There must be lots more water locked away in subsurface lunar regolith.
So the question is how do you extract quality potable water in sufficient quantities? Mining and processing lunar drinking water will require mega more power than what's available from lunar solar power photo voltaics are expensive to provide the transport logistics vs power output benefits-so did some one mention the N word??
I've some interviews discussing this topic in the future.
-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Tuesday 17th of November 2009 05:30:33 AM
I happened upon the "Nature" website earlier today whos report suggested that all sorts of interesting things were detected in the impact plume (Hydrocarbons and, in particular, Mercury)
But what was the spent rocket stage (The impactor) made out off??
How did NASA eliminate the inevitable contamination from the "Impactor" from the results??
Presumably they eliminated obvious contamination from spent booster in analyzing spectral data. I guess they were intersted in Hydroxyl groups breakdown of water in vacumm of space.
Mercury signature--that's interesting...I can't think of anything in a spent rocket stage that could contain mercury, except for possibly batteries...NiCd batteries contain small amounts of mercury to boost the individual cell voltage from 1.0v to 1.2 volts...
Maybe some small gravity trip sensors---old mercury contact switches, but there are plenty of things that work just as well, if not better than the old mercury switches...
And the chances that that spent Centaur stage landing on an outcropping of HgS (Cinnabar) are astronomically remote--so I woul dhvae to say it is most likely to be contamination...
Hydrocarbons--again, its a tough call. If the signature was significant (as in tens of kilograms of hydrocarbons) then it probably wasn't the Centaur...on the other hand, I wonder what the thermal tank insulation is made of (probably polyurethane)--likely it is also a contamination signature...
Water---definately a strong probability of water on the moon. Surely, the flight controllers vented all remaining LH2 and LO2 before imapct--otherwise, this could give a false positive if propellant residuals ignited on impact after the tanks are crushed and pulverized...
I read somewhere that the amount of water was a couple of 'buckets' full--but how much is a bucket? Two 5 gallon buckets? 10 gallons of water for about a 1000 metric tons of debris gives---roughly 40 parts per million...this is 'slightly' higher than the natural volatile fraction of hydrogen and helium from solar doping (about 2-3 parts per million.) It's still pretty darn dry...
If the impact had punched a hole through a meter thick of ice, a cylinder 8 meters wide by one meter tall should have just about: V=1m * (4 m)^2 * pi = 50 m^3 of water...50,000 kg / 10^6 kg = 5% water ice...
