Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust (gizmodo.com) 83
"European researchers are working on a system that can churn out breathable oxygen from simulated samples of moon dust," reports Gizmodo:
"Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel," explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release. Lomax, along with ESA research fellow Alexandre Meurisse, are currently plugging away at a prototype that could eventually lead to exactly that: oxygen production from lunar dust. They're currently testing their system at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), which is based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
Their prototype is working, but adjustments will be required to make it suitable for use on the Moon, such as reducing its operating temperature....
Interestingly, ESTEC is not treating the metals as an unwanted byproduct. The team is currently looking into various ways of exploiting these metals in a lunar environment, such as transforming them into compounds for 3D printing.
The European Space Agency points out that samples returned from the lunar surface were made up of 40-45% percent oxygen by weight.
"Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel," explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release. Lomax, along with ESA research fellow Alexandre Meurisse, are currently plugging away at a prototype that could eventually lead to exactly that: oxygen production from lunar dust. They're currently testing their system at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), which is based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
Their prototype is working, but adjustments will be required to make it suitable for use on the Moon, such as reducing its operating temperature....
Interestingly, ESTEC is not treating the metals as an unwanted byproduct. The team is currently looking into various ways of exploiting these metals in a lunar environment, such as transforming them into compounds for 3D printing.
The European Space Agency points out that samples returned from the lunar surface were made up of 40-45% percent oxygen by weight.
So.. (Score:4, Funny)
...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?
Re:So.. (Score:4, Funny)
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...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?
NASA will be launching a simulated Moon shortly for people to colonize. It'll be next to the real Moon for easy tourist access.
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Other "simulated Lunar regolith" materials are available. If you follow a certain NASA researcher in rover wheels on Twitter, you may have seen a 20-tweet-long thread if his at the weekend about why their simulated Lunar regolith" can't match the known tribological properties of Lunar regolith because they can't make such dusty materials for use in an un-enclosed workshop. The whole topic is considerably more complicated than it appears at
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...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?
You misunderstand. It's dust from a simulated moon.
This has been what was intended since the '60s. (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been what has been intended, for lunar colonies, since at least the '60s.
- Many kinds of rock - including lunar rock - are metal oxides.
- With sufficient energy you can tear them apart, yielding large quantities of oxygen (suitable for breathing) and metal suitable for building.
- The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger, without an atmosphere or clouds to attenuate it. With 1/6th gravity and no weather it's easy to build solar collectors. (Two weeks day, two weeks night, so you need storage or you only run energy-hiungry processes during the two-week day)
It's nice to see people are actually working on designs for the machines needed. It's another sign that, with the current round of (largely privatized) spce travel, we may be on our way back to the moon. This time to stay, rather than for a short visit and look-around.
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" - The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger,"
But then it pauses for 2 weeks.
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" - The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger,"
But then it pauses for 2 weeks.
Sounds like the sun-tracking motors on the panels will use less power than they do down here on Earth, that's yet another win for the Moon, thanks for pointing it out.
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Sun tracking is falling out of favor these days. Panels have gotten cheap enough that adding more / using a bigger panel gives you more power per buck than tracking the sun and getting rid of the cosine falloff. Also, on a densely-packed solar array you'd lose about as much from shadowing the next panel as you gained by having the panel normal to the sun.
Now the economics might work out differently on the moon - especially if they're building the panels, supports, and trackers from lunar material. There'
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Sun tracking is falling out of favor these days.
Irrelevant. You can keep your stupid fads and shit.
Don't blather about cheap panels, we're talking about on the moon you're not going to use cheap panels.
Blah blah blah. something something about steam, but see above. Why would I care about the latest fads in steam engines?
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With 1/6th gravity and no weather it's easy to build solar collectors.
It's easier to build nuclear reactors.
Let's assume we have solar panels on the moon. How will we protect them from meteors? The moon gets impacted by them all the time and there's no atmosphere to burn them up. A nuclear power plant can be put under a concrete dome or a thick steel plate like we do on Earth. If we are going to dig up the dirt for oxygen, and liberating it from the many metal oxides, then some of that oxygen will come from uranium and thorium oxides. There will be no shortage of fuel.
