fly to the moon with Ryanair and buy your water onboard.

Re:3..2..1..

[ZackSchil]

We have the technology. The time is now. Science can wait no longer. Children are our future. American can, should, must, and will blow up the moon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI

Costs?

[hardburn]

What costs more to get to the moon? A kg of water, or a kg of feathers?

Re:Costs?

[jfdawes]

Given that feathers are much less dense than water, everything else being equal it would cost more to get the feathers there since they enclosure required to contain them would be larger than the enclosure required to contain water.

Things not being equal, feathers are far more compressible than water so you could perhaps increase their density substantially.

You don't specify what condition you want the feathers in. It might be possible to just glue them to the outside of the craft, in which case there are no associated container requirements whereas the water must still be contained. In this case it's going to cost more to get the water there.

On the other hand, if the water was already in orbit it would be as ice, in which case you might be able to just glue a chunk of that to the outside of the craft.

If we're gluing random chunks of stuff to the outside of spaceships, it's probably going to come down to how much friction each material causes and what loss of material each substance would undergo due to space friction.

HTH

Re:3..2..1..

[ZackSchil]

We're spending so much money, millions of dollars to blow up the moon when there's so much right here on earth to blow up. Mount Everest, the north pole, et cetera. We're earthlings, let's blow up earth things.

WE'RE EARTHLINGS, LET'S BLOW UP EARTH THINGS!

WE'RE EARTHLINGS, LET'S BLOW UP EARTH THINGS!

Sweet...

[secretplans]

We're bombing the moon now.

Did someone say something about fuel?

Operation Spock and Awe.

Re:To the moon before Mars

[Kamokazi]

unless some crazy breakthrough in physics occurs that results in easy and safe departure from the earths surface

I think that is pretty much the key right there. It takes a tremendous amount of energy, calculation, and resources to life a tiny payload into space. We should be devoting more resources on cheaper and more economical ways to get into orbit...ie space elevators, assisted launch, etc. That makes it much easier to estabilsh space stations and you could construct spacecraft that rely on nuclear-based propulsion and launch them from these stations.

And then you start colonies in space and on the moon, and eventually there is war between the colony inhabitants and Earth, and we build giant robots and let psychic 16-year-old kids pilot them and beat the crap out of eachother and save humanity from itself in the process. Until of course the remnants of the defeated faction finish rebuilding in the asteroid belt and come back to kick all our asses. But such is life. For anime characters living in space, anyway.