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Space Science

Lunar Polar Ice Not Present 339

Posted by Hemos from the research-moving-along dept.
pclark999 writes "The New Scientist reports that radar probes of the lunar polar region has disproved earlier theories regarding large sheets of polar ice in craters permanently in the shade. "
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Lunar Polar Ice Not Present More

Lunar Polar Ice Not Present

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  • No ice on the moon??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:17AM (#7463958)
    Can we put Vanilla Ice there?

  • Time for plan B (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tekiegreg ( 674773 ) * <tekieg1-slashdot@yahoo.com> on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:18AM (#7463961) Homepage Journal
    Granted there is no water on the moon, we'll have to bring it there ourselves I guess, presumably we're either importing from Earth, or how about nudging a comet towards the moon once the technology is feasible? As long as your aim is good (for the love of god don't miss and hit Earth), we could have a large supply of water available for long term moon usage indefinitely (when we run out, just nudge another comet, but control the landing of the comet if there's already people there).

    • Re:Time for plan B (Score:2, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 )

      It's expensive to send water to the moon. Also Earth is pretty much a sealed ecosystem (although we get tonnes of stuff from space every day) so every time we send water to the moon we've removed it from the Earth for good. It's not like the christian myth of Noah and the flood where water can come and go at the whim of a deity.

      • Re:Time for plan B (Score:5, Informative)

        by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:27AM (#7464067) Journal
        Also Earth is pretty much a sealed ecosystem

        Say WHAT?

        (although we get tonnes of stuff from space every day)...

        Yeah, like, uh, sunlight?

        You know... that bright stuff without which 99.9% of this ecosystem could not exist?

        • Yeah, like, uh, sunlight?

          Which is why the post read sealed as in closed, and not isolated.

          Besides, how does the sunlight replace water?

          What we should do is power the ships by oxidizing hydrogen. When they reach the moon, they can drink the waste.

        • "You know... that bright stuff without which 99.9% of this ecosystem could not exist?"

          Point of Correction: Current evidence and resulting theories suggest that the bulk of biological mass on the planet is in the form of bacteria and archaea -- much of which does not rely on the photosynthesis cycle. A significant amount of microbes may dwell in the crust, out of the direct influence of the sun.

          Europa, here we come!
      • Nothing is sealed, my friend. Water is simply Hydrogen, which a large amount of the universe is made of, and oxygen. We can manufacture it in space or on the moon itself.

        • Re:Time for plan B (Score:3, Insightful)

          by rat7307 ( 218353 )
          Water is simply Hydrogen

          Don't forget the Oxygen part of the H20 equation... Thats the bit that makes creating it in remote places a tad trickier..

          CR
    • Actually, if you take a reasonable heat source to a comet (say...strap a fission pile to a satellite and make a rendevous), you could then get quite a nice reaction engine going.

      Simply vapourise cometary ice and ensure it squirts off in the direction you would like your thrust.

      OK, so your impact would be a bit more radioactive than it would have been otherwise, but then again, you might get away with jettisoning the reactor on a different trajectory as the whole shebang was heading down to the moon.

      I mea

  • Shoot. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:18AM (#7463965) Homepage Journal

    That means no brewery on the moon. So much for my dreams of being a drunken astronaut.

  • Out of ice (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:19AM (#7463974)
    Right, no ice for beer on the moon, everyone off to mars...

  • Dammit! (Score:2, Funny)

    by HiQ ( 159108 )
    I owned that ice! Who took it????

  • No polar ice on Earth, either, (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tex Bravado ( 91447 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:20AM (#7463982)
    before long :-)

  • An outrage! (Score:4, Funny)

    by DarkHand ( 608301 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:21AM (#7463989)
    This means that my great grand childrens' lunar snow cones bought at LunarDisney(tm) will cost 10 times as much! We shouldn't stand for this highway robbery!

  • This guy is everywhere! (Score:4, Funny)

    by fitten ( 521191 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:21AM (#7463993)
    Team leader Bruce Campbell

    Did he vanquish the Mooninites, too?

  • Aw, crap (Score:4, Funny)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) * on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:23AM (#7464007) Homepage Journal
    Now I'll never be able to unload www.luxury-moon-ice-cubes.com.

  • Little Off Topic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:23AM (#7464011)
    I was just surfing the web and came across this Nova [pbs.org] article about one of the possible theories [pbs.org] over the creation of the moon. Its says that the moon is a result of a asteroid crashing into the earth and was formed by the pieces that were blasted off the earth. Here is a video animation [pbs.org] they have on it.
    • That's one theory. Another theory states that the moon is a leftover chunk of a 10th planet that used to exist between Mars and Jupiter. That planet was destroyed in some major event, and its remains became the asteroid belt as well as several moons.

