NASA's LCROSS Mission Proves Lunar Ice Suspicions

NASA is reporting that preliminary data from the LCROSS mission indicates that there really is water in one of the permanently shadowed lunar craters, just as they suspected back in September. "'We are ecstatic,' said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. 'Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.'"

Comments

Whats the hold up

[thenextstevejobs]

Base on the moon! Lets go fuckers!

Re:Whats the hold up

[Abcd1234]

The hold up? Probably the part where a base on the moon is pointless and exceedingly expensive? I mean, sure, it'd be cool... but let's be reasonable, here: there is *nothing* on the moon worth getting (and before you He3-fusion wankers chime in, go read this).

Re:Whats the hold up

[yincrash]

the view of earth

Re:Whats the hold up

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the hold up?

Sadly, it is the elephant in the room; Mineral Rights.

Capitalism, will eventually rear its ugly head on this one. We know there's water, as well as salts, metals, He3.... With the amount of clout Corporations have, and the number of 'elected representative' they've put into office, we won't be going to the moon until the powers that be have sorted it all out in the back room. Altruism, and space exploration for the benefit of mankind is on the down swing. Economics, by way of profits, has been god for a while now, and isn't going to falter into that dark abyss anytime soon.

The adventurer in me, wants and knows we should be up there traipsing on the moon as I type. The realist in me knows it won't happen for at least a decade, regardless of what else is discovered.

Re:Whats the hold up

[Phoenixlol]

Plus i MIGHT not be able to hear my neighbor's trunk thundering my house with bass from there

Re:Whats the hold up

[Anonymous Coward]

Pointless? That's pretty much the reason you don't design interplanetary vehicles. :) Go and look at the space shuttle. Now look at the space shuttle compared to the size of the fuel tanks needed to lift it into orbit. I'll wait. Hell I'll even give you a link. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/multimedia/photos/sts-79/79p-065.jpg Notice anything? The space shuttle is pretty small compared to all the fuel required to break orbit isn't it? The fuel required to leave moon orbit is astronomically smaller than the fuel required to leave earth orbit. Setting up a manned moon base would be the first step into real interplanetary travel. Your quip that it is "exceedingly expensive" is laughable when you look at how much money the US wastes daily on war and other negative influences to humanity.

Re:Whats the hold up

[whois_drek]

There's nothing worth "getting" at the Lagrange points, or geosynchronous orbit, or any number of places. That doesn't mean it's not worth going there.

Re:Whats the hold up

[khallow]

That was a pretty ignorant post on He3 mining due to the exaggerated cost estimate, lack of local manufacture, and ignorance of other materials found in lunar regolith.

Even if it does require half a million tons of equipment, that equipment can be made on the Moon rather than launched from Earth at $40k or even $4k per ton. Also it's worth noting that current GDP contribution from natural gas and electricity in the US is somewhere around $200 billion dollars. If you can get the overall fusion power infrastructure including lunar mining to under say, a couple of trillion dollars, then you could switch over the US electricity and heating infrastructure completely to lunar-fueled fusion power. My view is that this mining infrastructure could probably be made and deployed for hundreds of billions of dollars *or less* once manufacture is established on the Moon.

Finally other materials than merely He3 are present. You'd have platinum group metals which would in the presence of significant lunar launch infrastructure be worth exporting to Earth. Rare earths of high enough value might be present in sufficient quantity to extract. Any activity off of Earth would be closer to the Moon in terms of delta v than Earth. So it'd start making sense to launch common materials like glass, iron, oxygen, aluminum, titanium, etc from the Moon rather than from Earth. From this site, it estimates:

Since about 100 million tons of regolith must be heated to about 1400 deg. F to get one ton of helium 3; 4000 tons of hydrogen; 2800 tons of helium 4; 10,000 tons of nitrogen; 20,000 tons of carbon and 54,000 tons of sulfur will also be obtained.

All of these would be byproducts of such a vast mining operation. Revenue from this operation would be more than just He3.

Re:Whats the hold up

[dkleinsc]

We all know that the reason to have a moon base is to build a libertarian utopia.

