NASA Estimates 600 Million Metric Tons of Water Ice At Moon's North Pole

After analyzing data from a radar device aboard last year's Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon, NASA scientists have found what they estimate to be 600 million metric tons of water ice in craters around the Moon's north pole. "Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high circular polarization ratio) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature."

Comments

Send up some miners

[stoolpigeon]

Having been a Heinlein fan for the last 30 or so years, I have to say this makes me happy inside.

Re:Send up some miners

[Moblaster]

It shouldn't. Monoliths give the same readings.

Re:Send up some miners

[elrous0]

If they're going all the way to the moon and back just for water, you had better specify "some really STUPID miners."

Re:Send up some miners

[cduffy]

If they're going all the way to the moon and back just for water

Water is one of the key things you'd need to run a settlement for other purposes -- a great deal of it is required to maintain an ecosystem (remember, you want plants for both food and air), it's extremely expensive to lift out of the gravity well, and it can be trivially broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are useful on their own. No, ice is worth far more up there than down here; why would you ship it down (at least, without first producing a useful product out of it, thus increasing its value)?

Slandering Heinlein... *shakes head*.

Re:Send up some miners

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon is, more or less, as inhospitable as Mars. The point of settling on the moon would be to learn how to settle other planets, except that the stakes and upfront cost are far smaller.

Re:Send up some miners

[Runaway1956]

The moon is a way station. I mean, almost NO ONE meant to settle in places like Kansas City, all those years ago. But, some of the early passers-by saw that it could be profitable to build a few stores, to cater to the OTHER settlers going west.

Besides - slashdot has plenty of creatures who dwell in basements. They'd be perfectly content to dig into the moon's surface with all that ice water at hand. Plant a few plants, rig up a little solar power, add a few fiber optic cables, and you'd have one hell of a LAN party.

Hey - I've gotta go patent this idea I just had, see you 'round!

Re:Send up some miners

[Rogerborg]

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins went to the moon for no better reason - and there is no better reason - than because it was hard.

Re:Send up some miners

[rwa2]

I dunno, people import bottled water from some pretty darned remote places.

I, for one, would take a sip. 8-D

But then again, I also drink from most public water fountains.

Re:Send up some miners

[rwa2]

Where would the solar power be coming from, given that the only water that's there is buried in permanent shadow?

You'd need a heck of a tower, or a pump. Or a huge orbital mirror array to shine light where the sun don't normally shine. But then the ice would melt and there'd be no point to settling those craters again. drats!

Someone will patent these ideas anyway, and maybe be foolish enough to implement. Same ones with all of these carbon sequestration schemes... they've got it all wrong! If they REALLY want to secure the one-world government, they should sequester all the oxygen and sell it back to all the people who didn't care about environmental regulation :-P

Re:Send up some miners

[c6gunner]

Why would you settle there in the first place, when it's a barren rock?

I dunno, ask the guys who built it.

Re:Send up some miners

[c6gunner]

Screw the miners, send up some Whalers!

Re:Send up some miners

[Arthur Grumbine]

Plant a few plants...

Now you're talking about some serious export potential.

Re:Send up some miners

[camperdave]

I mean, almost NO ONE meant to settle in places like Kansas City, all those years ago. But, some of the early passers-by saw that it could be profitable to build a few stores, to cater to the OTHER settlers going west.

Well, that and that's where their wagon wheels broke. That's why they have them sticking out of the ground at the end of their driveway, and holding up the lamps in the middle of the saloon.

Re:Send up some miners

[Yamata no Orochi]

Yeah, but the latency to the DRM servers on Earth would suck.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you don't want connections to anything but other devices on the LAN at a LAN party. Games that have to phone home are out on their ass.

Just like LANs here!

Re:Send up some miners

[Chris Burke]

Well yeah. If the moon was soft -- like if it was made of cheese for example -- then that would have made landing and subsequent takeoff more difficult.

Re:Send up some miners

[mansa]

Bottled moon water. :)

Re:Send up some miners

[stoolpigeon]

So close to one of my favorite quotes from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
 
  'That had produced a Scandinavian shout: “Ja, cobber! Tell ‘em send us hoors! Tousands and tousands
of hoors! I marry ‘em, I betcha!”'

Re:Send up some miners

[camperdave]

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills...

What shall serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills today? Obama, whom a lot of people saw as a modern day Kennedy, has all but cancelled manned space flight, so a fat lot of good that moon water is going to do us.

Re:Send up some miners

[khallow]

Why would you settle there in the first place, when it's a barren rock? Sure ice makes the moon SLIGHTLY more survivable, but to what end?

Why doesn't everyone live on a comfortable tropical beach? Because that's not where the opportunities are. If you want a better job or doing something new and challenging, you don't go to the beach, even if it has the best possible climate for day-to-day living.

It's pretty obvious that there's almost nothing of value to us currently on the Moon (there are a few corner mirrors left over from the 60's that still work, I think that's it). But there's good reason to expect that to change over the decades. Commercial activity has been steadily increasing over the past 45 years. Launch costs have slowly declined over that time as well. We see serious new attempts to enter the launch market (the new Russian commercial efforts, one for every launch vehicle they have, two new companies in the US in the past 25 years, Orbital Sciences Corp and SpaceX, China coming out with the Chang Zheng (Long March) 5, India developing more capable launch vehicles).

I think we'll continue to grow a presence in space until we get to the point where off-planet support infrastructure makes sense. Physically, the Moon is a much easier place to get materials from. It has a much lower gravity well (for example, lunar escape velocity is almost a fifth that of Earth's), copious solar power, no atmosphere (helps all launch system designs except air breathing vehicles) plentiful oxygen locked in the rock, and good concentrations of the light metals that are currently desired for spacecraft (aluminum, lithium, magnesium, titanium, etc). It also has the sort of volcanic/asteroid activity that lead in the past to enormous platinum group metal deposits on Earth (that is, there appears to be nothing unique to Earth about the way the deposits formed).

These resources currently have no value to us, because we don't have the stuff in place to take advantage of them. But my view is that this won't always be the case. We can't say that it won't be worth mining gold on the Moon 50 or 100 years from now, merely because the current costs exceed possible gain by a few orders of magnitude. These things change over time and as I've noted, they have been getting better for a while now.

Re:Send up some miners

[eleuthero]

solar power would be easy... big solar farm in areas typically in the sun... and power lines running down to your capped water plant.

Re:Send up some miners

[Rei]

But the moon is a lot more difficult than Mars in many respects. Two days of night on most of the moon, more radiation, less diverse surface minerals, etc.

As for the ice issue: 600m metric tons at the "north pole". They say it's within green circles that look to take up something like 4% of the image. The area covered is down to 80N. The moon's circumference is 6790 miles. I'm too lazy to do the exact math, but that means that the area covered here is something like 550,000 square miles. That means that the area taken up by the green circles is something like 22,000 square miles, so about 27,000 metric tons per square mile. Mini-SAR measures to a depth of "a few meters"; let's say 10 feet. That would work out to about 100 grams of water per cubic foot in those areas. A cubic foot of regolith has a mass of something like 75 kilograms, so that would be about 0.13% water.

These are very rough calculations, of course.

Re:Send up some miners

[khallow]

Wheat is a terrible product. You'd have to ship most of the resources needed to make it. The only thing in quantity is oxygen. There's very little hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon.

Re:Send up some miners

[FleaPlus]

As for the ice issue: 600m metric tons at the "north pole". They say it's within green circles that look to take up something like 4% of the image. The area covered is down to 80N. The moon's circumference is 6790 miles. I'm too lazy to do the exact math, but that means that the area covered here is something like 550,000 square miles. That means that the area taken up by the green circles is something like 22,000 square miles, so about 27,000 metric tons per square mile. Mini-SAR measures to a depth of "a few meters"; let's say 10 feet. That would work out to about 100 grams of water per cubic foot in those areas. A cubic foot of regolith has a mass of something like 75 kilograms, so that would be about 0.13% water. These are very rough calculations, of course.

This certainly requires more investigation, but Paul Spudis, the scientist in charge of the experiment, posted the following on his blog, indicating that the evidence supports there being relatively pure ice at least 2 meters thick:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/03/01/ice-at-the-north-pole-of-the-moon/

Over forty small (2-15 km diameter) craters near the north pole of the Moon are found to contain this elevated CPR material. The total mount of ice present at the pole depends on how thick it is; to see this elevated CPR effect, the ice must have a thickness on the order of tens of wavelengths of the radar used. Our radar wavelength is 12.6 cm, therefore we think that the ice must be at least two meters thick and relatively pure. At such a thickness, more than 600 million metric tones of water ice are present in this area.

