Lunar Dust: A Major Worry for Moon Visitors

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."

asbestos

[Internet_Communist]

sounds like moon dust has similar properties to asbestos. So small that it gets stuck in lungs and such...I have no idea if it's as resilient as asbestos is though...any clues?

Re:Hmmm

[InfiniteWisdom]

That is something they most certainly would plan on doing once they return to the space capsule.

Moreover, once you have a permanent base, thing are going to get that much worse. It is extraordinarily hard to keep micron-sized particles out completely whenever you enter and exit the airlock.

Re:Lung Disease

[Skapare]

The dust gets on your space suit. You go back inside. Some of the dust falls off and floats in the air inside. Later you breath it in.

Sounds to me like they are going to need some really good washdown. And a vacuum cleaner can actually work with air being sucked in to pull some particles along with it. The big question is just how much of an effort is needed.

Re:Live on the Moon? Thank you smokers!

[rebeka thomas]

Worth mentioning is that lunar dust has not been in contact with the common gases we simply breathe as humans. Nor with the fluids & matter of our lungs.

As well as not being ground down by the action of air and water like dust on earth is, many of these particles could contain practically any mix of extremely reactive substances, substances that have not been oxidised for example, by the actions of an air atmosphere.

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[account_deleted]

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Moon dust? Bah! Try Black Rock Desert Dust

[SuperSanta]

Finally an environment I was BUILT to survive in. Having gone to the desert at the end of August for the last 4 years, I know DUST. I know the feeling of contact lenses gritty with it, zippers of tents being destroyed after only one week exposure to it, taking a shower feeling dry and fresh for all of maybe 5 seconds before your skin has that fine gritty coating on it again. Bring on the moon!

Re:Live on the Moon? Thank you smokers!

[Total_Wimp]

Nah, it wont even get to that. They can control the dust just by hosing it down. Duh!

TW

Re:So what it means is

[sTalking_Goat]

How?

I actually thought the same thing too, but how. Can't blow the dust off, that' would be like sandblasting the suit. You can't wash it off, then instead of a floating dust problem you've got a bouncing mud problem. Some kind of human safe Sonicator could be ivented I suppose.

Toner Research

[purduephotog]

Toner cartridges carry a distribution of particle sizes that are considered 'safe' for you to inhale because they can't stick in your lungs.

You can also make toner with such a small particle size distribution it is actually taken into the blood stream and excreted, well, normally.

You get into trouble, however, when you get into particle sizes between the two of those ranges (Which escape me ATM).

That sized dust goes into the lung and stays there- too large to get absorbed, too small to get exhaled out.

It will also exhibit most of the properties of statically charged nano-particulates: It gets everywhere, fast.

There may be a 'clean room' to disengage the suits, but no matter how you adjust for the problem (save going underwater in an ultrasonic scrubber) that dust will move with you.

Maybe installation of those 'ion-breeze' units from SharperImage will fix it.... ;P

Re:Live on the Moon? Thank you smokers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't some common substances really reactive in a powdered form too? afaik there's a lot of iron out in space, and iron powder can be seriously explosive in the right conditions, or at least get very hot and burn when exposed to water & air. Take a deep breath of the wrong kind of moon dust and get third degree burns all down your lungs!

From memory some divers have used iron filing pads in wetsuits to keep warm in bad conditions because the oxidising in seawater provides enough heat to offset the cold of the water.

Trivial

[ltbarcly]

This is such a stupid concern. As for breathing it, do the same thing moms have done for 2000 years, don't let people wear dirty stuff inside.

There is no reason you would need to expose the INSIDE of the structure you live in to the OUTSIDE of the suit. Design the suit so that getting into the suit is the same as leaving the dust-free area. That means sort of 'docking' it. That way you are only exposed to the inside of the suit, never the outside.

Obviously you will have to repair and maintain the suit. When this comes up you'll have to clean it before bringing it in. At least you won't have to clean it after every use, and you won't need complicated (heavy, thus expensive) equipment to dedust people who go outside for 10 minutes to check something. Plus, no deduster means no failing deduster, which means you won't have to let dusty ass people inside because the vaccum broke.

The real question is why do you have a suit. It will only be necessary to go outside very rarely I would imagine, so the dust becomes less of an issue. Just suck it off anybody coming in and forget about it. You will have to be running some serious hepa/ultraviolet air cleaners anyway, because dust from human skin and abrasion between objects will just build up without limit otherwise. You'll have to ultraviolet the air somehow, or you risk things like legionairs disease, and nitrous oxide buildup.

I would be more worried about wear due to abrasion. Unless parts can be fashioned easily on the moon this could be a serious problem. Perhaps parts exposed to dust could be made out of a polymer that can be melted and remolded, so that the only loss is the small amount of plastic that is actually abraded off, instead of the entire part being ruined.

A hypothesis

[ockegheim]

I remember that NASA was concerned that the lunar module would sink into the layer of dust, but it didn't.

At the time scientists only had experience with terriestrial dust. Could the surprising supportiveness of the moon dust be at least partially related to the sharper structure of its particles?

Mars?

[Tablizer]

I wonder how this compares to Mars dust. Does the wind there grind off the micro-spikes?

Re:Lung Disease

[DerekLyons]

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.

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.

Every one of the Apollo lunar mission crewman have been exposed to this dust, without having unprotected acess to the lunar surface - the dust was carried into the cabin with them on the surface of their suits.

For example see this picture [comcast.net] of Gene Cernan after a lunar EVA.

Re:Hmmm

[Flendon]

For protecting the lenses they could use tear-away windshield film [mgnetwork.com].

Re:Pressurized...

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post actually mentions that the pressure is higher inside an airplane. The reason that the doors are held closed by this pressure is that they open to the inside!