NASA: "Water on the Moon!" This is the Shameless Science!

"James" wrote in message
...

If this were true, it should be bigger news than we've seen so far. It
would change the whole paradigm of getting started in space exploration.



Why? How?

It's still extremely expensive to get stuff to the Moon and you need a LOT
of stuff to extract the water.





--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"James" wrote in message
...

If this were true, it should be bigger news than we've seen so far.
It would change the whole paradigm of getting started in space
exploration.


Why? How?

It's still extremely expensive to get stuff to the Moon and you need
a LOT of stuff to extract the water.

It would seem that a launch pad to anywhere would make more sense to do
it from the moon than to do it from Mars or anywhere else. Extracting
water from either place wouldn't be easy. Then there is the supply
problem. A trip to the moon takes a few days. To anywhere else a lot
longer. Mostly, it's a matter of logistics so even any colonization
attempt would begin from there too unless another paradigm like super
space ships came on the scene. JMHO

Having lost most former global-warming BELIEVERS, the GW community --
industry -- will now proceed to tell us about how GW will adversely
affect water on the moon (WOTM).

There's gotta be a Nobel in there somewhere ...

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:34:02 -0400, "James" wrote:

Brian Gaff wrote:
Well, its also perhaps one part of the Science community trying to
upstage the upcoming impact.
I'm intrigued also by the fact that a measurement made on a flypast
back in the last decade has just come to light as a confirmation to
the Indian results.
The thing is this.
On the moon, you get impacts all the time, a good number of these
bodies contain water ice. So is it very surprising that the effects
of evaporating water are detected?
The more intriging finding in my view, is the discovery of water ice
at much higher levels and closer to the surface at lower latitudes on
Martian fresh craters.


Brian

Timing is everything; An Example of the Lowest Form
of Science.

NASA finds ice on the moon
http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...36167620090924

This 'Big Discovery' comes just as the Augustine Report on NASA's
future is being released. A report which is /very harsh/ on the
notion of returning
men to the Moon. See below.

What curious timing? One might just think this 'science' is nothing
more than a politically motivated show, 'politico-science'...call
it, only meant
as a last-ditch effort to save the dying idea of building a Moon
Colony.
An idea even Tom Hanks considers without reason......

"I think in the history of the human race, the moon has been
the first place we've gone to and said, 'OK, we don't need
to go back there again.'" Hanks said.

"And maybe we should do it again?" Axelrod asks.

"Well," Hanks says, "the question would be why?"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in881421.shtml

Moon Water is .."THE REASON WHY". A drop of moon water per liter
of lunar soil..Wow! FORGET GLOBAL WARMING, we need to be
mining water on the flippin' moon for a Trillion Dollar Colony
instead.
ARE THEY LUNATICS? (literally speaking....yes they are)

AMERICA'S SINGLE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM
for the next fifty years, a Gilded Safari to the Moon!
That's incredibly sad, if not tragic, considering what the world
will soon become due to fossil fueled climate change.

WHILE THE WORLD BURNS these 'scientists' hold a press conference
that's nothing more than a political dog-and-pony show.
To justify an immoral waste of taxpayer funds.
They should be fired.

And let "Moon Water" serve as the fitting epitaph for America's
manned space program.

Jonathan



Moon-Water-Factory or Space Solar Power?
Which makes sense?

Executive Summary
NASA'S SPACE SOLAR POWER EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
AND TECHNOLOGY (SERT) PROGRAM
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10202&page=1


SUMMARY REPORT
of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight

"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an
unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice
of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."
http://www.ostp.gov/galleries/press_...tineforweb.pdf



If this were true, it should be bigger news than we've seen so far. It
would change the whole paradigm of getting started in space exploration.

Another pipe dream, there is no bigger fan of space travel,
but get serious, hydrogen propulsion will not cut it no matter
where it is made, it cannot be stored as liquid, so forget it if
it can't be used up in a few hours or days.

And a space drive is needed that can accelerate at one g
indefinitely, else man is trapped on Earth or Mars or very cold
moons of the giant planets, it would take a lifetime just to get
out of the suns gravity well using chemical propulsion or
ion drives which must eject matter.

The Space Shuttle is the only real space ship, and should
have been expanded into capability to go to high Earth orbit and
even the moon or mars, but that is not an option now, the money
is all gone, health care, welfare, and green nonsense is more
important.

On Sep 24, 6:14*pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
jonathan wrote:
Timing is everything; An Example of the Lowest Form
of Science.

NASA finds ice on the moon
http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...36167620090924

This 'Big Discovery' comes just as the Augustine Report on NASA's future
is being released. A report which is */very harsh/ *on the notion of returning
men to the Moon. See below.

What curious timing? *One might just think this 'science' is nothing more
than a politically motivated show, 'politico-science'...call it, only meant
as a last-ditch effort to save the dying idea of building a Moon Colony..

An idea even Tom Hanks considers without reason......

"I think in the history of the human race, the moon has been
the first place we've gone to and said, 'OK, we don't need
to go back there again.'" Hanks said.

"And maybe we should do it again?" Axelrod asks.

"Well," Hanks says, "the question would be why?"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in881421.shtml

Moon Water is .."THE REASON WHY". A drop of moon water per liter
of lunar soil..Wow! FORGET GLOBAL WARMING, we need to be
mining water on the flippin' moon for a Trillion Dollar Colony instead.

ARE THEY LUNATICS? *(literally speaking....yes they are)

AMERICA'S SINGLE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM
for the next fifty years, a Gilded Safari to the Moon!
That's incredibly sad, if not tragic, considering what the world
will soon become due to fossil fueled climate change.