Re:Send up some miners

[Rei]

That would be very interesting indeed! I suppose that would require that it be patchy rather than uniformly distributed. Because it's certainly not taking up even a couple percent of the north pole image that they showed in a manner that's that thick and relatively pure; there's just too much area for that compared to their cited mass figure.

Re:Send up some miners

[FleaPlus]

That would be very interesting indeed! I suppose that would require that it be patchy rather than uniformly distributed. Because it's certainly not taking up even a couple percent of the north pole image that they showed in a manner that's that thick and relatively pure; there's just too much area for that compared to their cited mass figure.

I was taking a look at this image which Paul Spudis posted, specifically the middle "CPR" image:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/files/2010/03/Peary-CPR.jpg

I assume that the regions where it's >= 2 meters thick corresponds to the reddest regions, of which there are only a few speckles. It also makes sense when you consider that large amounts of lunar ice are likely to only persist in those parts of the crater which are in permanent shadow.

Also, as a practical matter, it's worth noting that these craters are some of the coldest spots in the solar system. It'll require some clever engineering to work in an environment with a temperature even colder than liquid nitrogen.

Re:Send up some miners

[Nefarious Wheel]

We see serious new attempts to enter the launch market (the new Russian commercial efforts, one for every launch vehicle they have, two new companies in the US in the past 25 years, Orbital Sciences Corp and SpaceX, China coming out with the Chang Zheng (Long March) 5, India developing more capable launch vehicles).

Am I the only one who read this and thought -- "They're going to outsource space travel soon"?

Re:Send up some miners

[quanticle]

In many ways, the moon is far more inhospitable than Mars. Its lack of atmosphere means that there isn't any radiation shielding or thermal moderation. The only reason the moon is "easier" to live on than Mars is because the moon is three days away whereas Mars is a three month journey.

Re:Send up some miners

[LifesABeach]

It won't be the guy who makes it rich by owning the 'northern' side of the moon, it will be the guy that has the Dixie Cup franchise.

Re:Send up some miners

[quanticle]

Well, building a tower on the moon is really easy, given that gravity is only 1/6 as strong. Couple with the fact that there's no atmosphere (no wind) and the fact that the moon isn't geologically active means that you can build a very tall tower very cheaply because you don't need nearly as much bracing.

Re:Send up some miners

[elrous0]

Only in this case it's a barren way station that only leads to other barren rocks. If there were a planet out there in this solar system that had earth-like atmospheric pressure, a reasonable amount of oxygen, some sort of radiation-shielding atmosphere, etc. I could see that as an argument. But there is nothing out there even remotely survivable or sustainable. There is no end-game here. The moon is just a pointless exercise that only leads to other, even more pointless, exercises. There is no Napa Valley or gold mine waiting on the other side of those plains.

And at least Kansas was a place where you could grow wheat.

Re:Send up some miners

[PerfectionLost]

That said there is no atmosphere to break up or burn out anything that's going to hit the moon. That's why it's a big mess of craters.

Re:Send up some miners

[Runaway1956]

Obviously, you didn't grow up reading Heinlein and people like him. It's doable. No, of course it isn't doable for people with no imagination, and an unwillingness to change. You can't take your lawn with you, your old oak tree for shade, and grandpa's shed with all the neat crap he saved from the days of Model T's.

The people who go out there will adapt, or they will die. Plain and simple. On the moon, they'll dig into the crust to get away from the radiation, and they will make homes from concrete and plastic, in those lava flows and other holes they find. They'll grow their plants under plant lights, or they'll find ways to beam sunlight to the plants, underground. Or, they might put the effort into developing photosynthetic plants that will grow during the two weeks of sunlight, then hibernate for two weeks of night.

The Loonies won't be people that you can easily understand. But then, your great great grandchildren would be a huge surprise if you could meet them no matter WHERE they grow up. Turn that around - would your great great grandparents adapt to today's world quickly and easily if they could be brought back here today? The last of my own great grandparents died about the time that color televisions were becoming popular among the less wealthy classes. It would blow his mind to watch a hi-def movie on my computer!

The future. Not just stranger than you imagine, but stranger than you CAN imagine.

Put the people up there. They'll find a way. They'll survive. Nothing capable of supplying water (and incidentally, OXYGEN) is truly barren. It can sustain life, if that life is determined enough to live there.

Re:Send up some miners

[PerfectionLost]

Most likely it will make more sense to make the moon a waypoint for other mining operations. Lower gravity and atmosphere provides several advantages with things like telescopes. It would also provide a good relay point for either manned missions to or from earth, as I'd guess the lower gravity would be easier to become accustomed to after prolonged exposure to weightlessness or artificial gravity.

Re:Send up some miners

[Rei]

Indeed. Everything becomes brittle at those temperatures. Of course, it's going to take serious energy to mine ice anyway, so you will have a source of heat. What you also will need is insulation (assumedly of the metal foil variety, since only thermal radiation matters, not conduction to an atmosphere or convection).

Re:Send up some miners

[khallow]

Most likely it will make more sense to make the moon a waypoint for other mining operations.

The Moon isn't on the way to anywhere but the Moon. Anything that gets on and off the Moon adds something like 3.5-5 km/s of delta-v to the effort to move that equipment.

Re:Send up some miners

[multi io]

Cheese in a vacuum should dehydrate / dry out and become pretty hard. I'm not sure what the descent engine would've done to it, though.

Re:Send up some miners

[metaforest]

Or to use an arcane but easier to interpret value:

enough water to cover about 486428 acres (760 sq miles[1968.5 sq km]) of land in a foot-thick[-.3048 m] sheet of solid ice.

Good thing it's concentrated in convenient pockets. Were it a diffuse 'binder' over the pole areas it would be quite process intensive to extract. Sifting through 75 kg of dust for 100gm of water seems like a huge waste of energy, even though the water is technically easy to extract by mild heating of raw stock.

A first cut might include tapping that source for potable water on extended lunar missions..... like that is going to happen with Oh-Bummer at the helm.

Ah well it will just keep accreting.

Re:Send up some miners

[elrous0]

And obviously, you've been reading TOO MUCH Heinlein. Imagination is fine. But there is a difference between realistic dreams and delusional fantasies. Settlers will only settle in an area if they have a chance of not only surviving, but thriving. There is no other planet or body in this solar system where humans can, or will likely ever be able to (barring some VERY major advances here on earth), do *either*. And yes, it's true that things change. But fundamental things don't. People don't settle in places just because they can. They do it because they think they can make their fortunes there. And no fortune awaits on the moon or Mars, just an unsustainable nightmare that would be infinitely more inhospitable than just about any spot on Earth. Again, no gold mine, no farmland--just vacuum and radiation.

So, even if humans did find a way to survive on the moon or Mars (which I seriously doubt), an even more important question is "Why would they want to?"

Re:Send up some miners

[Runaway1956]

You write, "There is no other planet or body in this solar system where humans can, or will likely ever be able to", then you go on to mention the reasons people settle in places. You are missing something important in the process.

The only thing preventing people from living on the moon is the DESIRE to live there. Suppose - just suppose, and humor me - that Mary Kay cosmetics "discovered" that some magical component of moondust prevented women from aging, and kept them looking half their age, right up past 100 years old. Exactly how long do you think it would take for the dozen richest bitches in the world to have Mary Kay's new line of products, at any price Mary Kay chose to put on them?

Did I hear you say, "Moon or bust!" ???? Remember - only a limited number of people had any interest in California, until they found gold in California. Immediately, everyone in the country with nothing to stop them moving was California bound. People already migrating to other, more interesting places, changed their destinations in midstride.

Believe me, Mary Kay cosmetics has a better chance of building cities on the moon than Nasa does. Look at the contracts that draw men and women into combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Multiply them by an order of magnitude or two, announce the contracts to the world at large, then stand aside for the STAMPEDE!!! There will be miles long lines at every recruiting center you can throw up.

Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a lot until you realize there the amount on earth is measured as a few 10^18 metric tons. More than a couple orders of magnitude difference.