Some actual serious reasons:
1. We'd get off this rock for more than a quick visit. If you're looking at major achievements of humanity, I'd think that would definitely rank somewhere significant.
2. Because we'd be off this rock, we'd have a good environment to test handling that sort of thing from an engineering standpoint, with the possibility of a much more manageable return if something were to go wrong. Important questions like "how do we handle the issue of solar radiation", "Can we grow enough plants in controlled environments to sustain an off-Earth colony", and so forth.
3. Heck, I'd pay good money to walk on the moon.

In short, this sort of thing isn't about making cash, it's about taking yet another small step for mankind. Yes, that requires looking past your lifetime, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Water is good news. I'm sure there's going to be lots of water reclamation equipment for any base we do end up building, but having external sources of water is a definite plus.

Re:Whats the hold up

[Abcd1234]

What about Cheaper mission costs if shuttles can be assembled on the moon and then launched from there with low orbit?

Yes, because that's *so* much cheaper than just building them in orbit. Yes, let's ferry all those materials hundreds of thousands of miles to the moon and then sink them in another gravity well... that'll be *so* much better.

Re:Whats the hold up

[skine]

I'm more afraid of being scrooched by Gidney and Cloyd.

Though we may be safe as long as NASA never get their hands on the Mooseberry fudge cake recipe.

Re:Whats the hold up

[pwfffff]

Moon base, Earth bass; what's the difference?

Re:Whats the hold up

[StikyPad]

It's better for us as a society to try new things than to be paralyzed in debate over cost/benefit analysis.

A base on the moon is a good interim step, learning to crawl before we walk, and while it may not have any known payoffs in material gains, the increased knowledge will be priceless. Further, it's a lot easier to resupply and make significant changes on the moon than on a distant planet.

There's a reason we test designs on earth as much as possible before we launch them, and it's the same reason we should be testing designs for human habitation on the moon before we try them elsewhere.

Unless you think there's no point in exploration period, which ignores the entirety of human history and a good portion of its technological advances.

Re:Whats the hold up

[Abcd1234]

That was a pretty ignorant post on He3 mining due to the exaggerated cost estimate, lack of local manufacture, and ignorance of other materials found in lunar regolith.

Given that the moon is composed of largely the same minerals as those on earth, you'd have to massively deplete our terrestrial resources before mining the moon became even *remotely* cost effective.

Even if it does require half a million tons of equipment, that equipment can be made on the Moon rather than launched from Earth at $40k or even $4k per ton.

Uh... from what, exactly? Or do you plan to bootstrap and entire manufacturing sector on the moon and *then* start mining He3?

If you can get the overall fusion power infrastructure including lunar mining to under say, a couple of trillion dollars, then you could switch over the US electricity and heating infrastructure completely to lunar-fueled fusion power. My view is that this mining infrastructure could probably be made and deployed for hundreds of billions of dollars *or less* once manufacture is established on the Moon.

Wait wait... let me get this straight. *If* you can build a fusion power infrastructure *and* lunar mining, including an *entire manufacturing base on the moon*, for under a *couple of trillion dollars*, a moonbase is suddenly worthwhile?

Wow. That's a really convincing argument, there. ::rollseyes::

Or we could just get Hydrogen-Boron fusion working, which runs at lower temperatures, and uses materials easily available on earth.

But you're right. I'm sure your idea is much better.

All of these would be byproducts of such a vast mining operation. Revenue from this operation would be more than just He3.

None of which is worth the cost of retrieval. All are exceedingly common, save for helium, which, conveniently, is a by-product of H-H fusion, and so if we ever did manage to develop controlled fusion, we could just make it ourselves.

Re:Whats the hold up

[mi]

there is *nothing* on the moon worth getting

Your statement may prove similar, to Bill Gates' famous predictions regarding 640k memory... How do you know, for the Moon does not have expensive commodities to mine? It is hardly explored — up until recently, we didn't even know, there is water on its surface!

You are lacking imagination... How about vacation-destination for those, who want to experience five times lower gravity? How about retirement homes for people, too frail to move on their own on Earth — they may be able to dance on the Moon? Technics may appear exploiting the low gravity for therapies for, say, spine-injuries (such as when a person needs to re-learn, how to walk). Barring major world-conflicts, we might be able to have all or some of that within 40-60 years.

Lower gravity may also allow for some new manufacturing methods... You name it...

