Lunar Dust: A Major Worry for Moon Visitors 464
smooth wombat writes "Wired has a story which talks about a danger to possible future inhabitants of the Moon that is rarely brought up: the highly abrasive lunar dust. Unlike Earth, the Moon has no erosive capabilities to smooth the edges of rocks or dust. As a result the lunar dust has arms that stick out, like Velcro, and sticks to everything. As the astronauts who walked on the moon found out, the dust scratched lenses and corroded seals within hours. Some of the particles are only microns across which means once they get into your lungs, they stay there. This could cause a lung disease similar to silicosis."
lawsuits (Score:2, Insightful)
Lung Disease (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that if you're freely breathing in dust with no protection between you and the lunar surface, you've got bigger issues to worry about than silicosis.
Indoors, silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Because we're not going back any time soon.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF does soon mean?
Not only that (Score:3, Insightful)
Google sentences from his "articles" and see for yourself.
Re:Simple solution.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what it means is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Something like this for the suites, a respirator then doing it again for the person should eliminate enough of the threat to make it little to worry about. As for abrasions on boots or lences? There could be a sleaved system that slides over them to take the blunt of the damage like sock or contact lences. These could be clearned and reused several times until they become unsafe or unproductive.
Of course this would be more suitable for permanent structures then it would be for landing craft. Somethign that could be done to litigate the risk would be to have a second landing vehicle with the neccesary componants and then have the landing craft dock with it after landing. The second lander could be motorized and have the ability to manuver to different parts of the moon by remote control to make it more convientient and less expensive. Once permanent structures are made, there would be little need for them again unless they can be fabricated into the the desing of the biodomes (whatever) and become one of it's functional clean room. It might even be able to goto the landing craft, pickup visitors and return them to the permanent structures to reduce the risk of colision when landing a craft at the building.
This fits so well in my little imaginary moon world. The shuttles could land far enough away to not endanger the settlement and the left over mision decontaminators become the airport shuttles. I bet there could even be a loading dock built into them so supplies could be lifted out of the cargo bay with the arm and placed directly on the transport like a shiping container.
Re:Get in line (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No. 1 problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Effects of the colonial era on human diversity (Score:1, Insightful)
You got to get your Rousseau Noble Savage/Disney history out of your head and pick up some history books.
Simple solution: orbital settlements (Score:5, Insightful)
See Mike Combs' space settlement FAQ [aol.com] which says:
Sunlight also drives the life-support system of the habitat, so the day/night cycle can be set to whatever is convenient. Compare this to the moon, where there is 14 days of continuous daylight, and then a 14-day-long night. Here, some alternate energy source would probably have to be used half the time.
Zero G would be a liability if there were no alternative to it. Astronauts experience loss of bone mass and muscle tone after prolonged exposure to weightlessness. But most of a space habitat would be under Earth-normal gravity, although there would be easy access to regions of reduced gravity and zero G (perhaps for personal flight). With planets, on the other hand, you have to take the gravity that's there, and it's often the wrong kind of gravity to keep us healthy. Lunarians or Martians would probably not be able to visit the Earth (nor accelerate at 1 G).
Re:Pressurized... (Score:1, Insightful)
So, we use EVA suits that DOCK rather than enter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the backpack mounts, underneath it on the back of the suit, there's a hatch.
Astronaut backs up to the side of the habitat,
removes the backpack or hinges it to one side.
There's a flat oval surface big enough to exit from.
A matching surface on the habitat also opens up.
On it there's a sticky surface like a Post-It note.
Astronaut presses the suit up against that surface, and it seals around the edge.
The sticky surface traps all the dust on the outside of the suit hatch and anything that stuck to the surface gets peeled away along with the sticky layer, out from between the EVA suit and the actual habitat surface.
Think of the old magic trick of slipping a tablecloth out from under the table setting, or of putting down one side of double-sticky tape and then pulling the covering paper out from in between the parts you want to stay in contact.
Then you have a pair of freshly cleaned surfaces stuck together -- astronaut on one side in the EVA suit, and true airlock on the other side in the habitat (yes, you do want a backup door.
Pull the little zip strip all the way around, roll up the membrane with any remaining dust stuck in between two thin layers of clean material.
Astronaut backs into the airlock.
Pull down another clean sheet of sealing material over the opening, with whatever connectors are required for flushing out and cleaning the EVA suit.
Close the portal, leaving the cleaned suit hanging there on the outside of the habitat waiting to be entered next time.
Step through the real airlock door, seal it, wash up, lather-rinse-repeat.
Go into the habitat.
Yes, I take this stuff seriously.
Short of setting up a nice big sprinkler system and freezing the whole area to control the dust, it's going to be a constant issue.
Mars is looking friendlier all the time, as are the Lagrange points.
Maybe the Moon really is for the machines.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it won't. Not to Americans anyway. Not with NASA's already paltry budget being cut to fund more Pentagon spending.
It might be a problem for the Chinese, but as long as we can keep buying cheap Chinese make consumer products at Wal*Mart, America won't give a damn.
Wake up America! Your birthright is being sold to Halliburton. Your schools have been hi-jacked by Christian Fundamentalists who believe that their Creation story ought to be taught in biology classes, and Florida is about to pass a law allowing college professors to be sued for offending Fundamentalist students by ignoring Creationism.
A Republican Congressman, Sennsenbrenner wants to enact criminal penalties -- that is, jail time -- for broadcasters who violate his idea of "decency", and Republican Senator Ted Stevens, wants to expand existing decency laws to cover cable and satellite broadcasts that people can't even see without subscribing.
Your President wants to outlaw medical research because he considers a two-day-old, 16-cell, unimplanted embryo a human life. His executive agencies are quizzing scientists about who they voted for as part of the hiring process, and suppressing research that his corporate backers don't want to see.