Re:Earth

[History's Coming To]

Presuming that somebody is going to the Moon anyway, the cost of getting a kilo of water there is of the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Digging a kilo up in-situ, if it's handy, costs very little indeed. That's the point. It's like finding a bunch of ready cut diamond rings lying around, as opposed to having to build a strip mine, excavate them and cut them, mine the gold for the ring, smelt it, make a ring, and mount the diamond.

Re:Earth

[grodzix]

Now just subtract all the non-drinkable water and you won't be left with even quarter of that. And besides, you will never need as much water on the Moon (Moon is much smaller and various ways of recycling water will be used) as on Earth so such comparison is pointless.

Re:Earth

[Trent Hawkins]

The point is that it's water that we don't have to get from earth in to space.

Re:Earth

[Dishevel]

The earth is a closed system. The water in fact is recycled.

Re:Earth

[ericspinder]

"Where did you get that ring???" sob - slap slap

To that you're supposed to answer "I went to Jared", or at least that's what the TV says will make her and her closest friends happy.

Re:Earth

[sdpuppy]

That was rated "Troll"?

Wow talk about clueless mods...

Re:Earth

[sean.peters]

Presuming that somebody is going to the Moon anyway, the cost of getting a kilo of water there is of the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Digging a kilo up in-situ, if it's handy, costs very little indeed. That's the point.

You need to think this through. Digging up water on the freaking moon is going to cost very little? Dude, it would cost the tens of thousands of dollars just to get a garden shovel there. Then you also need to send up the guy doing the shovelling, and his life support gear, and water transportation piping or tanker rockets or whatever, to get it to where you need it (which presumably is not going to be the poles - by definition, you wouldn't be getting enough light there to do farming or solar power generation). Your free water is a lot more expensive than you think it is.

Re:Earth

[RebootKid]

Mod parent funny.

Re:Earth

[grodzix]

Sure it is, but it's a natural process which is slow and insufficient for our needs. That's why we need things like wastewater treatment plants.

Re:Earth

[rbanffy]

It's already out of Earth's gravity well. That's what makes it useful.

Re:Earth

[DerekLyons]

Presuming that somebody is going to the Moon anyway, the cost of getting a kilo of water there is of the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Digging a kilo up in-situ, if it's handy, costs very little indeed.

Sure, other than the (decidedly non trivial) costs of developing the requisite mining and refining equipment and then moving several tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of kilograms of said mining and refining equipment to the moon.
 
Not to mention the costs of operations and support for said equipment, which can range from hideously expensive to merely very expensive depending on the amount of on-location operation and maintenance that is required versus remote operation and monitoring. For the near term, you can rule teleoperation out - there's many industries on Earth that would love to have remotely or automatically operated earthmoving equipment, we haven't figured that one out yet. While you can most likely operate and monitor the refining process from Earth (which still won't be cheap), you'll still need boots on the regolith for maintenance of the mining and refining processes - and the moon is a harsh mistress for equipment.
 
There's some huge up front and capital investment required before producing liter one of lunar water. Many people seem to forget that, charitably assuming they are even aware of it.
 
 

It's like finding a bunch of ready cut diamond rings lying around, as opposed to having to build a strip mine, excavate them and cut them, mine the gold for the ring, smelt it, make a ring, and mount the diamond.

With known and near term technology it's more like this:

• Boosting water to the moon is like you buying a diamond ring at your local jewelers. It's an expensive, but straightforward, and well known process.
   
• Mining water on the moon is like you buying a shovel and hitting Expedia.com for a ticket to South Africa. You may have seen a few episodes of Modern Marvels on the History channel on diamond mining and gold mining but you haven't ever prospected for either, let alone processed them into useful forms, or even designed a ring, let alone converting the gold and diamond into a ring. There's a lot of work ahead of you to master all those intermediate steps, and you're planning on doing it all from scratch.

Like fusion power, lunar water holds a great deal of promise, but there are numerous hurdles and challenges between where we are and a liter of water sitting on a table in the crews mess of a moon base. (Oh, and I haven't even discussed the huge challenge of establishing the base to support the mining crews.)

Units!

[Ihlosi]

How many Olympic swimming pools is that?

Re:Units!

[Anonymous Coward]

1000L = 1 Metric Ton(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_liters_of_water_is_in_one_ton_of_water)
2,500,000L = 1 Olympic Swiming Pool(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_water_does_an_Olympic_sized_swimming_pool_hold)

My math might be off, but that puts 600,000,000 Metric Tons of water at 240,000 Olympic swimming pools worth =D

Re:Units!

[ZeroExistenZ]

1 metron ton = 1000 kilograms

Liters which translates, for water, to roughly the same to kg.

According to Wiki, an olympic pool as a minimum volume of 2,500 m3 (88,000 cu ft) or 2,500,000 L (550,000 imp gal; 660,000 US gal) which would be filled with 2500 tons of water.

hence, you could fill up 2400 olympic pools (6 000 000 / 2500 ).

If you take into account the atmospheric pressure, weight of ice and perfect ratio between the water - kilos conversion that number might variate a bit.

Re:Units!

[halfEvilTech]

correction they esitmate 600 million metric tons - you have 6 million

so 600,000,000 / 2500 would be approximately 240,000 olympic pools

Re:Units!

[Coren22]

How did you and AC get your answers so different? I'm guessing AC had his last equation screwed up...

Still, this would be enough water for a pretty sizable settlement on the moon, so I think we should be all set for settling the moon.

Re:Units!

[Whalou]

Why did you guess who was wrong when the numbers were right there?

Re:Units!

[AGMW]

... but that puts 600,000,000 Metric Tons of water at 240,000 Olympic swimming pools worth =D

OK, so that's by far and away NOT an inexhaustible supply then!
Using it for basic 'living' needs ought to be all fine and dandy (ie O2, drinkies, plants, washing, sports) assuming we can sensibly recycle the stuff, and AFAIK we're already OK at that (see ISS). Indeed, that much water should support a pretty sizeable colony.
Using it as 'propellant' might not be so sensible though, as it will dwindle PDQ!

Re:Units!

[baKanale]

In liquid form that's approximately 200,000 olympic swimming pools, or, equivalently, 1 Sydharb.

Re:Units!

[2names]

I prefer imperial units. I know metric units are more simple and logical, but...

"A pint's a pound the world around."

You can't make neat rhymes with metrics.

"A litre's a kilogram the world o' sham a lam."

It just doesn't work.

Re:Units!

[DarthVain]

That's a lot of Harvey Wallbangers!

Just trying to put it in units that would have been appropriate for the last time anyone was on the moon. I am somewhat surprised there wasn't a smoking apparatus of some kind for the inside of spacesuits!

Re:Units!

[elfprince13]

What kind of funky sci-fi unit is a metron ton?

Re:Units!

[Rogerborg]

Let's use units we all understand, please. 600 million metrics tons is about 829 milliOprahs, or a 4.2 on the Candy scale.

Re:Units!

[c6gunner]

Why did you guess who was wrong when the numbers were right there?

It's Intelligent Mathematics. When in doubt, go with faith.

Re:Units!

[xaxa]

I prefer imperial units. I know metric units are more simple and logical, but...

"A pint's a pound the world around."

- That isn't an Imperial unit. That's a US customary unit.
- An Imperial pint (the one used when you buy beer in a pub in Britain, 568mL) of water weights a pound and a quarter. My grandma would tell you, "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter."

I'm sure you could make something up:
A litre of water weighs a kilo, or ought'a.

Are there any other rhymes? I don't know of any.

Re:Units!

[c6gunner]

Water ice?!?!

That's like saying, "hey, come on over to my place and we'll go swimming in my water pool!"

Ice is a solid phase, usually crystalline, of a non-metallic substance that is liquid or gas at room temperature, such as water, carbon dioxide ice (dry ice), ammonia ice, or methane ice.[1] However, the predominant use of the term ice is for water ice, technically restricted to one of the 15 known crystalline phases of water.

Note that "predominant" does not mean "only". It's quite possible to have, say, methane ice.

Re:Units!

[2names]

Wow, you and the one after you sure do know how to suck all the funny out of things. Thank you for correcting my mistakes.

Re:Units!

[coolsnowmen]

I agree, its ability to be used as a poetic device is always my reason for using a one measurement or another.

Re:Units!

[zippthorne]

The moon has no atmosphere and low gravity. You don't need propellant to get off it, you just need a railroad. Once your stuff is off the moon, you don't really care what the maneuvering propellant is made of either, as long as it can be vaporized and electrically charged.

Re:Units!

