The discovery of water within the lunar soil earlier set off a buzz amongst the space geek community.
While Luna’s revelation inspired dreams of interplanetary conquest, the fact is that the Moon’s soil is far too dry for us to use as a fountain, let alone for watering crop.
Instead of digging through 10 million tons of soil in order to get 10,000 liters of water, it might be easier (and cheaper) to simply ship tanks of hydrogen instead.
Unmanned space craft could help open up the lunar frontier by steadily seeding Luna with thousands upon thousands of hydrogen tanks upon it’s surface.
Since about 40% of the lunar soil is composed of oxygen, future explorers could extract it from the Moon dirt, and then mix it with hydrogen dropped off by previous unmanned rockets.
(Image Credit: Crystal Links- Lunar Mining)
Water can then be heavily filtered and recycled, allowing humanitiy to establish independent lunar outposts without the need of frequent supplies.
As a bonus, future settlers could use the spare hydrogen and oxygen to also create rocket fuel, which could help reduce the cost of missions elsewhere (whether it’s Mars, Ceres or even the moons of Jupiter).
You’re ignoring two things: if permafrost exists at the lunar poles, that water and other hydrates will be much easier to obtain, and the same process that causes the lunar regolith to capture protons from the solar wind and turn them into hydrogen can probably be made more efficient; one could envision positioning a device with a negatively charged stream of oxygen which is then captured and condensed. You might not have to mine a single ounce of regolith in order to get water.
You’re right about that Jim, but for now we do not know if it does exist there–yet.
If it does, then there will be no need to ship hydrogen tanks lunar side (depending on how much frost they find of course), although it may be better to err on the side of caution than to presume an abundance only to be greeted by dry, white moon dirt.
The advantage of writing late is that I know that water has been confirmed at the poles. That’s the positive side. But the negative side is that I also know that the Constellation program has likely been cancelled so we’re not going to go to the lunar poles after all.
So…if NASA doesn’t take us to the lunar poles could somebody like SpaceX do so? Hmmm…their F9H gets only 13% of the mass to LEO than would the Ares V. It may be challenging but perhaps a couple of small craft (earth departure & lunar lander stages) launched by F9Hs could place teleoperated robonauts on the lunar poles to prepare fuel, O2, water, and a habitat. Then individual astronauts might be able to be launched to the Moon.
But, if an astronaut is too massive to make it to the poles, then maybe we will need to deliver hydrogen to the lunar equator.
Thoughts?
SpaceX is in no position to launch anything to the Moon–yet.
I think after dozens of successful LEO launches (and many successful GEO launches) they’ll be in position to send gear and equipment to the Moon.