There may be a lot more of it than we thought. And we were already thinking there’s quite a bit.
13 thoughts on “Lunar Ice”
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There may be a lot more of it than we thought. And we were already thinking there’s quite a bit.
Comments are closed.
I am waiting for the serria club (or their ilk) and the “common heritage of all mankind” to kick in.
The Moon is culturally significant across human cultures and should be treated with the respect it deserves. When we step off our home, it is important to retain our ties to the things that make us human, like our Moon. Culture and civilization are not sterile.
Many times we been told that the solar system is filled with bountiful resources beyond comprehension that will fuel human expansion for thousands of years. Then why are people so shortsighted that they focus on the nearest object, that also happens to be the most important celestial body, other than the Sun, to our shared human heritage?
The Moon has a role to play in getting us away from Earth but any prolonged activity there of any significant scale would be a failure of our civilization and culture. I see this to some degree as a problem that has plagued us in other areas, like the belief in gullible warming. It’s the deification of self and the deconstruction of society that we have seen during the last half of the 20th and first part of the 21st centuries.
What does a space faring civilization look like? What does the culture look like? It isn’t the technology that makes the civilization, its the civilization that makes the technology.
WTF did that mean? Did you fire up your post modern generator?
I’m sure you understand but if not, then perhaps you haven’t spent enough time contemplating our place in history, what a culture actually is, and what the future holds for us living off Earth.
How we got to where we are didn’t just happen by accident and our technological progress didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ignoring the other things that made us successful is a mistake. I argue that rather than my points being postmodern, they are actually an assault on postmodern thinking that permeates our culture, whether some people are self aware to recognize it or not.
Prove it.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of “space” agency that could maybe send some sort of probe or robot or something to find out for sure? If I was planning some sort of manned expedition, I think I’d like to know before I got there. Might make a difference on where I’d land and what I’d bring.
Oh, knowing what to bring is pretty easy. Teaching the astronauts low gravity downhill slalom skiing in space suits is what’s hard. Of course the lunar ski lifts will be one of the first major pieces of hardware they’ll need to install, but fortunately it will also double as an overhead conveyor system to get the ice to the electrolysis plant.
Such an old fuddy-duddy.
It’s all about the rego-boarding now, daddy-o.
I don’t even know what rego-boarding is. O_O
On an unrelated note, a couple days ago they got an original Apollo AGC working. They had to replace a few diodes and a transistor, along with tons of other work.
Youtube video with Scott Manley
After all this time, its RAM was still readable, and it still knew its position at JSC where it had been powered off decades earlier.
Anyway, it’s proven lunar flight hardware that might help cut costs on Artemis because that’s a flight computer they won’t have to buy new.
I’ve got a ton of AGC related code left over from an attempt to automatically convert it to a more modern assembly language. Unfortunately, it’s a really bizarre architecture so I gave up.
Rego-boarding – think snowboarding, but on regolith.
The south face of Copernicus awaits!
Table 1 of this pdf gives the results of the various lunar ice prospecting missions to date.
I had thought the neutron spectrometer readings refuted Spudis’ optimistic predictions. But according to that table the neutron spectrometers have a max sensing depth of 70 centimeters. Spudis’ mini RF radar goes to a depth of 10 meters.
I still believe Spudis was very optimistic and I’d lay two to one odds against ice sheets at least two meters thick.
In the initial Science article the LCROSS team reported 5.5% water by mass in the plume of ejecta. A year later they posted a correction saying they had over estimated by a factor of 5.5. Which would give 1% water by mass. I notice the PDF above still gives 5.5% water for the LCROSS ejecta. So I’m not sure what’s going in.
Even if rich lunar water deposits aren’t a sure thing the possibility is well worth checking out. I’ve been a big supporter of Bridenstine’s goals. However I’m pessimistic he’ll be able to accomplish much.
He has an almost-impossible task. The only way I can see it happening is if a) Trump wins reelection and the Republicans take back the House next year and b) Starship flies when Elon says it will, or within a year of it.
As Trump’s dual track approach is a continuation of policies from both Bush and Obama, I think they both have a chance of continuing after Trump is gone. We can hope SLS bites the dust but I don’t think the other track is in danger of disappearing even if some of the details change. The details should change as there are developments on the near term horizon that should cause reassessments and changing course.