      Back on topic, any settlement on the moon would do best to take various materials containing hydrogen and oxygen, and crack them. Once cracked, the raw hydrogen and oxygen particles could be combined to make water. Hydrogen is pretty easy to come by. A ram scoo
      • That's one theory. Another theory states that the moon is a leftover chunk of a 10th planet that used to exist between Mars and Jupiter. That planet was destroyed in some major event, and its remains became the asteroid belt as well as several moons.

        And you thought Alderaan was just in the movies.
        We're living Episode XXIV

      • If you have a ramscoop capable of collecting any significant amount of hydrogen in deep space, that means you have propulsion technology that zips you around so fast that going to and from the Moon is child's play. We're talking about a significant fraction of c -- at such speeds, travel time between Earth and the Moon is measured in minutes. And honestly, though I'd love to be proven wrong, I don't expect to see such a thing any time soon.

        I like the idea of scooping up chunks of Earth's upper atmosphere

        • Re:Little Off Topic (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AB3A ( 192265 )
          How about never seeing such a thing. Couple of points:

          First, RamScoop practicality has been debated extensively. Many physicists who examine the problem and the energy expeditures have pointed out that given even an extremely small inefficiency, it would make a damned good brake instead of a propulsion system.

          Second, if you're going anything like significant fractions of c you'd whiz right past the earth's and moon's orbits. Here's a sanity check: Low earth orbital speeds are about 2.5E-5 c.

          Since you
          • Fair enough. Last I heard, there was still some controversy over whether or not a ramscoop could be efficient at high enough velocity; I admit that I haven't particularly kept up on the idea.

            And yes, of course there's no way to travel at xc, where x > 0.001 or so, between the Earth and the Moon and have either of them as a reasonable destination. (Unless you have accelerations that would turn the occupants of the ship into jelly.) What I was thinking was, to make the original poster's idea feasible,
            • > you'd have to go waaay out there -- like, a few light-weeks out

              That would be outside of our solar system. Considering that the best source of Hydrogen is at the *center* of our solar system, it would make the best sense to fly into the wind, don't you think? Especially when that wind is composed of exactly the material you're looking for.

              That would be far enough out that even the environmental wackos couldn't complain about using atomic engines. Time to revive NERVA or ORION! With those engines, you
        • > I like the idea of scooping up chunks of Earth's upper
          > atmosphere and taking it to the Moon, though. You still
          > need an engine that's orders of magnitude more
          > powerful and efficient than anything we have now, but
          > something like that might at least be within reach.

          Well, since you'd be skimming the upper atmosphere, the engines wouldn't have to be ultra-powerful, just highly effiicient. Atomic engines would give the necessary power easily. An array of ion engines using materials mined fr
      • That's one theory. Another theory states that the moon is a leftover chunk of a 10th planet that used to exist between Mars and Jupiter. That planet was destroyed in some major event, and its remains became the asteroid belt as well as several moons.

        Sorry disproved long ago, the tidal influences of Mars and Jupiter prevent a large body forming in the asteroid belt. There was never a large body in that area of space. Besides, an explosion would not produce the relatively neat distribution of the modern

  • reliability of conclusion (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (a) similar studies done from *lunar orbit* favor the existence of ice. why is an earth-based study more accurate?
    (b) the article states that only 20% of the permanently-shadowed surface was tested from arecibo. so why the unilateral conclusion?

  • Well, more accurately (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:25AM (#7464034) Journal
    it said there was no sheets of ice at the poles. There could still be grains. The previous survey showed a lot of hydrogen up there, and the best guess for how you get lots of hydrogen to stick around is as ice.

    Not sure why you couldn't have methane mind...

    Simon.

    • Re:Well, more accurately (Score:4, Funny)

      by vslashg ( 209560 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @12:16PM (#7464603)
      Not sure why you couldn't have methane mind...

      Because every time you got a good idea, you'd be distracted and say "That smell again! What's that smell?"
    • Nobody seriously believed that there would be sheets of ice at the lunar poles anyway. When Clementine confirmed the presence of hydrogen at the lunar poles the most commonly accepted source was as hydrates in the lunar regolith.

      There are only sources for the hydrogen according to recent theory:
      - Cometary impacts
      - Cold trapping of the solar wind (this paper details just this scenario: http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/FTI/POSTERS/hhs_space200 0 .pdf)

      Cometary impacts were always a looong shot.