[Idarubicin]

For reference, New York City consumes approximately 5 million cubic meters (that's 5 million tons) of water per day.

If we started to use water at that rate right now, we'd exhaust the Moon's supply by sometime this summer.

That said, I would expect Moon dwellers to be more conscious of their water use, and to recycle their wastewater to a much greater extent. The population of the Moon also won't approach that of NYC any time soon.

On the other hand, it's probably not a good idea to assume that we will recover water from the Moon's surface with 100% efficiency. As well, very few New Yorkers are likely to use their tap water as a source of (for example) rocket fuel.

Re:Units!

[Yamata no Orochi]

Is that fluid oz.?

Does beer weigh the same as water?

Re:Units!

[Jiro]

The same reasoning could justify "water pool". Pools can be made out of something other than water, just like ice can be something other than frozen water. Yet we still don't speak of water pools.

Re:Units!

[c6gunner]

Well we would if we were talking about pools on the moon. Context matters.

That should roughly equal

[Ukab the Great]

1,267,327,975,003 pints of beer.

Re:That should roughly equal

[y4ku]

Or for us Russians, 403,361,142,857 handles of vodka.

Re:That should roughly equal

[91degrees]

I very much doubt their estimate was accurate tot the pint.

Re:That should roughly equal

[nsebban]

Definately, but here we're talking about water on the moon. Shouldn't the unit of choice be the "Library of Congress" ?

Re:That should roughly equal

[eleuthero]

How much information can a water molecule hold?

Re:That should roughly equal

[Dracophile]

One-point-three-eight-naught Libraries of Congress on the Wall...

It's ice, you clod!

[93,000]

Solids need to be measured in Volkswagen beetles.

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[OctaviusIII]

Well, a 1967 VW Beetle weighs 840kg, or 0.84 tons. 6*10^8*0.84 = 714,285,714.3 VW Beetles.

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[xaxa]

Well, a 1967 VW Beetle weighs 840kg, or 0.84 tons. 6*10^8*0.84 = 714,285,714.3 VW Beetles.

ITYM 714 megabeetles.

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[Kartoffel]

Yes, but for larger volumes, the cubic school bus is a good alternative unit.

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[skine]

But I'm American.

Is there any way you can compare it to football?

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[Kartoffel]

It's equivalent to 31,700,646,200 ten-gallon Gatorade coolers. If you stacked them on top of one another, it would be enough to go to the moon and back 12 and a half times.

Re:It's ice, you clod!

[Chris Burke]

That's crazy -- how are we going to get the ice from the moon to earth to put in the VW Beetle so we can measure it?

Re:That's great, but....

[Mashdar]

In the spirit of individuality and innovation, I vote we each create our own system of measurements, and use them exclusively. Six billion units of length, and no standard!

Habitable Moon

[TechForensics]

This is great. Now all we need is oxygen and we can live there. Hmmm..... O2 from electrolysis of water, powered by solar?

Sounds like it might now be vastly easier to establish a self-sustaining moon colony.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Mindcontrolled]

I doubt that there will ever be a completely self-sustaining lunar colony. The moon severely lacks in carbon and nitrogen. You need both to replenish lost atmosphere. For complete self-sustenance you also need a source of carbon to form a chemical supply chain. This is also not possible. So you would have to at least import those two elements in sizeable quantities.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Yvanhoe]

A few months ago, the Japanese probe Kaguya/SELENE gave us a map of the numerous uranium deposits on the moon. This is it. Let's go, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR ?

The project Orion got shelved because detonating nukes to propel a spacecraft had too much environmental and political problems, but from the Moon none of these problems are relevant. For a reminder, this projects proposes a spacecraft that could weight 100 000 tons, go at 3% of c through a constant 1g acceleration during 10 days. Let's build a godamn shipyard on the moon !

Re:Habitable Moon

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Tell me again why I'd want to colonize the bottom of a gravity well when sunshine is ubiquitous, water comets are floating about nearby and metallic asteroids are just waiting to be spun, melted with mirrors and mined for metals?

Re:Habitable Moon

[CraftyJack]

O2 from electrolysis of water, powered by solar?

something like that.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Rogerborg]

Sunshine, x rays, cosmic rays. I guess the answer depends on if you want to have kids or not.

Re:Habitable Moon

[nospam007]

"Sounds like it might now be vastly easier to establish a self-sustaining moon colony."

Nonetheless, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Yvanhoe]

On the moon there is no wind to disperse particles, no rain to drain them, no biosphere to harm. You can limit the impact of launches to a specific zone. And anyway, space is radioactive. If you want to build a colony on the moon you anyway have to shield it from solar radiation.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Mindcontrolled]

Tell me again why I'd want to colonize the bottom of a gravity well when sunshine is ubiquitous, water comets are floating about nearby and metallic asteroids are just waiting to be spun, melted with mirrors and mined for metals?

Don't ask me - I didn't come up with the idea, just pointing out the main problem with self-sustainability on the moon. I agree that there is not much reason to go there, except for the heck of it. As you said, the useful resources are somewhere else. I am not sure about the element composition of the asteroid belt, though - as I pointed out above, you absolutely need a decent supply of N and C for the atmosphere, for chemistry, to sustain your plants. Probably a non-trivial amount of S and P, too. Water and metals alone won't cut it. I suppose there should be supplies of it in the asteroids, but I am lacking proper references for it at the moment.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Sir_Lewk]

sunshine is ubiquitous

The moon has days and nights just like the earth. "The dark side of the moon" is just an album.

Re:Habitable Moon

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Um. Thanks for emphasizing the point I was making (i.e. sunshine is ubiquitous, in space, not on the moon.)

Re:Habitable Moon

[sean.peters]

Right, because getting the materials to the moon necessary to 1) mine lots of uranium, and 2) build a hundred thousand ton spacecraft, wouldn't be too expensive or anything. The environmental and political issues are the least of your problems here.

Re:Habitable Moon

[zippthorne]

Bones.

And free station-keeping.

Re:Habitable Moon

[Neoprofin]

Because it's cool?

Re:Habitable Moon

[IronChef]

We'd need a lot of nitrogen too, or some other inert gas. A pure oxygen atmosphere, presumably even at low pressure, is unhealthy and dangerous in the long run. It's hard on the body, and there's the fire hazard. So if we make oxygen from water on the moon, what will we dilute it with?

Re:Habitable Moon

[SEE]

Well, in the case of the Martian gravity well, because you can get additional CHON for your habitat without having to ship it across a few million kilometers of space first. Inefficiencies in recycling and losses due to accident are a lot less serious when you can draw replacements directly from the immediate environment.

But even with this water, no, the Moon still doesn't make any sense compared to orbital space.

Don't mine all of them

[buback]

This is incredible news, but a couple of these craters should be preserved as they are. All that ice has taken billions of years to accumulate, and we should save one or two of the prettiest looking ones for posterity.

That is, once we get there and start chopping up ice on an industrial scale.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Hey, aren't you one of those Greypeace fanatics?

Re:Don't mine all of them

[PhilHibbs]

It's a big rock floating through vacuum. What is there to preserve? There's no ecosystem, no history, no emotional attachment. The only reason I can think of not to use it is that once it's used up, then it's gone, and if you think of an even better way to use it later then it's too late.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

It's not just some big rock; It's the Moon. It's the same Moon that our primate ancestors looked up at in wonder. To say it has no history or emotional impact is profoundly ignorant.

How difficult is it to fence off ONE crater? The water in these craters will become the Blood an Flesh of our childrens' children, and spawn innumerable generations of Moon dwellers. They will surely thank us for saving one of the craters in it's pristine state.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[Bakkster]

It's not just some big rock; It's the Moon. It's the same Moon that our primate ancestors looked up at in wonder. To say it has no history or emotional impact is profoundly ignorant.

The craters you want to preserve are only visible by satellites orbiting the moon's poles. There is not emotional attachment to them.

