Moonbase when?
As soon as there is enough of a market interest in anything that can be obtained from Moon and can't really be faked on Earth!
I have faith in capitalism, at least in this regard.
Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
41–50 of 189 posts
Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worried about disturbing the ecosystem?
The moon is about 1/4th the size of the Earth, or about as wide as the United States. The moon also significantly impacts our tides here on Earth. Now, the optimist in me would say there's no way little old humanity could manage to find a way to screw that up. The pessimist in me notes that in roughly a hundred years we've managed to push our planet to the brink of ecological disaster, so to answer your question: yes…
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Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#43Moonbase when?
When they find oil, or cobalt, or rare earths. We have enough water on earth, we don't need the one on the moon. /s You might remember, Columbus did not go to America for a vacation.
Frankly, I would rather go to the moon for a vacation than America. Space tourism would easily pay for a moon base.
Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#44Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moon is about 1/4th the size of the Earth, or about as wide as the United States. The moon also significantly impacts our tides here on Earth. Now, the optimist in me would say there's no way little old humanity could manage to find a way to screw that up. The pessimist in me notes that in roughly a hundred years we've managed to push our planet to the brink of ecological disaster, so to answer your question: yes…
Ah well then pardon my snark - of course we humans are very determined when it comes to exploiting our environment but a crude look at the figures might set your mind at rest: Moon's mass - about 0.7x10^23 kgs Global annual iron ore output - about 2.5x10^12 kgs (per [1]) One over the other - 2.8x10^10 years So on the order of a billion years to remove one percent of it. And that's assuming we develop the same kind of…
Even a second-rate H.G. Wells adaptation could imagine humanity finding a way-
Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, they used to say the same thing about big mountains, right? Here's a slightly older take on it from that era: """ People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our obser…
you get it.
So does William Shatner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ
Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turtles all the way down. “Why do we need a space station?” “As practice for getting to the Moon!” “What can we do on the Moon?” “Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!” “Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?” “So we can make components for the Mars colonies!” “Why do we need a Mars colony?” …
Earth is a spaceship, unfortunately somehow a bunch of monkeys went rampant and now they're busy tearing up the life support system. If we can satisfy their (limitless and still growing) hunger for energy and resources by exploiting the rest of the solar system, the monkeys can be kept pacified. That could buy us time to figure out a more permanent, and balanced, solution. The great thing about the Moon/Mars/asteroid…
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Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#48I wonder if there are locations along the dark side / light side border, where some of this water boils off during the 'daytime' heat, and then freezes again during darkness, and is just sitting on the surface as a fine layer of frozen crystals? I know there in very little atmosphere, but maybe just enough to hold a little water vapor? Maybe over time this would allow more accumulation in permanently shaded parts of the lunar landscape, including of course the dark side.
Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turtles all the way down. “Why do we need a space station?” “As practice for getting to the Moon!” “What can we do on the Moon?” “Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!” “Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?” “So we can make components for the Mars colonies!” “Why do we need a Mars colony?” …
If you look at it that way, you can use the same logic here on Earth. Why do you go to work in the morning? I know how these question chains go, I have a young son.
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Re: Vast new stores of water reported on the moon
#50Every such discovery reaffirms that the moon is a time machine.
Next to (or inside) the ice from the Permanently Shadowed Regions, there may be clues to how life got started on Earth. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-6546-7_... It's estimated that this trapped ice may be from the Earth and the Moon from 3.6B to 4.2B+ years ago. Along with other volatiles, this may give humanity an unprecedented look at what the Earth and the Moon were like before life arose. And if we're truly lucky, depending on how old life is, it may even help us understand how our planet changed while life arose and after life arose.
If it's not there, then the glass beads that they found the water in could also contain trapped gases and compounds that we've become better at detecting. Gases were found in one of the beads brought back by Apollo 15, https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1991LPI....22..409...
It will likely take decades to figure out most of the information those samples will contain. Helium 3 wasn't discovered in the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 samples until the 1980s. The Apollo samples are still yielding new science all these decades later.
I'm so excited about what the future has in store for us.
If you'd like to learn more, this is a fairly approachable article written by NASA's former Chief Scientist, Dr. Jim Green, https://room.eu.com/article/evolution-of-volatiles-on-the-mo...
The Moon as a Recorder of Organic Evolution in the Early Solar System: A Lunar Regolith Analog Study — https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2014.1217
Potential for prebiotic chemistry at the poles of the Moon — https://spie.org/Publications/Proceedings/Paper/10.1117/12.4...