Wake up! Science in America is under siege -- not only are we not going back to the Moon, we're headed straight for the Dark Ages.
Re:Dictionary entry for lunar dust... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd say at least you were brave enough to post with your "name", except that on
Me? I always post anonymously so that I don't have to read the inane replies that guys like you send back.
BTW, don't judge my politics from my posts.
Re:Simple solution: orbital settlements (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural Resources!
Simply put, you need to have "stuff" in order to build anything, and planets like Mars and the Moon have lots of that stuff.
A neat advantage that Mars also offers is that you can start a human civilazation with comparatively fewer resources to start with, as they can draw from the local environment in a much easier fashion than you can by simply sitting in "empty" space, such as LEO. The ISS is a prime example of this, where all of the resources have to be brought up from the Earth in order to sustain human life up there... subject to budget cuts, mismanagement at HQ, and changes of priorities.
That said, you can still obtain some resource from asteroids, but that means you have to run out to them and set up camps on those asteroids to carve up the resources for the space stations you are talking about, or simply start building the settlements themselves right there. You still got planetary settlement then, regardless of where you ship the metal & minerals afterward.
In short, I don't see a way that you can avoid settlements on the Moon or Mars in the next 500-1000 years, and any manufactured worlds (like an O'Neil colony) would have to at least have a symbiotic relationship with miners living on dirt with gravity.
BTW, when you are dealing with agriculture in space, there are a lot of unknowns that will go into the picture. To suggest that there will be no pests or weeds is showing signs of ignorance as to how food is actually grown, as you need a very complex relationship between microorganisms, insects, and multiple species of plants in order to grow healthy crops. Even most farmers take this for granted as they push dirt around, but it is still something that they use to their advantage even here on the Earth. I've had to pull too much sweet corn out of soybean fields to think that weeds are merely noxious plants that God somehow put in there to "torment mankind". This is going to be an issue, however, for any agriculture that takes place off of the Earth.
Also RE: mobile territories--- This is going to be much harder than you think. If you want to have a space colony that can be moved around, it has to be built substantially different from something that is simply built in place to stay there. For a practical current application to compare against, look up or examine the building practices for mobile homes ("manufactured homes" in the current lexicon) vs. on-site constructed homes. Mobile homes have to have steel beams in certain places in order to keep the thing together as it travels down a freeway at 70 mph, and other construction considerations that must be done that keep certain floorplans from being done. Yes, there are some very creative architects that do seeming wonders with manufactured homes, but you can still look at the outside of a house and tell the difference. What make a manufactured home cheap is the economies of scale when they are mass-produced, and not having to haul as much labor on-site. This will not be an option in space for centuries if not for over 1000 years.
If you already have a solid and well established colony on bodies like Mars or the Moon (self-sustaining even), then you will be able to talk about manufactured worlds. Until then, you will have to lift everything from the Earth, which is prohibitively expensive for any very large project, or something that has not risen to the level of being of national importance, Robert Bigelow not withstanding.
Re:Toner Research (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No. 1 problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to put a little more perspective on it all. In the 60's, when vaccuum tubes were 'modern electronics', they started with _nothing_, designed, built, and executed a lunar landing program in 9 years. Today, even something as simple as a feasability study for a return trip will take more than 9 years, and the grand master bush plan has it taking 20+ years just to get back. The real proof of the pudding, is when you go visit the space center in florida, and after taking a couple of the tours, you realize, its not a showcase of modern technology, it's a museum. the whole place is basking in the glory of half a century ago, the good old days, when nasa actually did something, and the space program was something to be proud of.
I really dont think anybody reading /. today has anything to worry about in terms of health problems from breathing moon dust. Most of you will die of old age before america returns to the moon.
Look at me, I'm a panic artist in tinfoil! (Score:5, Insightful)
Christian Fundamentalists and Creationism are not the biggest problems in American schools today. I'm not sure what the biggest problem is (I've begun to realize that my last hypothesis was rather narrowminded), however, I'm starting to think that a deep fear of controversy, and the lack of clear purpose are in a dead heat for it.
Schools seem unwilling to teach about ideas and issues people feel strongly about one way or another. Schools also can't seem to figure out if they exist strictly to do the bidding of the parents, or to have some measure of independence and personal destiny of their own. That ties in with the issue of controversy, though, I suppose. (Then there's also my pet issue with schools: the sink holes that are administrations)
On the issue of broadcast(and cable/satellite) standards, I have to agree with The Wilschon and wonder what this has to do with science, or the Moon. Nevertheless you're talking about one Representative(of 435) and one Senator(of 100). I don't know what kind of support they have for their ideas, but I'm not about to become panicked over the fact that they have them. Senators and Congressmen are allowed to have dumb ideas too... just so long as they don't get the votes to pass them into law.
As to stem cell research(which you can say), like one of the ACs said, he isn't outlawing it, just restricting Federal funding. We're funding it out here in California [ca.gov], though.
Yes, my headline is rather flamish(flemish?), but seriously man, the Dark Ages? If you're going to act as an alarmist, at least come up with some original thoughts.
Re:Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
The people that want to get offended on my behalf because Janet Jackson has boobs, are the same people that want to teach our children that the earth is flat. And they're the same people that want to halt any scientific research that might produce results contrary to their mythology.
This urge to control the information you're exposed to doesn't exist in a vacuum, whether you're talking about space, embryos, or TV.
Firecracker smell makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Since there's not much free oxygen on the moon, the dust is likely to contain any number of compounds that will rapidly oxidize on contact with a human-breathable atmosphere.
So all the comments about moon dust smelling "burnt" sound pretty likely. Fire can be seen as an example of a rapid oxidation effect, after all.