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Europe Plans To Drill the Moon For Oxygen and Water by 2025 (fortune.com)
The European Space Agency hopes to be mining the moon for water and oxygen in six years' time. From a report: The agency took a big step toward this ambition by signing a deal with launch provider ArianeGroup on Monday. The one-year contract will see the company examine the possibility of mining regolith -- lunar soil and rock fragments that can yield oxygen and water, which could be very handy if you're trying to put a base on the moon. The mission would use an Ariane 64 launch vehicle. The European Space Agency (ESA) has already directed ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, to develop the craft, and its first test flight is anticipated in 2020. As for the lunar lander, that would come from the German startup PTScientists (which entertainingly stands for "Part-Time Scientists") -- the same outfit that aims to put the first mobile network on the moon.
State financing is needed for ESA, since all the customers have left for SpaceX....
What about the POLAR bears on the moon?
I guess they better get busy or this won't happen.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, on the moon, their numbers will remain flat. On Earth however, their numbers have tripled so I think they'll be OK.
We are our own.
cheese is melting,,, fondue?
We know the Earth is flat, now the Moon is too?
Oh no, have they heard the tale of "The Time Machine"
Very much bad-ness has been predicted, yes?
Moon cracks...smash becomes.
Big mistake. They should have gone with SpaceX. They have a new stainless steel rocket in development already. Plus they have the lowest launch costs in the world. Yes, I live in the same fantasy land as the ESA does.
Aubrey Cutie for "oxygen" too. Ain't gonna happen either.
Continuing the new Slashdot's tradition of using crappiest possible links that monetize for the site owner I see. Here is an article that actually has useful coverage of this.
This is proposal for a study yet to be done, which if actually funded and carried out would to some sort of extraction demonstration on the Moon. So we are several steps removed from any actual "mining the Moon" with this.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Robots donâ(TM)t need water and air or paychecks. Thereâ(TM)s probably more valuable things to mine and ship back to earth like energy and metals. They would only be replaced by computers and robots.
You don't understand: we have to go to space. It is our manifest destiny. Just like we discovered the New World, we will continue to explore out in the Universe. It is the only way ahead. You don't want to be stuck on this rock stuck in a gravity well when the asteroid hits do you?
You don't understand: we have to go to space. It is our manifest destiny. Just like we discovered the New World, we will continue to explore out in the Universe. It is the only way ahead. You don't want to be stuck on this rock stuck in a gravity well when the asteroid hits do you?
And because its more Star Trek like.
The European Union has succumbed to the same pie-in-the-sky space-nuttery that bankrupted the Soviet Union, and will see similar results. Mankind was born on Earth, and thankfully will never spread to plague the rest of the universe.
Bipolar Nazi dinosaur lizard people could be hiding just under the surface. There should be a movie soon about that. It could made movies grate again. Litretally.
Are there any concerns of what moving tons of mass over time from our moon to the Earth would do to the orbits?
Removing it from the moon to use elsewhere in space would change things too right?
Cause it seems like exactly the kind of shortsightedness that's caused a lot of our current man made environmental problems.
I get this is a "300 year" problem but like I said, shortsighted.
How much weight, in Ice, will be removed before it impacts the tides on Earth?
They are already extinct. From the Whales on the moon.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seriously? WTF does this have to do with going to space? Nothing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The west needs to invest into robots that can do this on the moon, mars, and esp on earth. We have a need of robots to lower labor and access difficult to reach places at lower costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Right. And Star Trek is from the 1960s so it should be really easy to do by now.
... and the Moon.
Dumb bastards. The US could have been a contendah. STELLA!!!
Had Waxahachie gone through, the world's leading scientists would be gathered in Texas. Imagine all the ancillary economic benefits.
We would have mining colonies on the Moon manufacturing fuel and launching rockets from 1/6th gravity.
Fuck that.
Let's create jobs with the goddam war machine, right?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If they are going to the moon to look for water and oxygen will they need to take Africans Pakistani's Mexicans homosexuals bisexuals transsexuals and fluid genders and a separate department for Muslims and if so can they build a spaceship that big?
P.S. is a LGB something something letters a schizophrenic with multiple personalities? Are they all the letters at the same time?