WHILE THE WORLD BURNS these 'scientists' hold a press conference
that's nothing more than a political dog-and-pony show.
To justify an immoral waste of taxpayer funds.
They should be fired.

And let *"Moon Water" *serve as the fitting epitaph for America's
manned space program.

*Jonathan

Moon-Water-Factory or Space Solar Power?
Which makes sense?

Executive Summary
NASA'S SPACE SOLAR POWER EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
AND TECHNOLOGY (SERT) PROGRAM
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10202&page=1

SUMMARY REPORT
of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight

"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an
unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice
of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."
http://www.ostp.gov/galleries/press_...tineforweb.pdf

Given the quantities they're talking about, and the amount of material
that would have to be processed to get a useful amount of water, I
suspect that shipping water from Earth would still be cheaper than
putting the necessary equipment onto the moon.

Sylvia

Wrong.
It costs about $10 thousand dollars to get one pound into orbit...
even more to get it to the moon's surface.
That's more than $70,000 dollars per gallon of water.

It would be much much cheaper to scoop lunar regolith (surface dirt)
into containers and just heat them up to get one quart per ton.

I M @ good guy wrote:
If this were true, it should be bigger news than we've seen so far.
It would change the whole paradigm of getting started in space
exploration.

Another pipe dream, there is no bigger fan of space travel,
but get serious, hydrogen propulsion will not cut it no matter
where it is made, it cannot be stored as liquid, so forget it if
it can't be used up in a few hours or days.

And a space drive is needed that can accelerate at one g
indefinitely, else man is trapped on Earth or Mars or very cold
moons of the giant planets, it would take a lifetime just to get
out of the suns gravity well using chemical propulsion or
ion drives which must eject matter.

You call hydrogen propulsion a pipe dream, and then turn
around and talk about a constant-1G drive? And this drive
is going to somehow work without "ejecting matter" (mass)?

Hey, if they have those things on your planet, great. Send
us one, or at least the plans...

Bob M.

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"James" wrote in message
...
If this were true, it should be bigger news than we've seen so far. It
would change the whole paradigm of getting started in space exploration.



Why? How?

It's still extremely expensive to get stuff to the Moon and you need a LOT
of stuff to extract the water.

I heard one of the researchers who confirmed the discovery on NPR
yesterday. She said that with the thickness of the layer of water
estimated at 1mm, you'd need to scrape up the area of a football field
in order to extract about a liter of water.

lorad wrote:
Given the quantities they're talking about, and the amount of
material that would have to be processed to get a useful amount of
water, I suspect that shipping water from Earth would still be
cheaper than putting the necessary equipment onto the moon.

Sylvia

Wrong.
It costs about $10 thousand dollars to get one pound into orbit...
even more to get it to the moon's surface.
That's more than $70,000 dollars per gallon of water.

It would be much much cheaper to scoop lunar regolith (surface dirt)
into containers and just heat them up to get one quart per ton.

And the "scoop," containers, and heating system (plus whatever
you need to recondense/collect the resulting water, which presumably
winds up in a pressurized environment...masses how much, exactly?

Let's say all told, it's a couple of tons at least. Assuming your
$10K/pound
is good, that's $40M just to ship the stuff there, before the first
drop of water is collected (and neglecting the cost of designing
and building the equipment in the first place, which we can
probably assume is non-trivial). But a couple of tons of water
is almost 500 gallons; how long do you think it's going to be before
we've got a need for 500 gallons of water on the moon?

Bob M.

On Sep 25, 11:51*am, "Bob Myers" wrote:
lorad wrote:
Given the quantities they're talking about, and the amount of
material that would have to be processed to get a useful amount of
water, I suspect that shipping water from Earth would still be
cheaper than putting the necessary equipment onto the moon.

Sylvia

Wrong.
It costs about $10 thousand dollars to get one pound into orbit...
even more to get it to the moon's surface.
That's more than $70,000 dollars per gallon of water.

It would be much much cheaper to scoop lunar regolith (surface dirt)
into containers and just heat them up to get one quart per ton.

And the "scoop," containers, and heating system (plus whatever
you need to recondense/collect the resulting water, which presumably
winds up in a pressurized environment...masses how much, exactly?

Let's say all told, it's a couple of tons at least. *Assuming your
$10K/pound
is good, that's $40M just to ship the stuff there, before the first
drop of water is collected (and neglecting the cost of designing
and building the equipment in the first place, which we can
probably assume is non-trivial). *But a couple of tons of water
is almost 500 gallons; how long do you think it's going to be before
we've got a need for 500 gallons of water on the moon?

Bob M.

Your assumptions are incorrect..
The container could be a lightweight polymer - perhaps even mylar..
maybe 10 pounds.
The heating mechanism even less.. mylar films placed on a hyperbolic
fiberglass frame serving as a solar still.. maybe 8 pounds.

500 gallons?
Well.. if you hope to use hydrogen/oxygen as a reactive propellent
(derived from electrolyzed water) or as an energy source... probably
day-one.

lorad wrote:
Your assumptions are incorrect..
The container could be a lightweight polymer - perhaps even mylar..
maybe 10 pounds.

Ten pounds of mylar are going to contain a ton of
lunar regolith for heating and water collection?

The heating mechanism even less.. mylar films placed on a hyperbolic
fiberglass frame serving as a solar still.. maybe 8 pounds.

Ditto, with the appropriate mods to the question.

Bob M.