If you want something worth preserving, try the Sea of Tranquility, or even prevent anything visible to the naked eye on the side of the moon facing us. Some small craters where we can't see them mean nothing to us compared with the moon and its more recognizable features.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[PhilHibbs]

The presence or absence of water in the craters has had no impact on human history - but I guess you're right that it's *going* to. I suppose it boils down (no pun intended) to how many craters this ice is spread among - if it's thousands, then fencing off a few is an option. If it's three big ones, then good luck getting people to forego that much usable resource.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

Some day people are going to go into those craters and i can only imagine what they'll find.
We have no idea if the ice is just a flat sheet or if it's formed into giant snowflake like ice crystals.
what if, when we get there, it looks like this cave discovered in Mexico:
http://www.crystalinks.com/crystalsmexico.jpg

I fully agree that the ice is valuable, and should be mined. I'm just saying that preserving ONE crater will be even more valuable, in the fullness of time.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

actually it will probably look more like this:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/frost2/Tape.jpg

Only bigger, which I think would be pretty impressive and worth saving.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

Yep, exactly. Hell, 5 years ago we didn't think there was ANY water. It's discovery is already starting to have a historical impact.

And yeah, I'm only saying it so that people THINK about the potential impact mining would cause. We Americans could easily have dammed up the Grand Canyon, but I'm certainly glad that we didn't.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[Bakkster]

I fully agree that the ice is valuable, and should be mined. I'm just saying that preserving ONE crater will be even more valuable, in the fullness of time.

Right, but that argument stands apart from the 'same moon our ancestors saw' argument. I think it's totally reasonable to protect some craters from a geological and scientific point of view (beyond the fact that international treaties prevent exploiting lunar resources), but not from a purely nostalgic point of view (since we haven't seen these craters long enough to be nostalgic).

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

:-) yeah
BTW, have you signed my petition to save the Moon Bats?

Re:Don't mine all of them

[Starlet Monroe]

It's a big rock floating through vacuum. What is there to preserve? There's no ecosystem, no history, no emotional attachment.

There's no ecosystem at the time scale which we're accustomed to using to look at things. That doesn't mean there's no ecosystem.

Just sayin'.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[buback]

I was just saying that you could call the Earth a 'rock in a vacuum' too.

And I was trying to say that the moon has historical importance in general, just like Antarctica has historical importance, even before people set foot there.

And I'm also saying that polar craters WILL have historical importance, eventually.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[Ginger Unicorn]

There's plenty of history - a lot of information about the evolution of the solar system is encoded in the geology of the moon.

Re:Don't mine all of them

[PhilHibbs]

Good point.

It's a start

[jimbobborg]

Now how much water is in the South Pole?

Re:It's a start

[elrous0]

Way more than on the moon--and it's got free oxygen, survivable atmospheric pressure, and survivable levels of solar radiation to boot. It's also a helluva lot easier to get to the than the moon.

Sure, the moon will prove less attractive than Antarctica to any rational human settlers, but who DOESN'T want to settle in Antarctica right? Anyone?

Re:It's a start

[Rogerborg]

Ah, the old "Let's finish colonising the earth before we try anywhere harder" argument? Logic... logic is the beginning of wisdom.

Re:It's a start

[NeoSkandranon]

Read At the Mountains of Madness :)

Re:It's a start

[greenguy]

I'm pretty sure the GP was asking about the moon's South Pole.

Re:It's a start

[DerekLyons]

No, just pointing out the lack of a rush to colonize Antarctica as well as the lack of any rational reason for doing so. (Other than national virtual penis enlargement.)

Ice Planet

[KnownIssues]

So that Ice Planet movie isn't looking so silly after all, is it?

Won't last long!

[cashman73]

It'll be stable as water ice until we start to colonize, and then "lunar warming" will set in, which will thaw it out and turn the moon into a gigantic swimming pool! Or, at least that's what Al Gore tells me,. . .

Re:Good!

[Pojut]

But in all seriousness, if you dropped a 600 million metric ton ice cub into the ocean, what would happen?

...you would water it down? ::rimshot::

Re:Good!

[CrimsonAvenger]

But in all seriousness, if you dropped a 600 million metric ton ice cub into the ocean, what would happen?

Well, the iceberg that just broke off of Antarctica was about 1000 times as large, if that helps.

And if it doesn't help, assuming that it would cause about as much effect as tossing a normal ice cube into an Olympic-sized swimming pool wouldn't be too far off. Though the normal ice-cube in the Olympic-sized pool would cool things down a bit more....

Coca-Cola announces moon base

[Orga]

Space elevator to be constructed to ship new "Lunar Juice" brand drinking water back to Earth for sale at your local quickie mart.

Re:That's great, but....

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There were no communists around at the time when the first people got the idea to put the decimal number system that we have to a good use. But I will translate it for you: The volume mentioned is over two billion koku.

When was all this figured out?

[wandazulu]

I guess it would have been after 1972, because I'd like to think that NASA would have sent some Apollo astronauts to collect some ice samples while they still had the chance. Or was it always known, theoretically, and for whatever reason they decided it could wait, as everyone assumed that if Apollo 21 didn't get around to it, Apollo 86 would.

Sigh. I really miss those days.

Re:When was all this figured out?

[jo_ham]

None of the Apollo landing sites were anywhere near the poles. It's more complex (or more fuel dependent) to go into a polar orbit from my understanding, making it tough to put a human-occupied lander there (compared to putting it down near the equator).

Re:When was all this figured out?

[Colonel Korn]

I guess it would have been after 1972, because I'd like to think that NASA would have sent some Apollo astronauts to collect some ice samples while they still had the chance. Or was it always known, theoretically, and for whatever reason they decided it could wait, as everyone assumed that if Apollo 21 didn't get around to it, Apollo 86 would.

Sigh. I really miss those days.

At least RTFS!

"After analyzing data from a radar device aboard last year's Indian Chandrayaan-1"

Chandrayaan-1 only went up a year and a half ago, so yes, this was figured out after 1972.

Re:When was all this figured out?

[Bakkster]

Not to mention that these craters receive no sunlight, making the environment much colder and therefor harsher to both humans and equipment.

Let's go again before I die!

[xanthos]

It's been almost 40 freakin years since someone has been on the moon! I remember it because I am an old guy but most of the planet wasn't born yet when it happened. There is so much we don't know yet and 40 years of questions to be answered yet. We have spent more time on the surface of Mars, thanks to Spirit and Opportunity than we have the moon. If only we could find a way to ensure it would be profitable! Then we could make the dim witted people without enough brains to get a real job that we elect to government take notice.

(yes I feel better now, thank you.)

Re:Let's go again before I die!

[Runaway1956]

"most of the planet wasn't born yet when it happened"

Yes, there's a joke in there. No, I'm not touching it. ;^)

But, I'll admit: I watched all of the moon landings on television, live. Maybe that's why I'm not going to bash you with the planet's birth. Us old bastards gotta stick together.

Re:Good!

[elrous0]

But in all seriousness, if you dropped a 600 million metric ton ice cub into the ocean, what would happen?

The first thing that would happen is scientists all over the world would ask you how you managed to marshal the incredible resources needed for such a feat, followed by questions of how you managed to get it through the atmosphere without it breaking up. Next would come the numerous islanders and coastal dwellers looking to string you up from the nearest tree for wiping out large swaths of the coast and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Daily Show covered this.

[CFBMoo1]

I just got done watching the Daily Show about this.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-1-2010/neil-degrasse-tyson

Re:oh fantastic

[PhilHibbs]

I guess they are talking about mass.

Re:That's great, but....

[91degrees]

About 2 and a half billion hogsheads.

Iceberg analogy

[handy_vandal]

Can someone please express "600 million metric tons of water ice" in terms of "an iceberg the size of [insert nation or state or island here]" ...?

Re:Iceberg analogy

[handy_vandal]

As it happens, my mother is dead. I watched it happen. You should try it sometime.

Re:Iceberg analogy

[Yamata no Orochi]

My parents are deeaaaad!

Exploitation

[ianare]

How long until some corporation decides they'll mine all that ice, space-ship it down to Earth, and sell it to yuppies the world over. Moon water! Cures cancer, gets you laid! Get yer Moon water naow !!

Re:Exploitation

[Kenoli]

Shipping water from the moon to the earth would be pretty ironic.

Re:Exploitation

[ianare]

Because shipping it from Fiji to NYC isn't ?

Indefinitely stable water?

[lymond01]

These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely.

Just give us a few years. I can see the ads:

"Experience our jetted tubs in just 1/6th Earth's gravity -- like lying on a table of water."

"Engineers needed to build ice-melting machines to cool Lunar Fission Reactor."

"Don't forget to flush!"

Re:NOT 600 Million... only 600

[vampire_baozi]

FTFA: 1.3 trillion pounds, or 600 million tons. Dividing by 2*10^3 shouldn't be that difficult.

Then again, this is Slashdot, nobody ever reads TFA!