P.P.S. if Brexit people are not allowed who will pay for it? Italy? Greece? Spain? the yellow vests? or Deutsche bank, the most indebted bank in the world. If Brexit is speeded up and they leave before 2070 does it mean the British will pay for it? Water can also be a man's name so will they have to call water just w to avoid offending women
Europe couldn't even scramble planes to bomb Libya...and they want to try to do something in space again? https://www.theguardian.com/wo... https://www.nytimes.com/2011/0... "Libya has been a war in which some of the Atlantic alliance’s mightiest members did not participate, or did not participate with combat aircraft, like Spain and Turkey. ...the French finally pulled back their sole nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for overdue repairs and Italy withdrew its aircraft carrier to save money. Only eight of the 28 allies engaged in combat, and most ran out of ammunition, having to buy, at cost, ammunition stockpiled by the United States."
Interesting logic, Europe's space program sucks because an unspecified set of countries ran out of ammo over Lybian in 2011. For one thing the major players here were the UK and the French, the Germans bowed out anticipating what a FUBAR Lybia would become. The French who make their own bombs and ammo, they have not relied on the US for their aircraft munitions in a major way for a long time (and for a very good reason) and I know for a fact that the French did not deplete their stockpiles in 2011. That leaves the UK and a bunch of countries that buy their jets from the US on US military assistance programs. The US deliberately keeps such countries on a starvation diet of munitions and parts. On top of that all repairs to certain system parts on F-16s for example have to be done by US citizens flown in especially for the purpose which, as you can imagine, is a very slow and inefficient process. The Finns for example, bought their own F-18 fleet outright, and were thus able to rip out several of these untouchable black boxes and replace them with something they could fix themselves which had a correspondingly positive effect on operational readiness. On top of that the EF Typhoon was, at the time, still being introduced into service and not upgraded to perform A2G missions, forcing the RAF for one to rely on the Tornado which was beginning to be phased out at the time. But all this aside, remind me again why this has anything to do with ESA and the European space program??
Yeah. We should fuck with a celestial body that has a direct impact (literally and figuratively) on how our planet works. Once again displaying the total lack of wisdom to deal with technology.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, on the moon, their numbers will remain flat. On Earth however, their numbers have tripled so I think they'll be OK.
Wouldn't that be going out on a LEM?
MASA put an Orca on the Moon. (The Simpsons)
fuck balloons, HUFF that shit!
ESA is a multinational space agency. They do not provide launch services. If you are talking about Arianespace then this is a launch system provider. They had 11 launches last year. However, Arianespace is not ESA. There are some launches scheduled for this year https://www.rocketlaunch.live/...
A moon year, get it? HA HA HA I'm so funny! Please validate my existence *sob*
ESA is an multinational space agency including Canada and Switzerland. While there are many EU member states also involved in ESA, ESA and the EU have nothing to do with each other directly. They are separate organisations. However, ESA is operating Gallileo which is an EU funded project. Beside that ESA gets its finances directly from its member states. https://www.esa.int/About_Us/W...
Aren't the rights to the moon's resources still up in the air? I haven't looked very closely at the space treaties out there, and who has agreed to what, but I thought the general idea was that no one could claim ownership of the moon. Looks like we need a war. USA! USA!
I see what you did there.
Thanks *so* much, Republican President Nixon, for canceling the rest of the Apollo program, and thanks, also, to St. Ronnie Raygun for lack of support for anything beyond low earth orbit. Then there were the GOP members of Congress in the early/mid-nineties who nearly killed the project to build the ISS.
The GOP has hated civilian space, just like they hate science.
What about the POLAR bears on the moon?
If it's warm enough on the Moon for nudists to frolic around . . . then it's probably to warm for polar bears anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And, of course "drilling the Moon" might rile up those Helium 3 toking Nazis on the far side:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I hope those ESA folks perform due diligence and research schlocky Moon movies before just barging ahead with their drilling.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Considering the moon is in space this the first, TINIEST step in the journey of a 170,000 (*) light years. =P
Will it make a difference? Too early to tell but at least people are starting to get serious about taking space seriously. Baby steps are important even if only baby steps.
(*) The Milky Way galaxy may be much bigger than we thought
Cause, you know, Russia (the area where most Russians live) is part of Europe. Since the EU is not the same thing as Europe.
Just like America is not just US-America, Asia is not just eastern Asia, and there is no country called Africa. :)
>> WTF does this have to do with going to space?
The aerospace and space-faring capabilities of a country are usually closely coupled. See the USA, USSR and China for examples.
The only rules are those of the one with the biggest stick.
