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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.
What about the POLAR bears on the moon?
I guess they better get busy or this won't happen.
ESA has always been financed by the member states. And SpaceX is supported by the US government.
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.
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?
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.
SX did get some subsidies from us gov to develop products, but far far less than just about any space launch system in the world. And like ESA helping airbus 20-30 years ago, it saved them money by being cheaper than all others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
England is now investing more and more into HSF programs. So are many other nations.
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.
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.
The mass of the moon is 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms. I think by the time it becomes an issue it will have long since ceased being an issue.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
MASA put an Orca on the Moon. (The Simpsons)
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!
Where did you see that they wanted to move it elsewhere in space?
It's for a lunar base.
That said, even if they did move it elsewhere, the rate at which we could ever possibly mine it is so insignificant compared to the mass of the moon that the sun would have long since burned out before we could have possibly moved enough of its mass elsewhere to create any kind of perceptible orbit difference.
300 year problem? Try far more than even a trillion years.
I'm not sure that "shortsighted" is the term you are looking for.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
My reply on the red site, to someone asking how much of the moon could be mined before the tides were effected:
Not even one grain - any change in mass whatsoever will have an effect on the tides. Just a proportionally minuscule one.
How much before the effects become noticeable? That's a kind of arbitrary line, but if we say a 0.1% reduction in the force of lunar gravity would be noticeable, then we could remove 0.1% of the Moon's mass.
How much is that in tonnes? Mass of moon(=7*10^22kg) * 0.1%(=10^-3) = 7*10^19kg = 70 million billion tonnes.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
>> 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.
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.
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
You realize Space: 1999 isn't real, right?
And put up a parking lot.
Caution: Contents under pressure
SpaceX manages a couple dozen launches a year. The number of payloads wanting to launch every year is considerably more. Until SpaceX finds a way to launch a lot more often, it doesn't matter if they sell the launches for $1 each -- there'll still be lots of room for competitors.
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Are there any concerns of what moving tons of mass over time from our moon to the Earth would do to the orbits? ... I get this is a "300 year" problem...
You don't seem to get decimal points.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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