Unfortunately

[sconeu]

We're not going there anytime soon... at least from the US.

fatal flaw:

[Thud457]

But the prisoners are resistant to having all the water extracted from them, so you have an unsustainable, open system.

And assuming you get over that hurdle, wouldn't you have to ship up more kg of prisoners than you ship down kg of wheat? Or could you get close to a 1:1 ratio if you freeze-dried the wheat to recover moisture before shipment?

Re:fatal flaw:

[cduffy]

But the prisoners are resistant to having all the water extracted from them, so you have an unsustainable, open system.

Why would you need to extract water from the prisoners? You're getting labor out of them, so they have far more value alive. When they die, certainly, there's much to reuse -- but "returning to the soil" (as water and fertilizer) has a great deal of precedence, so I hardly see why it would be objectionable.

As for it being an open system, quite true -- the discovery that the readily available water would run out and they'd find themselves starving in less than a decade was a key factor in Heinlein's prisoners' revolt.

And assuming you get over that hurdle, wouldn't you have to ship up more kg of prisoners than you ship down kg of wheat?

Pardon? Set up a self-sustaining economy (water and energy being the two ongoing inputs -- the former being a limited natural resource on the moon and the latter being easy to generate) and the prisoners can feed themselves using the food they grow and water they mine, raise families, build more tunnels as-needed for additional living space, and otherwise provide for themselves. There's a bit of handwaving here regarding availability of other plant nutrients -- would need to do research on composition of moon rocks and cost to import any materials which aren't locally available -- but inasmuch as we're limiting our discussion to water, I don't see the feasibility concerns.

Re:NOT 600 Million... only 600

[Rockoon]

TFA says its 1.3 trillion lb's, which is 6 orders of magnitude larger than that figure you pulled out of your ass.

Great...

[DoofusOfDeath]

If you thought bottled water from Fiji was wasteful...

Re:NOT 600 Million... only 600

[jimboindeutchland]

TFA says 1.3 TRILLION lb's. So add 6 zeros to the end of your estimate.

Re:NOT 600 Million... only 600

[buckeyeguy]

from the article (remember, reading is FUNdamental....):

Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.

The great thing is, once it's being used, the moon craters provide convenient locations for wastewater impound lagoons; cheaper than 100% recycling.

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[grumbel]

Measuring water as weight seems so totally illogical.

In the metric system: 1 liter of water == 1 kg.

Re:NOT 600 Million... only 600

[grumbel]

The 1.3 million pounds seem to be wrong and fixed in the press release, as it right now lists 1.3 trillion pounds.

Who gives a crap

[m0s3m8n]

Like we will ever be going there in our lifetimes. NASA has effectively had it's balls cut off. When the people vote themselves Bread and Circuses (i.e. "spread the wealth around"), all useful discretionary spending will get diverted to social programs to keep them happy.

Re:Who gives a crap

[c6gunner]

The short of it is, I'm a science guy and I can see the benefit in taking money from pure science and potentially moving it to buying everyone a new TV.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Who gives a crap

[BeanThere]

So do something about it.

Re:Who gives a crap

[painandgreed]

Get over it. We were never going to Mars or the Moon again anyway. It was all just PR from the Bush administration. Did you really expect that giving NASA the goal of getting to Mars via the moon while not altering their budget significantly would ever actually result in anything? It was all just part of a Presidential speech to placate the liberals with a pipe dream.

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[Comboman]

That's the beauty of the metric system: 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram (and can be contained in a cube that measures 10 cm on each side). 1 metric ton = 1000 kilograms. Therefore 600 million metric tons = 600 billion kilograms = 600 billion liters (approx 158 billion US gallons).

Re:Good!

[Waffle Iron]

But in all seriousness, if you dropped a 600 million metric ton ice cub into the ocean, what would happen?

If dropped from the altitude of the moon? Let's see:

$ units
You have: 0.5 * 600e6 tons * (11 km/s)^2
You want: megaton tnt
        * 7870.6515

I'd guess the result would be catastrophic tsunamis and a few years of disruptive climate effects.

Big deal

[BamaPookie]

I had that much on my driveway after the snowpocalype.

Forgive the skepticism

[Calsar]

Obama cancels the plans to return to the moon and about a month later vast quantities of water are suddenly discovered on the moon. I used to work for NASA and while I don't think they would lie, the possibility of water on the moon may have gotten blown out of proportion into there are tons of water on the moon to support someone's funding.

Re:Forgive the skepticism

[FleaPlus]

Obama cancels the plans to return to the moon and about a month later vast quantities of water are suddenly discovered on the moon.

You seem to have a common misconception: NASA only cancelled Constellation, which was a horribly overbudget and behind schedule program designed to build two new rockets which wouldn't have been able to take people to the Moon until sometime in the late 2030s. The newly announced program boosts NASA's budget, and places an emphasis on lowering the cost of spaceflight to LEO and building the technologies needed for sustainable beyond-Earth exploration.

In situ resource utilization (e.g. lunar ice extraction) is one of the new technologies emphasized in the new plans. The old Constellation plans largely defunded this kind of research, as the funds were needed to help prevent the rocket building from getting further behind schedule. The new plans call for a near-term in-space resource extraction demonstrator:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf

Flagship Technology Demonstrations

Projects selected as in-space, flagship demonstrations will be significant in scale, and offer high potential to demonstrate new capability and reduce the cost of future exploration missions. These missions will demonstrate such critical technologies as in-orbit propellant transfer and storage, inflatable modules, automated/autonomous rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, and other next generation capabilities key to sustainably exploring deep space.

In FY 2011, NASA will initiate several Flagship Technology Demonstrators, each with an expected lifecycle cost in the $400 million to $1 billion range, over a lifetime of five years or less, with the first flying no later than 2014. In pursuit of these goals, international, commercial, and other government agency partners will be actively pursued as integrated team members where appropriate. ...

In FY 2011, NASA will initiate demonstration projects in the areas of in situ resource utilization (ISRU), autonomous precision landing and hazard avoidance, and advanced in-space propulsion, leading to demonstrations on either robotic precursor or flagship missions.

In Situ Resource Utilization: NASA will fund research in a variety of ISRU activities aimed at using lunar, asteroidal, and Martian materials to produce oxygen and extract water from ice reservoirs. A flight experiment to demonstrate lunar resource prospecting, characterization, and extraction will be considered for testing on a future Flagship Technology Demonstration or robotic precursor exploration mission. Concepts to produce fuel, oxygen, and water from the Martian atmosphere and from subsurface ice will also be explored.

NASA's plans also call for propellant depots in low-Earth orbit, and likely EML-1, a Lagrange point which allows relatively easy access to the Moon, Near-Earth Asteroids, and Mars. Once lunar ice extraction is demonstrated and an EML-1 propellant depot is established, a natural progression is to have automated processing plants on the Moon produce H2 and O2 fuel from lunar ice, which can then get shipped up to the EML-1 depot making access to the inner solar system much easier. The old plan suppressed this sort of research in favor of in-house rocket-building, while the new plan enables sustainable space exploration.

water ice

[skroops]

After eating my daily hunger-food I like to wash it down with a nice soda-drink cooled off with water-ice. It makes my stomach-digestion easier.

Re:water ice

[Opyros]

"Water ice" isn't redundant in this context; it's used by astronomers to distinguish frozen water from other ices, such as frozen CO2.

How much water is this relative to standard use?

[kfogel]

So I'd love to know how much water, say, New York City uses in a given time period. Anyone know? Like many of us, I don't know what "600 million metric tons of water" means in practice. Comparing it to some more meaningful figure, like a major city's water usage over one year, would help a lot.

Bottled water industry

[Temujin_12]

Following the long tradition of bottling and distributing a substance already readily available to the general public, the bottled water industry has extended their supply chains to include the highly demanded Lunar water.

Re:Bottled water industry

[LeadSongDog]

Following the long tradition of bottling and distributing a substance already readily available to the general public, the bottled water industry has extended their supply chains to include the highly demanded Lunar water.

Update 1: Initial public concerns over resource depletion were allayed when it became clear that Coca-Cola Corp's Lunar Water(tm) is to be prepared from terrestrial tapwater using patented fluorine-removal filters, while PepsiCo's AquaLuna(tm) is to be recycled from the orca tanks at MarineLand and SeaWorld.

