Bombing the Moon for Water

s20451 writes "In 1998, NASA scientists deliberately crashed the Lunar Prospector into the Moon, in a failed attempt to detect traces of water allegedly hiding in deep craters at the lunar south pole. Now the BBC is reporting a new proposal to attack the lunar poles with "Bunker Buster" missiles to liberate a detectable amount of water. Called Polar Night, the mission is being proposed as part of the "Discovery" series of probes."

Re:Hey!

[meridian-gh]

Life?

More like fuel. Hydrogen and Oxygen. Guess what the shuttle engines run off of?

If we discovered water in any signifigant quantity on the moon, it would (someday) make getting there and back much cheaper and easier. Instead of packing the gas with us, we can stop at the ol' lunar gas station. It is so hellaciously expensive to put things in orbit, every pound saved is a penny earned.

It could also make construction of spacecraft on the moon or in orbit a possibility. Again, the less we have to bring up with us, the better.

Regards,

Meri

Hello?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone actually read the friggin article? They don't want to bomb the moon. The bombs will not be filled with explosives. They will be filled with scientific equipment to detect water. They're just going to drop them into crevices.

Re:hmm

[Nix0n]

Moon does'nt have oxygen. Therefore this bomb will need to have its own oxygen system.

Umm, the vast majority of conventional munitions have their own oxidizing agent, with very few exceptions( such as the fuel-air bomb ).

If a substance's oxidation rate is dependent on its contact with atmospheric oxygen, it would be far more likely to "burn" than "explode".

The dust(?) created from this bomb will linger far longer than earth because of moon's gravity.

Another problem with your reasoning. The specific reason that dust "lingers" on earth is buoyant forces BY THE AIR upon very small dust particles. the moon's gravity well is smaller than that of the Earth, but the fact that F=ma will prevail without impedance by an atmosphere will make the "dust" settle rather quickly.

Re:What a great idea.

[Wyatt Earp]

Like I said.

Short of breaking it up what harm is there?

None.

Bombing for water isn't going to decrease it's mass to the point where it has any effect at all on the Earth or the Earth-Moon relationship.

It has a mass of 7.34x10^22kg

That is alot of rock you have to chip off to get an impact on it's gravity.

Re:What a great idea.

[Wyatt Earp]

If the Moon can take hits like Tycho or Copernicus, then even an SS-18 Satan's 25 mod 's 20 MT City killer wouldn't do a damned thing to it.

Copernicus is 93 km across.

The Moon has been up there taking hits for 3-4 billion years, it hasn't had a stress fracture yet, and even dropping nukes on it won't cause one.

Re:Damn?

[mfrank]

Most would be able to go off in a vacuum. There's what, about 250 grams of O2 in a cubic meter of air? That's not enough for solid explosives to use.

What I think the parent was saying, though, is the MOAB would explode, but there wouldn't be any way for the shock wave to propagate. It would just be a spray of high-velocity chemical by-products of the explosion. For a MOAB, though, that would still be nasty. I wouldn't want to be 10 meters away from that in a spacesuit, but you could be a LOT closer than with a similar explosion in an atmosphere.

Re:Much like UNDERWATER, a compressed blast is wor

[Wyatt Earp]

You mean like how all those underground explosions in mines, caves and nuclear tests split the Earth up?

Oh wait it didn't.

The Moon is made out of the same kind of rocks as the Earth, the main difference being that as far as we can tell there is no liquid core or mantle in the Moon.

Gigajoules of force have hit the moon and while it wasn't compressed because it was at the surface, the force of those blows is still many times greater than any compressed blast humans might set off.

This whole the Moon will crack or shatter garbage has come from either too many viewings of Armadeggon on TNT or the same mindset that thought Trinity would set the atmosphere on fire or that Crossroads would punch a hole in the bottom of the ocean and the water would drain out.

Re:Much like UNDERWATER, a compressed blast is wor

[JoeRobe]

The bunker buster does not burrow THAT far underground - we're talking something on the order of tens of meters, maximum. An asteroid, say 100m across, will bury itself FAR deeper into the moon than any bunker buster will, and will release several orders of magnitude more energy INTO the moon than any one of our nukes ever could.

Even if it did bury itself very deep, you need to remember that the moon ISN'T like a big rock. It's got more dynamics going for it than your standard stone. An explosion, just like all the other explosions in the past 4 billion years, would just be absorbed in the rock primarily spread out across the surface (regardless of the few meters of burrowing)

Re:Damn…

[drinkypoo]

I'm not a demolitions expert, but I do have Google [google.com] at my disposal.

Course Note 01 This paper is for homework purposes only OXYGEN BALANCE (OB) IN EXPLOSIVE MATERIALS Faisal G. Hashem August 12, 2001 Heat of Formation The general formula for explosives is CxHyNwOz. Explosive reactions are oxidation reactions. More generally, the oxidizer does not have to be oxygen; it can be an oxidizing salt such as Nitrate or Perchlorate.

Etc. (http://www.mines.edu/Academic/mining/csm_isee/csm _ee_course_notes/cn_mngn498s01_01.htm [mines.edu])

Biblical moon references

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from the King James Version, so you can't even play the "modern devil-inspired translations" card: references to the moon in the KJV [biblegateway.com].