      A side note to those
  • Let's see:

    As the chinese would be the next to put a foot on our satellite, a red moon is off then...

  • Not necessarily... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:29AM (#7464084) Homepage
    The BBC News [bbc.co.uk] site has been carrying a summary of a Nature article on this since yesterday. The telling quote is "The observations, from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, do not rule out ice". The conclusion seems to have been that the ice might still be present, but rather than being thick sheets can only be in small grains or thin sheets. There is also the possiblity of sub-surface ice since the probes can only reach to a depth of several meters into the surface dust.

    Roll on the ESA's Smart 1 probe next year which will hopefully resolve the issue.

  • I guess I won't be able to open up my Lunar Sno-Cone shop. Can I sue the owner of the Moon for lack of facilities? Or do I sue the owner of the Sun for driving off all the ice?

  • Dude! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:33AM (#7464131) Journal
    Where's my ice?
  • how did all the whalers on the moon get around?

    At least they can still sing the whaling song.

  • Well maybe it WAS there... (Score:5, Funny)

    by iworm ( 132527 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:37AM (#7464181)
    Let's get this clear: they used a really really really really powerful radar, and then found that the ice "wasn't there". Uh huh. But now the moon does have strange clouds of water vapour... Whoops.

  • Polar ice isn't the only myth here... (Score:3, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:40AM (#7464206) Homepage
    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

  • Hydrogen is more important than water (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @11:45AM (#7464262)
    Although finding water would be nice, the real issue is finding a long-term source of hydrogen on the moon. The moon offers plenty of long-term sources of oxygen as a byproduct of processing moon rocks [asi.org]. But hydrogen may be scarer, unless there really is a concentration of either water or hydrated rock at the poles. Without hydrogen, life gets much harder. Perhaps the moon really is a harsh mistress.
  • Bummer, I guess I'll have to leave the ice skates at home.
  • How does this affect the theories about the moon being formed after Earth collided with some ancient planetoid? Or am I way behind on the current theories about the moon?
    • How does this affect the theories about the moon being formed after Earth collided with some ancient planetoid? Or am I way behind on the current theories about the moon?

      It doesn't. Any ice on the Moon would be the result of a cometary impact in the recent (geologically speaking) past.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Not complete refutation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @12:10PM (#7464503) Journal

    The radar astronomers admit that they were not able to probe Shackleton crater where Clementine got it positive reading. In any event, I doubt we are talking about much more than frost in the regolith. This is bad news for those who prattle on about stipmining the lunar south pole in order to manufacture rocket fuel.

  • Shadows (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Autonomous Crowhard ( 205058 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @01:15PM (#7465295)
    I read this and I have a question... How can they be using Arecibo to detect into the bottoms of those craters? Given Arecibo's location (18.3) and Luna's orbital inclination (5 degrees) and the fact that they are looking at Luna's poles then the angle of incedence would be pretty low (4.13 degrees) for the south pole. From the article it sounds like they are only checking the sides of the craters and not the bottom. Not sure what good that does.

    Also, so what if it takes a lot of processing to get the water out of the soil. It's not like you don't have a great source of energy just over the crater wall.

  • I mean, it is just one survey. In the scientific world, that equals one experiment, which should be considered in the context of the others, which are equally valid.

    From what I read, it is 3 things:
    1) A survey
    2) An analysis of the results
    3) A conclusion based on the analysis.

    I don't think that this constitutes proof at all. Maybe the author needs to take a Logic course.

  • Global warming. That's the reason. Hey, we've got to get rid of the greenhouse gases on the moon. No SUV's. SUV's generate all greenhouse gases.
  • Question for someone who might know: How was the ice supposed to survive for billions (or for that matter, even thousands) of years? Ice sublimates [madsci.org]. (You can see it directly that you don't even necessarily need low pressure environments; make ice cubes in your freezer and leave them for a few weeks. The ice cubes slowly but surely shrink.)

    Once the ice/water vapor gets into the sun, it'll leave the lunar surface, since simple observation shows the Moon isn't capable of holding water vapor (or it would).

    So
  • ...because Mars Needs Women [imdb.com]!

    We geeks can't afford sharing the ones we have already what with all the big tentacles, musculature and attractive extra eyeballs. Mhey.
  • Whenever the moon was created it had to have been very hot, and so water would have existed as vapor if it existed at all. Since the moon doesn't have enough gravity to hold down an atmosphere, all it's gases, including the water vapor, would have boiled off into space. Why would scientists be hoping for water? It seems to me the only materials that should remain on the moon are those that remain solid/liquid at high temperatures. Am I wrong on this? I would think that the atomosphere would have left pretty

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