So, medicine, novelty, mining, manufacturing, what else? Oh, science! What will the scientists, able to dig a space body literally under their feet, be able to find out about Space in general, and Solar System in particular? What discoveries — some of them even with prompt practical applications — await?

Re:Whats the hold up

[Toonol]

It's a far better staging point for interplanetary launches than Earth is. Not as good as high orbit, but a large moon base may be arguably more practical and economical than a large orbital base.

Re:Whats the hold up

[khallow]

I didn't consider any of your other points interesting. If I build hundreds of billions of dollars in lunar infrastructure, then it's a safe bet that I'll develop considerable lunar manufacture. And I wouldn't make such an investment unless corresponding Earth sources either were depleted or didn't exist (as in the case of Helium 3) in adequate quantities in the first place.

Or we could just get Hydrogen-Boron fusion working, which runs at lower temperatures, and uses materials easily available on earth.

This is a killer and one of the big problems now for anything coming from space. Namely, why go to space to get something, if there's an easier, cheaper Earthside solution? I was under the impression that proton-boron fusion was harder than helium3-helium3 fusion, but that doesn't turn out to be the case (an interview with Richard Nebel on the Polywell fusion prototype project which he heads).

Question: Assuming a Polywell demonstrator works in say 3-10 years, would a developed reactor be able to burn 3He/3He, or does Polywell's performance "max out" with p/11B?

Answer: We looked at 3He/3He and concluded that the fusion reactivity was just too low. (The characteristics of 3He/3He (cross section, reactivity, Lawson criterion) are at least an order of magnitude below those for p/11B.)

You still have deuterium-helium3 which is easier (in terms of temperature and Lawson criterion), but that's less aneutronic than hydrogen-boron (due to the presence of deuterium-deuterium fusion which generates a neutron 50% of the time it occurs).

Re:Whats the hold up

[Tetsujin]

Can't we use materials that exist on the moon instead of sending them from Earth? We could probably dig some tunnels there and live under the ground, safe from the radiation. Solar panels, lights, plants, water, air. We could bring microchips, perhaps some plastics from earth, get the metals and fuel from the Moon. Also having a colony there wouldn't hurt human kind.

It's hard to imagine any kind of mining operation on the moon being economically viable at this point in time. For what we'd have to pay (and you can think of this as a cost of "money" or of "energy" - the two concepts are equivalent to some degree) to send work crews (robotic or human) to the moon, provide them with necessary supplies, maintain them... extract the raw materials, refine them, turn them into a useful form... Sending rockets up periodically to resupply them... At the present time it would simply be far cheaper to build what we need here. Even if you figure in the cost of launching that built equipment from Earth instead of from the Moon, the benefits of not stretching our supply chain to (or beyond) practical limits during the preparatory phase of an interplanetary expedition make up for any extra cost of launching from Earth.

Re:Whats the hold up

[WindBourne]

Nothing except for possibly lots of Uranium/Plutonium for use in space exploration, Rare Earth minerals (which may causes wars/world war to be started in the next 5 years), the ability to launch a number of sats at high speeds cheaply, a new tourist location for Billionaire (who would then fund a lot of this), New Robotics that come back to Earth and on to mars, the ability to test equipment prior to sending to mars, the ability to put lasers, rods from gods, etc if needed, or even better yet, stop others from doing it, etc, etc, etc.

BUT, hey, it is silly waste of resource to the idiots that think that they will solve all of the World's need by focusing HERE. Right?

Re:Whats the hold up

[apoc.famine]

The moon is NOT "composed of largely the same minerals as those on earth". It's got far less metals and useful stuff than earth. As far as we can tell, the moon is the splashed-off surface of the earth, after an impact with another body.
 
The heavy, useful stuff like metal didn't really make it to the moon in any good quantity - it's mostly the lighter silica that the upper crust is made up of. Recall that most of our metals come from mines - those holes which go deep into the ground.
 
If you want to make glass and ceramics, maybe the moon would be an ok source for materials. But for anything else, it's terrible.

Re:Whats the hold up

[hazem]

Your point about the composition of the moon makes sense, but your citing mines going deep doesn't.

The deepest mine is about 4km, and compared to the Earth's diameter of 12.7k km, that's not very deep. To scrape enough mass off the surface of the Earth to make the moon, you'd probably be going deeper than most mines.

