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Old June 2nd 19, 11:35 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default NASA?s full Artemis plan revealed: 37 launches and a lunar outpost

JF Mezei wrote on Sun, 2 Jun 2019
12:16:41 -0400:

On 2019-05-29 07:10, Jeff Findley wrote:

Solid ice of what purity? How much abrasive lunar regolith is frozen in
that water? Since we're operating in vacuum, don't you have to mine the
frozen bits and keep them frozen until you put them in a sealed chamber
to melt/bake out the water? If the water/mud melts before you get it
into a chamber, all of the water will be lost to vacuum, will it not?


Pardon my ignorance he if you have frozen water, wouldn't that imply
it exists in a region of the moon that is cold and gets little sun?


Generally true. Typically in the shadowed bottoms of craters and
such. This is why the south pole is of such interest. Because of
lunar inclination there are a lot of craters that never get sun on
their bottoms (no tan lines).


If that region gets little sun, how can you use solar to use
electrolysis to get the O2 and H2 out ?


Put the panels at the top of the crater and run cables. Solar is a
bad solution for the Moon, though, since you need to be able to get
through two weeks with no sun. Nuclear, fuel cells, or any other
technology that doesn't rely on the Sun is better.


Also, if you have dirty water, can you still perform electrolysis to get
the H2 and O2 out?


To some extent, but why would you when cleaning it is so easy?


What if it is frozen dirty water? can you just put
anode and electrode into a block fo ice with regolith in it and get the
gases out? or does electrolysis only work in liquid form of H2O ?


Electrolysis pretty much requires a liquid, since the generated gas
needs to get away and new material needs to flow to the electrodes.


--
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