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Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

phys.org

81–90 of 96 posts

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#81

> With enough ice sitting at the surface—within the top few millimeters—water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon's surface. OR: It could be collected, shipped back to earth, bottled, and sold to the wealthy at ludicrous prices.

If it funds space exploration and development, why not ?

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#82
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as though science is a complex job that occasionally requires a lot of work.

Sure, but eight years? Edit: What I'm getting at is that this seems a profound result, with perhaps crucial implications. Not some minor detail, of only arcane interest.

> this seems a profound result, with perhaps crucial implications

I'm not sure about this case in particular, but in general this is actually a good argument as to why something would take longer than usual. A lot of work has to be verified, especially groundbreaking work.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#83
post #74

Water = fuel as much as it is important to life. Weaker gravity well + infrastructure should = cheaper exploration.

This is interesting, I didn't think of it like that. You're saying the moon should be used as a base because less energy is required to leave the moon. I wonder if those savings amortize the up-front cost of creating a self-sufficient moon base.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#84
post #15
post #8

Just a question, is there any reason why whenever we detect frozen water its on the north pole or south pole of any circular object in solar system? I guess ones of them is sun heating up everything in the equator region.

brundolf's response plus atmosphere, which can diffuse energy from near the equator to other parts of the planet via convection, although Venus ice caps are still colder than Earth's, so not sure anymore... The universe is a complex place.

The ice caps hiding under an atmosphere of burning sulphuric acid at hundreds of degrees!?

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#85

> With enough ice sitting at the surface—within the top few millimeters—water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon's surface. OR: It could be collected, shipped back to earth, bottled, and sold to the wealthy at ludicrous prices.

Another cool thing one could build on the moon is a rail cannon to bombard Earth. Moon's gravity well makes it relatively easy to hurl stuff from there to here, and the stuff _accelerates_ as it approaches Earth, assisted by earth gravity. The scenario is explored in detail in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#86

> With enough ice sitting at the surface—within the top few millimeters—water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon's surface. OR: It could be collected, shipped back to earth, bottled, and sold to the wealthy at ludicrous prices.

Forget about Lunar Water man, that's so 2002. Let's distill moon stuff and make MOON BEER and MOON VODKA. Oh yeah, >

That would be... a moon shot.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#87
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a very interesting idea I have never thought about? How slow would the water fall down and when splashed? Would you have to be careful not to smack the water a whole bunch least you suspend to much mist in the air to make it hard to breath for a while? What would it look like to splash around? I would love to see some cool physically based gpu renderings of what hydro stuff would look like in low g.

Quite a few of the consequences are discussed here: https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

Great read.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#88
post #74

Water = fuel as much as it is important to life. Weaker gravity well + infrastructure should = cheaper exploration.

This is interesting, I didn't think of it like that. You're saying the moon should be used as a base because less energy is required to leave the moon. I wonder if those savings amortize the up-front cost of creating a self-sufficient moon base.

I do too. Making that base practical and viable may include too many nasty details. I don"t know.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$ base64 -d ~/tmp/wtf.txt uZbase64: invalid input Edit: I suck and forgot to remove the leading stuff. I love the internet today. If anyone is wondering it is SFW.

On mac others might want to: # filename - wherever you pasted the base64 string FILE= && base64 -D $FILE.txt >> $FILE.png && open $FILE.png

* don't do this w/ random stuff off the internet. That could have easily been something other than an image, and `open` will happily open whatever it was regardless of the extension.

Re: Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

#90
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a very interesting idea I have never thought about? How slow would the water fall down and when splashed? Would you have to be careful not to smack the water a whole bunch least you suspend to much mist in the air to make it hard to breath for a while? What would it look like to splash around? I would love to see some cool physically based gpu renderings of what hydro stuff would look like in low g.

Quite a few of the consequences are discussed here: https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

Lol...of course there is a xkcd for the topic... I should have known. Thanks for the great link.
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