Everything that we call rights, is only as enforced as the one with the biggest stick enforces it.
That includes human rights and even the concept of property.
No, I don't like it either.
Elon Musk is a native African.
That's what they said about oil.
But exponential growth means that it takes only a single cycle, to go from 50% to 100% (e.g. of it becoming a problem). And less than 7 cycles for the problem to become two orders of magnitude worse!
So, you're trying your best to imply that the Democrats are very much in favour of civilian space?
Is there any evidence of that?
Especially given the Democrat control of Congress during Nixon's terms, and their control of the House for all of Reagan's terms (and the Senate for part of Reagan's terms).
As well as their control of Congress during the early/mid-nineties (depending on how one counts "mid 90s" of course. - they had control till '95, but lost it in the mid-terms then - thanks to Clinton)....
You DO remember that the Congress is the group that spends the money, right?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Both Ariane 62 and Ariane 64 are optimized to launch commercial payload in Low Earth Orbit. A bit light for the moon; That is if ArianeGroup succeed to build them as planned. Ariane 5 is still the launcher that sends the most commercial payloads for the moments (do not forget it can launch 2 satellites in one go). But its days are numbered.
Besides, ArianeGroup builds rockets. Arianespace commercializes them along other rockets like VEGA or the Russian Soyouz Fregat. The ESA is the European Space agency and is some sort of NASA with a lower budget. As a previous poster explained, it is not a body of the EU and has non-EU members in it like Switzerland and Canada; Canada has some kind of special status while not being a full member.
Three different entities.
And such plans shouldn't be taken too seriously. It is probably an attempt at getting the European states to finance launches. They are often not adopted beyond preliminary studies. The problem of the Europeans is the lack of ambitions of their political caste and a pork mentality even worse than in the USA.
I will freely admit I didn't read anything but the title of the article. So many thought went through my head that just screamed WTF. So yeah, I am planning on raising dragons and am also planning to launch a Unicorn farm.
Dear Fudgepacker:
That was South Park, you foolish moron.
Yours Truly,
John Trautmann
What morons. They're going all the way to the moon for water and oxygen? You can get that stuff for free right here on earth!!
..for the typical roughneck who would not otherwise have much of a chance of going to space.
Your post reminds me of the US House representative who asked a navy admiral during a formal hearing if parking all the ships on one side of Guam would cause the island to tip over...
We have oxygen and water on earth. I think they're talking about mining oxygen and water to support a moon base.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
"Only eight of the 28 allies engaged in combat, and most ran out of ammunition, having to buy, at cost, ammunition stockpiled by the United States."
If true this means they bombed the fuck out of Libya so much as to run out of bombs, as Israel or even the US sometimes do.
Anyway this was a crime of aggression and crime against humanity which should be the principal concern here.
I'm not against scientific space missions usually but fuck you, EU. European Union is the enemy of the people and we'll make pay you dear. You won't get away with a Moon mission for a billion or something as a repayment for dozens of billions stolen from the people by suit-and-tied smug oligarchs.
Well played. Take your well deserved mod point.
Iron Sky, 2012, minus the bipolar lizards...
You realize Space: 1999 isn't real, right?
Wow, this is just totally detached from reality. Here's a clue: It wasn't the Republicans who were saying that we should solve our problems at home before we go into space. It wasn't the Republicans who were saying that NASA's budget would be better spent on the War on Poverty. And it wasn't the Republicans who voted to deny NASA the funding necessary to keep the moon program going, even at a much more modest rate. There was another party. Begins with a D...
And put up a parking lot.
Caution: Contents under pressure
odd that you merkins always need the RAF do to the low level precision stuff then.
No the repubs were just saying fuck solving anything just give all the money to the rich,
Has someone told them that Oxygen and water is something we already have in larger and free quantities? and it could last even more if we make good use to it?
Also how much Oxygen and water could supply? and it might be tainted. If they really want to burn some cash why not helping to protect the resources we already have? ah! yes, old-fashioned and stupid economics.
There is a new movie coming soon from the team. This time it's about things underground, apparently.
More American pork barreling. Lets start another war and force everyone to buy more of our weapons again. Spins globe and throws a dart.
Grow up. Even if there was H2O & oxygen to collect from the Moon, its not going to affect the earth, or knock the Moon out of its orbit.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It would explain why we only see one side of the Moon... (Do I really need to place a /s here?)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon