New Radar Maps of Moon

SpaceAdmiral writes to mention that NASA has some new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon obtained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The new images have also been used to create a simulation of the Moon's day and a movie of a Moon landing from the point of view of the astronaut. "NASA is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for 'peaks of eternal light.' Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station."

Strip mining followed by dissociation, yah right

[amightywind]

Not to mention that the sparse ice regolith deposits would have to be extensively strip mined, presumably by nuclear powered equipment, and then chemically dissociated, another energy intensive process, to produce a minute amount of fuel and oxidizer. All this on a topography with 37,000 feet of elevation change. It is surprising how silly ideas like this persist.

Re:Sunlight 24/7

[AJWM]

All the ingredients to make solar cells and power conduits are right there in the Lunar regolith: silicon and aluminum. Build a couple of factory crawlers, start them out someplace on the equator and have them just crawl around the whole moon, building and deploying solar cells connected to the aluminum conductor grid at the same time.

When they're done, you have a moon-circling power distribution grid, half of which is in sunlight at any given time. Okay, the initial setup may be a little beyond what we can do now, but...

(In effect, the polar 'power towers' are the same idea but with a much smaller radius.)