Unambiguous Evidence of Water On the Moon

Nethemas the Great writes "Information has leaked ahead of the scheduled NASA press conference tomorrow that we have found unambiguous evidence for water on the moon. From the article, 'Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.'"

Comments

Heavily rumoured

[barath_s]

There have been persistent reports in the Indian press over the last 3 days that Nasa's Moon Minerology Mapper on board India's Chandrayaan-1 had found water, and that the Thursday press conference would reveal it. Glad to have the embargo lifted early. http://www.examiner.com/x-21670-Houston-Space-News-Examiner~y2009m9d22-Did-Chandrayaan1-confirm-ice-on-the-Moon http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1074265

Re:Not enough

[TubeSteak]

The water these missions have found is present in very small quantities. Extracting it would require a lot of energy.

Unlimited energy is available on the moon.
You can run a stirling engine indefinitely based on the temperature differential between sunlight/radioisotopes and shade.
Alternatively, you could go solar.
Weight is your only real limit.

Re:Tritium Mines

[Doc Ruby]

There's plenty of solar power on the Moon's surface, and plenty of materials for construction in its crust. The first stage would be launching a small amount of automated fabrication machinery, run by a small crew, to build a solar power plant.

That plant could supply the energy to power the larger construction of a nuclear plant. Again, using local materials, and a larger crew supported by the larger infrastructure built by the solar power. The nuclear power available would be much larger than even the solar power.

Along the way, the power, infrastructure and crew would be capable of doing a lot more than building the next phase. Lunar science, other industrial engineering, telescopy, and launching other missions to farther out.

A solar base should take America no more than 5-8 years to build, if funded intelligently (ie, at the levels at which we love to fund wars for oil, but with a larger and more guaranteed return on investment). A nuclear base should take no more than 10 years to build, with probably 2-3 of those years performed during the 5-8 years building the solar plant. So the nuke plant could be operating somewhere 12-16 years or so from commencement. Since the US is right now deciding the entire roadmap for offplanet development, the clock should start in a year or two. Twenty years until we have sufficient power to explore, industrialize and colonize the nearby solar neighborhood is quite short, especially with lots of material benefits to show sooner along the way.

As for other countries, that's their problem. Many nuclear capable countries already launch nuke plants in satellites. That's a much more dangerous operation than building one on the Far Side of the Moon. And as usual, the US project will create the science and engineering, as well as working proof of concept, for other countries to do it themselves. We always give away some of the most valuable products of our investments in space, because it makes the world better in which Americans can live (as well as others who take advantage of it).

The US is going to put more and more nukes in space, even if it's just the CIA and Pentagon getting the monopoly. The more we do it for more peaceful and constructive purposes, the safer we'll be in every way. We could spend the next couple decades doing it. Or arguing why we shouldn't - and watching China, India, Russia, Japan and other global competitors doing it instead - and probably not as well. We can be Spain in this new age of exploration/colonization/industrialization, or we can be Britain. I'd like my grandchildren to keep speaking English.