Idiot

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yeah, it is not like the Chinese, Russians, Indians or even the EU agency wouldn't call the NASA out on this. There is being a skeptic and there is being a blithering idiot. Guess what group you fall into?

Finally, a solution to our water shortages!

[noidentity]

This is wonderful news. If we could find a way to bring that water to Earth, we could solve all these water shortage problems people are always going on about.

No easy comparison . . . life support systems

[StefanJ]

It's easy to look up per-capita water usage, and the amount required just to stay alive, etc., but this doesn't give a full picture of the amount of water a person "uses" because you have to take into account his share of industrial and agricultural usage.

When planning a moon base, you'd have to be able to figure these things out way in advance. You'd need some for personal consumption (drinking, cooking, washing), for cooling, for running hydroponic farms and O2 cracking plants, and etc.

You could then figure out how much of this could be recycled (it would be very hard to get 100% efficiency) and the waste due to the extraction process to arrive at how many people the ice deposits could support and for how long.

(There would be economies of scale, and undoubtedly the amount of investment in the plant would go a long way in determining recycling efficiency.)

Once all this is figured out, you could figure out how much of the water could be spared for use as reaction mass. You could work out a deal of sorts; "sell" water to a deep-space exploration company in exchange for a promise of non-water volatiles (nitrogen, ammonia, methane, helium, etc.), mined from outer moons, for delivery at a later date. These volatiles would be very valuable to industries on the moon.

What other purposes?

[sean.peters]

Water is one of the key things you'd need to run a settlement for other purposes

What other purposes? I've never seen any convincing rationale for wanting to settle the moon. But let's dispose of some rejoinders right up front, shall we?

• But the moon has lots of He3! Answer: call me when we've figured out a use for He3. Fusion power: 20 years away, always will be.
• But we could manufacture stuff on the moon and sell it! Answer: a non-starter. Consider that building factories is really expensive. Now consider that you'd have to build this factory, then lift it 250k miles - straight up. And you'd have to bring a bunch of people. And all their life support gear. And housing. And food (or hydroponic facilities or whatever). And at least some minimal personal possessions. Add up the weight of all that. Now remember that it costs like $10k/kg just to get to freaking low earth orbit. There is absolutely no way you could ever recover the costs even to get everything there that you'd need, not to mention your operating costs. If there was some magical, hugely lucrative product that had to be made on the moon, that would be one thing... but there isn't. The moon is a big chunk of the same rocks the earth is made of.
• Space hotels! Answer: also a non-starter, for much the same reason. Hotels are expensive to build on earth, and to put one on the moon you'd need to get it there, at exorbitant rates. Plus all your staff. Given the costs of getting people into space, you're talking about a market of, what, a few people per year? You couldn't support a hotel ON EARTH with that kind of occupancy rate.
• We need to establish a second home in case earth gets wiped out! Answer: probably a good idea, but good luck getting today's taxpayers to fund an absolutely ludicrously expensive project (both in capital expenditures and operating costs) that has absolutely no chance whatsoever of benefiting them personally. While I think space colonization would be really a cool thing to do, I wouldn't actually vote for doing it - it's simply too expensive for what we'd get out of it in any reasonable period.
• We need practice for colonizing Mars! Answer: 1) Ok, so why do we need to colonize Mars? All the same objections apply. 2) Even if we did, why not just go straight to Mars and learn there? It would be cheaper in the long run. But seriously, you're never going to get past part 1).

Look, I read all the Heinlein books too. They were great. And colonizing space would be really cool. But there has to be some kind of economically feasible way to do it, and there just isn't.

Re:What other purposes?

[ColdWetDog]

Go 'way, you. We were having fun until you came along.

Killjoy. (Snuggles back with his dog eared copy of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".)

Re:What other purposes?

[cduffy]

But we could manufacture stuff on the moon and sell it

If you're manufacturing things on the moon for use on Earth, it's harder to justify, yes. If you're manufacturing things on the moon for use outside the gravity well, that's a different story; ship your production equipment out of the gravity well once, and then you don't need to continually lift your finished goods.

Even if we did, why not just go straight to Mars and learn there? It would be cheaper in the long run.

Kill your colonists even once for something which could have been salvageable if it weren't for the distances involved, and never mind the funding and engineering problems involved in trying the more ambitious project from the get-go -- you've lost massive amounts of public support as well.

Do you have any analysis to point to to the effect that using the moon as a lower-risk, lower-cost testbed environment is counterproductive in this case?

Re:What other purposes?

[sean.peters]

If you're manufacturing things on the moon for use on Earth, it's harder to justify, yes. If you're manufacturing things on the moon for use outside the gravity well, that's a different story; ship your production equipment out of the gravity well once, and then you don't need to continually lift your finished goods.

You have a chicken/egg problem here. The problem is that no one has any use for finished goods in space. No one lives there, remember? At least to get started, you'd have to do a lot of shipping back and forth to the earth, and you can't, so to speak, get that project off the ground - it's too expensive.

Do you have any analysis to point to to the effect that using the moon as a lower-risk, lower-cost testbed environment is counterproductive in this case?

You mean, aside from where I pointed out that colonizing the moon costs a ridiculous amount of money and doesn't get you anything? And you haven't even addressed the main objection, which is that colonizing Mars is just as useless as colonizing the moon, only even more ludicrously expensive due to the great distance involved.

Re:What other purposes?

[cduffy]

You have a chicken/egg problem here. The problem is that no one has any use for finished goods in space. No one lives there, remember?

Consumer goods, certainly.

On the other hand -- equipment and infrastructure for asteroid mining, large-scale solar power collection systems (for beaming to Earth, or powering light-sail-based probes, or generating antimatter [see analysis by Robert Forward on feasibility of this one -- he makes a strong case that antimatter generation could become a productive activity if treated as a profit-driven engineering problem rather than strictly the domain of "big science"]) are rather different activities.

You mean, aside from where I pointed out that colonizing the moon costs a ridiculous amount of money and doesn't get you anything? And you haven't even addressed the main objection, which is that colonizing Mars is just as useless as colonizing the moon, only even more ludicrously expensive due to the great distance involved.

No doubt that's true, but that doesn't stop people (including, for some reason, the most recent US president hailing from the supposedly anti-big-government political party) from setting it as a goal regardless. If we take it as given that going to Mars is a goal (never mind the rationality thereof), then using the moon as a waypoint makes sense.

was changed, quietly...

[meekg]

Well they changed it quietly later, it said Million before. now it's compatible, but it is pretty out of whack from a physical point of view.
Consider - 60 craters, 10 km by 10 km, this is a layer of ice 1 m thick. really?
in another article, http://www.spaceagepub.com/pdfs/Shevchenko_1.pdf, the area of the craters is estimated as 50 km2.
I'm waiting to see how this one plays out.
I've got my money on Million being right.

Re:How much water is this relative to standard use

[musicalmicah]

New York City uses 1.086 billion gallons of water a day, so with a weight of 8.35 lbs/gallon (3.78749629 kg/gallon), that's 4,113,220.97 metric tonnes a day.

So we're talking the amount of water New York City uses (directly, not indirectly, since we're not including the water required for its food needs) in 145 days.

Re:How much water is this relative to standard use

[c6gunner]

So I'd love to know how much water, say, New York City uses in a given time period

That depends on what you mean by "uses". Water isn't like oil - it doesn't get burned up or destroyed when you "use" it. That's why I always laugh when people tell me to take shorter showers "in order to conserve water". By reducing the amount of water you use you're not really conserving water, you're conserving energy needed to move that water around and to clean the resultant sewage.

To answer your question, though - according to wikipedia, the public water supply in the US used about 163 million cubic meters of water per day in 2000. That's equivalent to about 163 million metric tonnes of water. However, that's only 21% of total consumption. That means that the US as a whole, in the year 2000, was using about 776 million cubic meters per day.

None of these figures would translate well to a possible lunar colony, though. Water consumption rates vary wildly between nations (and even just between provinces or states). The US uses twice as much on average as typical European nations. Consumption rates on the moon would be lower still, and water-reclamation would be mandatory. Water wouldn't be wasted on watering lawns, or golf courses. Agriculture would likely by hydroponic, which would require less water "usage" (the water cycle for hydroponics is a closed loop). I'd imagine that we'd come up with a more efficient system for disposing of solid human waste, too.

Hope that helps.

