NASA Says Moon Has More Water Than Great Lakes 255
jerryjamesstone writes "The US Great Lakes have some competition: the moon. Yes, that old thing in the sky may hold more than all of the water contained in the Great Lakes, according to a NASA-funded study. From the article: 'Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, along with other scientists across the nation, determined that the water was likely present very early in the moon's formation history as hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This finding means water is native to the moon.'"
The US great lakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
And here I thought the great lakes were in Canada as well.
Re:but then... (Score:3, Insightful)
"NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon’s interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth. "
I'm not entirely sure what significance this has on us. I guess it might make establishing a moon base a little more feasible, but there really isn't any point of doing such a thing. Transporting anything from the moon to the earth is so expensive that it likely isn't worth mining. And you have the initial cost of establishing a mining outpost on the moon which, although probably mostly robotic, would still require some amount of human intervention. Either way, it would require such a hideously large initial investment that it's not likely to happen any time in the future.
Re:but then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Earth to the moon is really flippin' expensive, to be sure.
Moon to the earth? It's called a GRAVITY WELL. Give things a kick, they come down on their own; all you need is enough casing to survive reentry. I'm not saying it's a solved problem, but it's a much, much easier one.
Then again, I've read too much Heinlein. *grin*
Re:but then... (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly don't know how this actually works. You can't just go straight down to earth, you have to aim quite precisely to make sure that you don't completely burn up. You also have to not land in the middle of times square or in the middle of an incredibly dangerous part of the ocean. Hauling a container (which I guess you think is really easy to build) full of some minerals (probably quite heavy due to size of container and density of anything worth mining) in the middle of 40 foot waves is a suicide mission.
Of course, you still have to get this magic container up to the moon. The heavier it is, the more expensive it is. And as for "giving it a kick", well, you have to transport the boot up there too. Then you have to assemble, test, power, and use this boot. How do you expect to do that cheaply?
Re:but then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Transporting anything from the moon to the earth is so expensive that it likely isn't worth mining.
Building/launching from moon some space factories (or whatever needed) to mine the asteroids would be an investment that will pay for sure.
Re:Putting things to scale... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the Moon contains even more than one teaspoon of water in 5 tonnes of rock.
Yeah, the article makes it clear that 50 parts per million is the highest estimate they can come up with. Also, it isn't water: it's hydroxyl (OH) groups on molecules in rocks, which is what you get when rocks forming in a wet environment.
This is the way geologists talk about things, but still, the reporting is almost as misleading as the recent pack of lies [timesonline.co.uk] from the people who brought you Iraqi WMD's claiming there is vast untapped mineral wealth in Afghanistan (which Stephen Peters, the head of the USGS’s Afghanistan Minerals Project, is strangely unaware of according to the linked article from the Times.)
The discovery of hydroxyl groups in rocks on the moon at the 50 PPM level is scientifically interesting because previously lunar minerals were believed to be absolutely anhydrous: the way I was taught geology back in the day we were told "lunar minerals are just like Terrestrial minerals, except they have no water". That has now been changed to, "except they have almost no water". Ford Prefect would be pleased.
Re:but then... (Score:4, Insightful)
Space Elevator. Now. .... I honestly don't know why there isn't a lot more effort in this direction already.
Dammit, I can't believe this keeps coming up. Because it DOES NOT EXIST! It's a science fiction fantasy. Will never work without massive leaps in technology that no one knows even how to approach solving. Might as well research magic at this point.
There's also Gold in the Sea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guess the other nations (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I don't think the Earth-Bound States of America will suffer from not getting its hands on the water that could theoretically be extracted by laboriously pulverizing the entire volume of the moon. Since - as the article points out - the EBSA already has that same amount of water, already in drinkable form, lapping at its shoreline from Minnesota to New York. We'll manage.
Re:Cheating Moon (Score:1, Insightful)
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
Re:but then... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's far less difficult than you imagine.
The worst part would be mining for raw materials. You would need some heavy machinery. Luckily, you can send lighter machinery that grabs and processes materials for the heavier machines that, in turn, can grab more materials to be used to build more of them. You will have to send parts from Earth, but they would be comparatively small.
As for sending containers (obviously manufactured on the Moon) all you need is a big magnetic rail. Given no atmospheric resistance, it's not hard to reach the 2 Km/second escape velocity. Energy is abundant too - as are materials for building solar panels. And since the Moon is tidally locked, you can easily accelerate those payloads to a very precise point in the Earth atmosphere.
With that kind structure in place, human occupation would be easy.
Re:but then... (Score:4, Insightful)
Space Elevator. Now. .... I honestly don't know why there isn't a lot more effort in this direction already.
Dammit, I can't believe this keeps coming up. Because it DOES NOT EXIST! It's a science fiction fantasy. Will never work without massive leaps in technology that no one knows even how to approach solving. Might as well research magic at this point.
That's an unfair characterization. The technological hurdles are large but they are well-understood. There's an excellent 2002 report by NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts http://www.spaceelevator.com/docs/521Edwards.pdf [spaceelevator.com] which discusses the technical problems in great detail. The primary issues preventing a space elevator are related to the tensile strength of the ribbon/line. Carbon nanotubes are in theory strong enough, but they need to be able to be manufactured at a much larger scale, with higher quality (especially in regards to average tube length) and need to be placed in a reliable matrix. The reason that it looks like there isn't much space elevator research is really because there's very little that would need to be researched that specifically about space elevators. The primary issue is carbon nanotube research and that's happening now at a quick pace because carbon nanotubes have lots of different applications. The technologies necessary for a space elevator are already being developed for other applications.
Re:but then... (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been cultures on the Earth where the amount of time required for an ordinary person to work in order to sustain basic living requirements was actually quite low.... on the order of an hour or two a day. There certainly were even for these cultures periods of time that everybody was expected to put in long hours during critical seasons and events that happened, but this tended to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule. What did these people do during the other hours of the day? Create art, make babies, teach lessons to the next generation, and have fun enjoying life. See Plains Indians (native American tribal groups) and Pacific Islanders (Polynesians) for examples of cultures like this.
On the other hand, Tennessee Ernie Ford [wikipedia.org] made famous a song about the life of an ordinary coal miner, where in fact they ended up owing more money at the end of the day simply by working than they had at the beginning of the day.... typically working a 12-16 hour shift at least six or seven days a week. I'd certainly say that going to work is not necessarily the point of doing stuff like this, and it turns out that "advanced civilization" tends to dump hard work even more upon ordinary folks.
There is much more to life, and there certainly are folks who wouldn't mind going to the Moon or elsewhere in the Universe for a whole bunch of reasons... including just to get away from people like their mother's-in-law or to get a fresh start on life (being in a location far enough away that extradition doesn't really make sense). Yeah, I can see a whole bunch of reasons for people going to the Moon, and not all of them are glamorous either.