However, I suspect that while there are rich veins of metal in the surface of the Earth, most of the metal is below the surface, in the mantle and the core. But none of our mines go anywhere near that deep.

Re:Whats the hold up

[R3d M3rcury]

"Even if you figure in the cost of launching that built equipment from Earth instead of from the Moon, the benefits of not stretching our supply chain to (or beyond) practical limits during the preparatory phase of an interplanetary expedition make up for any extra cost of launching from Earth."

Personally, I'm not all that interested in an "interplanetary expedition" just yet.

One of the big questions is, "Why should we have a manned space program--or any space program at all? Why send men when we can send robots cheaper, easier, and safer?" Now we all have our etherial answers about the good of mankind and science and propagating the species and yadda yadda yadda. And all that is well and good. But I think it would far better serve our purpose to get some people living and doing work in space. And not just scientific work but the kind of work that Joe Sixpack can understand--building stuff.

There are great reasons to launch rockets from the moon rather than from Earth. One of the ones I bring up over and over is the fact that you can use things like nuclear propulsion without necessarily worrying about what happens if the rocket fails. Everybody's afraid to lift uranium out of the atmosphere--"What happens if the rocket blows up?!? We'll all die!!" Well, there's uranium on the moon. As has been said over and over, chemical propulsion isn't going to get us where we want to go.

The idea of going to the Moon should be to stay there. Lots of useful stuff to build things with. Less gravity which is good for launching stuff, but not so much less that normal operations are hindered (as I've said in other posts, if you drop a screw it falls on the ground--it doesn't go floating off).

When we have done this, we can build the ship that will transport explorers to Mars on the Moon.

Re:Oblig

[Conchobair]

My humor tastes are too dry for your water puns.

Drill baby drill!

[eln]

So now we need to get up there with some drilling equipment and figure out if there's actually water beneath the surface or if the only water on the moon is trace amounts leftover from the occasional comet impact.

Re:Drill baby drill!

[Idiomatick]

"detected more than 100 kilograms in the part of the plume it observed."

And they couldn't see the vast majority of the plume.

Re:Wait?

[Chris Burke]

It refuses to account for its location on both November 22, 1963, and on September 11, 2001.

Moonshine

[Conchobair]

Anyone else really want to use this water to make liquor? Even if coke just bottled it, I'd drink some moon water.

Re:Moonshine

[cmiller173]

Given the opportunity, I'd brew a batch of beer with it. Boiling point on the moon is a lot lower though, hop utilization is going horrible. Definitely going to need a pressurized dome for this to work.

Re:Moonshine

[natehoy]

Greetings, Sir or Madam.

I have managed, through sources connected to major aerospace corporation, to collect a small sample of the water of moon and I can assuring you it is both refreshingly also delicious.

Do not listen to the naysayers who undoubtedly assure that such a beverage must be much expensive for the average person can afford! It is most assuredly not that way!

I have decided to assist them in the funding of their next expedition to moon by selling some of water that was returned from the last expedition. The aerospace company is located in small country in southern Africa, so you must comprehend there are bribes and other politics involved extracting an amount for your purchase and enjoyment.

However, I can assure you that the water is pure and safe, ready to drink, and unaltered. Through amazing coincidence, it contains all of the same chemicals found in most spring water, so it is most assuredly beneficial to your consumption use.

If you are interested in such opportunity, please reply soonest and I will arrange to have a sample sent to you. I may need small amount sent in cash, and if sample is of proven quality to you we may further discuss additional quantities.

I await eagerly your reply.

What's the point?

[Pro923]

I mean will Lunar Springs really be able to compete in the bottled water sector? Will I be able to choose between filtered and "Some Regolith"?

It's all gone now.

[nomorecwrd]

, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water

Or, maybe it did hold water... until the impact.

Mining

[PolarBearFire]

Finally! Something we can mine the Moon for. This will spur space competition to get this valuable resource. I can't wait for my first sip of $10000 Evian Moon Mineral Water.

Obligatory Futurama

[Jason Levine]

Sing to the tune of "We're Whalers on the Moon":

There's water on the Moon
We found it with big boom
For the probe crashed down
Impacted the ground
There's water in the plume!

Re:Alright...

