NASA Needs Fake Moon Dust

crisco writes "NASA's renewed interest in lunar exploration and 'in situ resource utilization,' or ISRU, is driving the need for tons of carefully faked lunar dust and sand for testing purposes: 'We don't have enough real moondust to go around,' says Larry Taylor, director of Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. To run all the tests, "we need to make a well-qualified lunar simulant.' And not just a few bags will do. 'We need tons of it, mainly for working on technologies for diggers and wheels and machinery on the surface,' adds David S. McKay, chief scientist for astrobiology at the Johnson Space Center (JSC)."

Bad astronomy debunking url

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the url to phil plaits debunking. I highly recommend that anyone thinking the moonlandings are a hoax check it out.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html [badastronomy.com]

Armstrong describes the Lunar soil

[Fox_1]

Armstrong and Aldrin found a thin dust layer on the surface of the moon.
'I am at the foot of the ladder. The LM [lunar module ] footpads are only depressed in the surface about one or two inches, although the surface appears. to be very, very fine grained, as. you get close to it. It is almost like a powder. Now and then it is very fine. I am going to step off the LM now. That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'
When he started walking on the surface of the moon he said:
'The surface is fine and powdery. I can - I can pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides. of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints. of my boots and the treads in the fine sandy particles.'
When he was collecting samples:
'This is very interesting. It is a very soft surface, but here and there where I plug with the contingency sample collector, I run into a very hard surface, but it appears to be very cohesive material of the same sort. I will try to get a rock in here.'
Apparently the ground was unyielding enough that they had trouble getting the flag planted.

Got abrasive dust?

[JayTech]

Sounds like a nearly impossible task to replicate lunar dust considering how abrasive the stuff is. This article [wired.com] does a good job of explaining.

So predictable

[Lord Kano]

NASA is finally winning over the last few people who believe that the original moon landings were faked and now as they prepare to go back they put out a call for tons of fake lunar soil. I'd suspect that they do some of these things to intentionally draw the charges.

LK

Enough Already ...

[openldev]

If I hear another "fake moon landing" joke, I think I might kill myself. Seriously folks, it's an old joke and isn't funny the 100th time it is posted for the same story ...

Re:obvious solution

[SeeSchloss]

I'm always astonished by the level of ignorance of people regarding nukes and blowing up large objects... I seriously doubt any amount of nukes detonated on the surface of the Moon would be able to blow it up, detonating all of the Earth's arsenal a thousand of kilometers or so under the surface might produce some results (but 'm doubtful about it) but there's no way we can do that.

I remember this time I was talking about sending nuclear waste or nukes to the Sun to get rid of them to someone, and another guy who heard that was like "No way ! With the power of modern nukes, we'd just blow up the Sun !". Stupid.

Re:Got abrasive dust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they want to stay a lot longer this time, even possibly setting up a permanant base. But that requires digging, possibly oxygen extraction from the dirt, and even using it as building materials. So what they need now is something similar enough to the real thing to test equipment before they send it up.