Aside from the small consideration

[sean.peters]

... that wheat raised on the moon and then sent back to earth would cost about a zillion times more than just growing it on earth, I can't see any objection at all. Stuff you need to grow wheat on earth: land, rain, fertilizer, tractors, farmers, grain elevators, trucks for distribution. Stuff you need to grow wheat on the moon: land (plus air, plus a dome to hold the air in), water (that you have to pipe from the poles to the equatorial regions where the sun actually shines), fertilizer (that you have to ship from earth, as the moon is not particularly rich in fixed nitrogen), tractors (that have to be shipped up from earth), farmers (that have to be shipped up from earth, and require an enormous amount of life support equipment), grain elevators (that have to be assembled on site from materials shipped up from earth), rockets for distribution.

but inasmuch as we're limiting our discussion to water, I don't see the feasibility concerns

I'm planning on building a 10,000 square foot waterfront mansion in Manhattan - but inasmuch as we're limiting our discussion to building materials, I don't see the feasibility concerns. Seriously, dude, water is the least of the feasibility problems here.

Re:Aside from the small consideration

[cduffy]

As with any interesting challenge, finding reasons it can't be done is easy. Finding ways it could be done is much more interesting. Consider taking the other approach, eh? I'm not saying that either I or Heinlein have come anywhere near to proposing solutions to the challenges at hand, but let's start with what we've got:

land (plus air, plus a dome to hold the air in)

Underground. No need for a dome to hold in air. Less concern about radiation. Far smaller exposed surfaces where holding air is an issue.

water (that you have to pipe from the poles to the equatorial regions where the sun actually shines)

Or you can pipe the electricity from the areas where the sun shines, since you're doing your farming underground. Or you can use a nuclear power source. Wasteful, sure -- but electricity is cheap.

fertilizer (that you have to ship from earth, as the moon is not particularly rich in fixed nitrogen)

May well be a showstopper; I haven't done research on the subject. Keep in mind that we're looking at a timescale where -- even if there aren't major technical improvements in lift vehicles -- privatization will have brought costs down substantially.

tractors (that have to be shipped up from earth)

If we're running a penal colony, substituting manual labor for machines is not necessarily a blocker. Keep in mind that our manual labor force is a profit center -- we're not paying them for their work, we're getting paid to keep them confined. Yes, this means we need to spend some time re-engineering solutions for which fast project completion and safety were picked as the priorities to instead have low cost as their primary driver. Engineering problems exist to be solved.

farmers (that have to be shipped up from earth, and require an enormous amount of life support equipment)

Not so much individual (as opposed to strictly large-scale) life support equipment required for folks who spend their lives underground. If one only transports folks with life sentences, that also reduces the care needed to ensure their ability to eventually re-acclimate to full gravity.

grain elevators (that have to be assembled on site from materials shipped up from earth)

See above again about not needing to use modern farming techniques if we have (effectively) slave labor on hand.

rockets for distribution

Chemical rockets for bringing things down? Seems excessively wasteful, when just giving a shove with a mass driver and letting gravity handle the rest would do. Shipping things down the gravity well, particularly when they don't need to stay within human-survivable G levels or to use a particularly fast or direct route home, is a much easier problem than shipping things up.

Again -- fiction, sure... but I find it far more interesting and entertaining to look at the ideas which are salvageable or plausible rather than those that aren't.

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[coolmoose25]

It's also the beauty of the Imperial system. 1 pound of water = 1 pint... and since beer is mostly water, 1 pint of beer is also 1 pound, and pretty much you can by a beer in England for 1 pound of money... Beat that, Metric System!

I'm a lone voice here, but...

[rickb928]

... After RTFA, I was a little concerned;

- The presumption is that the stuff they actually can't see doesn't 'seem' like anything else, except it does 'seem' like water. So they think it's water. I'm a little concerned they went out on a limb here, but nothing that couldn't be settled by sending up a rover and tasting it. Right?

- All the ideas that colonizing the Moon if for no other reason than to launch from there seem to think the Moon has, among other things, minimal problems with waste, pollution, and climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. We've sent precious little there, and already thre are concerns about potential pollution and abuse .

By all means, let's get up there and mine out all the water, uranium, and silica before someone else does! Sure!

ps- I think there have been complaints about how we have treated the Moon and other objects.

sublimation

[wonkavader]

Can someone tell me why the ice doesn't just turn to gas and vent to space?

Re:sublimation

[FleaPlus]

Can someone tell me why the ice doesn't just turn to gas and vent to space?

It's really, really cold in these craters -- they're actually some of the coldest spots in the solar system, at -400F (-240 degrees celsius or a little higher than 30 Kelvin). Ice can remain there for billions of years without sublimation. Heck, you could probably store liquid nitrogen in these craters.

Re:sublimation

[pclminion]

Sublimation is not spontaneous. It's a phase change, which requires an energy input. No light is hitting this water, so where would the energy come from? Even if the ice WAS sublimating, in order to "vent" into space it would have to reach the escape velocity of the Moon. At a temperature of 30 kelvin, a water molecule's most probable speed is only 166 meters per second. The escape velocity is 2380 meters per second. That water isn't going anywhere.

Re:sublimation

[Terwin]

You could try storing liquid nitrogen there, but it would no doubt get hard pretty fast...
"Liquid nitrogen freezes at 63 K"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen

Re:sublimation

[wonkavader]

Thanks!

Re:sublimation

[wonkavader]

Thank you!

Tell me why...

[sean.peters]

... I'd want to mine the asteroids for metals, when I can get all the same stuff on earth, only a lot cheaper?

Re:Tell me why...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Well, if you were already living in space, and didn't want to pay the gravity lifting price, you'd look at mining the free floating stuff.

Is this...

[GeekLove]

...in earth weight or moon weight?

Re:Good!

[rbanffy]

Well... If it left the Moon at lunar escape velocity and came straight to Earth accelerating at 1g, it would make a remarkable splash.

That clinches it

[ThatsNotPudding]

The Moon Shall Rise Again.

I hope it's grape flavor

[kriston]

I hope it's grape flavor water ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_ice

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[AstrumPreliator]

Not quite. They're talking about water ice here. Water ice is less dense than liquid water. So 600 million metric tons of water ice = 600 billion kilograms of water ice = 6.52 x 10^11 liters of water ice.

I know what you were trying to say, but it doesn't work for water ice, just liquid water. Just thought I'd correct that minor mistake ;).

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[Yamata no Orochi]

More like 1 kg of water = 1 liter.

Re:Good!

[Lithdren]

You'd tick off the dolphins.

Re:Why do people measure water as weight?

[pclminion]

One pint of water is only approximately one pound. See Google. In fact, the amount by which it is off is the same factor by which the fluid ounce and the weight ounce differ. Damn whoever made them different.

The rhyme I was taught is "A gallon of water's 8 pounds and a quarter," and even that isn't exactly right either.

Re:How much water is this relative to standard use

[grumbel]

Biosphere 2 seems to have used 6 * 10^6 liters in its water cycle to sustain 8 peoples, since Biosphere 2 was a closed system it is much closer to a moon base then average water consumption in New York, as it includes agriculture, animals and all that stuff. Assuming no optimizations that would be enough for 8 million people in a moon colony, not that bad.

CPR = circular polarization ratio

[cyn1c77]

It's customary to type the acronym in parentheses immediately after the phrase so that the reader doesn't have to sit there and reread the blurb a few times to try to decipher what CPR stands for.

No plan to return

[amightywind]

It is great that there is water at the moon's polls, but now there is no plan to return. Obama rashly killed Constellation. But the world should take heart, America is no longer a space power, but the labor unions are doing well.

Re:No plan to return

[FleaPlus]

It is great that there is water at the moon's polls, but now there is no plan to return.

False. See my other comment: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1568358&cid=31331994

Re:No plan to return

[amightywind]

I see some vapid assertions about technology development. You recite liberal talking points faithfully, but there is no plan. The fact is in 6 months the US will have no access to space for the foreseeable future. Nice try.

so that's about the volume of Hetch Hetchy

[cathector]

according to wikipedia, Hetch Hetchy reservoir in california holds about 440,000 cubic decameters of water.
440,000 decameters^3 in liters = 440,000,000,000 liters
= 440,000,000,000 kilograms
= 440,000,000 metric tons of water

so the moon water estimate of 600,000,000 metric tons is about 1.4 x as large as Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
Great for a research or industrial outpost for a couple decades, but small potatoes for popular colonization.

Re:Good!

[DaFallus]

Wow, not one person, mods included, appears to have caught the Futurama references... for shame