[rhyder128k]

If nothing else this will provide continued employment for that Adam Sandler fellow. "Water Boy II: Over The Moon!".

Obligatory NASA link

[kvap]

They already found water on Mars a few years ago and posted on their website:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0504/WaterOnMars2_gcc_big.jpg

Re:Can we just clarify something?

[alexborges]

"but obviously won't sustain any sort of life."

You clearly have never been to Berlin.

Re:Can we just clarify something?

[natehoy]

They have found water, as in H2O, not CO2.

It may or may not be mixed with anything narsty (I'd lean toward "almost certainly does"), and it may or may not exist in sufficient quantities to be useful.

However, this is still a potentially significant discovery. If a future expedition discovers that there's enough water up there, it could make lunar bases easier to build. After all, water is probably the single heaviest thing you'd have to carry up for a lunar base. If a ready supply is already there, that's a big start, even if you have to develop some technologies to scrub the nasties out of it before you can drink it. It's also an important building component if you want to use local materials to, say, build protective walls over your delicate settlement. Lunar adobe brick made of local dirt and local water, for example. Then you wouldn't care what contaminants are in it, as long as it could be used to solidify bricks.

Re:Wait?

[Bemopolis]

Nor has it publicly denied that it raped and murdered a young girl in 1990.

Because I Said So, That's Why!

[mindbrane]

I've no background and little education in this area but I do have an off the wall question. I have some understanding of the theory describing the initial impact from which the moon is thought to have come, and, the attendant theory that the formation of the moon may have been one of the first, big contingent happenings that drove the development of life on earth. My question centres on the material that made up the body that smashed into the early earth, added much to the earth's "girth" and gave us the present moon. Is it possible the impacting body was composed of a lot of water? There's questions surrounding how earth came to have so much water. If the impacting body that gave us the moon contained a great amount of water, the impact, formation of the moon, water on earth and the early evolution of life comes into focus as a "just so" story.

just my loose change

 

Re:Because I Said So, That's Why!

[mindbrane]

Or are you a creationist troll ?

I'm a deeply confirmed atheist, so much so that I can't imagine trolls at all, other than as pejorative labels for creationists. This linked article was the first handy bit I could find that speaks directly to my post. /. has run a few stories about the problems with the earth's amount of water and it's origins. If you want a more lore based recounting, Captain Jean Luc Picard narrated a pbs special, titled, IIRC, "Moon's Origins". Picard's aka Patrick Stewart's pronunciation of a French name in a truculent, anglo-saxon accent is worth the time to hunt up a copy at your local library.

Model Predicts Lots More Water

[GreenPhreak]

The dominant paradigm since the Apollo Missions was that the Moon was as dry as a bone.

However, a paper was put out recently (before the discovery of water a month ago) proposing a model for water and other volatiles venting out of the interior of the Moon. One of the predictions of this model is that there should be significant subsurface water primarily near the poles. The results from Chandrayaan-1 and LCROSS today confirms that this is true--there is significant subsurface water near the poles. The claims that the water is solely on the surface and due to cometary deposition or solar wind interactions are now blown "out of the water".

This model predicts a lot more water under the surface for potential use in human exploration. w00t!

Check out the paper here: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0909.3832

Re:Can we just clarify something?

[jhfry]

Better yet... H2O has a great O element... and you can breathe it!

So, suppose you could drill down and hit a well of ice. A bit of solar energy pumped into that frozen mass yields liquid water, a bit more gives hydrogen and oxygen. Now you have fuel (fire) and air and water. Earth will be the tough element to obtain. I don't imagine that moon soil is all that good for planting, and most plants need nitrogen that may not be easy to come by on the moon.

Either way... water far more valuable when you realize that its not just water but O and H too.

Re:Can we just clarify something?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually.... plants can do just fine in lunar soil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7351437.stm

Re:Alright...

[Tetsujin]

cue the aliens on the Moon, landing there and using the water to mix with the scotch and other lame ass jokes.

The aliens have set themselves up with a nice little night-club on the moon...

...no atmosphere, though.

Re:Can we just clarify something?

[rachit]

Oxygen is cheap on the moon if you can get a good energy source (ie. nuclear reactor). The moon is mostly silicon / iron / calcium oxide.