On
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I remember the 1960's, including "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. The amount of water involved is prodigious, and awkward to refine from rock. Given the feasibility of solar sails, why wouldn't it make more sense to bring quite large icy blocks from the rings of Jupiter in years-long or decades-long orbits to impact designated locations on the Moon? One such ice metior, roughly 100 meters wide carrying roughly half a million cubic meters of waterfor quite a large colony with life support,
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I meant the rings of Jupiter. They're much closer than Saturn, and the solar sails much more efficient than sending the sails and returning them all the way from Saturn. On review, the rings of Jupiter may not have enough ice to easily harvest. Some steroids may be feasible, but planetary rings would allow a great deal more choice and less need to pre-select a particular target.
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I'd also remind you that the radiation environment around Jupiter is pretty nasty. They had to take a fair bit of care about the design of the Juno mission's orbital programme to keep it's likelihood of failure due to radiation damage low enough to be acceptable. Now that the main observation targets have been accomplished they're "searching for the core" (by probing the close-in gravity field, by flying through it) while
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Perhaps use the solar mirror for harvesting?
I'd not realized the Jupiter rings were so dusty, and so poor in ice. I'd thought having a target so much larger would help astronavigation. But I _do_ like the idea of tapping the Jupiter trojans.
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The Trojans are in a relatively stable location. I'd anticipate that they'd be much easier to vector to and connect with: if one is unavailable or unsuitable, simply choose another nearby.
Also, "distance" is not the limitation one might expect with solar sails. There is a casual analysis of trip durations by various means to various planets at http://www.astronomycafe.net/F... [astronomycafe.net] Jupiter via solar sail is only 100 days. Mars is 29 days. Those trajectories are apparently not docking trajectories, The surprising
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Once the orbit is well enough defined to "reacquire" an object at a third opposition (as seen from Earth, so about 3.25 years, not 36-odd years for Jupiter and attendants to go round the Sun thrice), it's considered well-enough known for the MPC to change the temporary designation (e.g. 2016 MU69) to a permanent one ("486958", and possibly a name such as "Arrokoth"). Sometimes you can improve the orbit enough to reach that confidence if
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The Trojans are a more stable orbit than most asteroids, which are unpredictably perturbed, primarily by Jupiter. I'd expect minor perturbations of such inherently unstable orbits to be relatively large and take time tracking and docking with them, compared to the more long-term stable orbits of a planetary ring or the Trojans that you brought up. Sadly, they don't seem to have a lot of ice, which is what _I_ was looking for in solar sail harvesting range.
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The Trojans are "stable", in the L4 and L5 points. Please do look up "Lagrange points" and why orbiting objects tend to accumulate there at L4 and L5: Earth has similar orbital points relative to the moon, which is why various space stations are planned for them. The other Lagrange points, such as the one on the opposite side of the sun from Jupiter, are less stable. Even small perturbations tend to accumulate and migrate the satellites from that meta-stable location.
I'm not saying the asteroids jumble from
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It has some comments that illuminate what "stable" means in respect of Lagrangian regions:
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OIC. Typo for "asteroids". That had me puzzled for a minute or several, so I ignored it. You'll find that the grain size of all the planetary rings is pretty small, on average. Yes, Saturn does have a few lumps in the range of a few hundred m to a km or so, but they're few and far between. Which is why they stand out, in their effects on the neighbourhood, because they're r
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The amount of water involved is prodigious, and awkward to refine from rock. Given the feasibility of solar sails, why wouldn't it make more sense to bring quite large icy blocks from the rings of Jupiter in years-long or decades-long orbits to impact designated locations on the Moon?
Energy and time. The answer to every question about space. Also safety, the other answer to every question about space.
There will already be humans on the Moon's surface long before a mission to Saturn's rings could even launch, let alone yield an impact. Said mission's accuracy is highly doubtful. With a bit of luck, the chunk of ice it sets in motion actually hits the Moon. Hitting somewhere in particular is a whole lot harder. I don't think people on the Lunar surface want to spend their days hopin
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It's not quite that simple... (Score:3, Informative)
According to the article, it's a pretty ugly process. First you have to heat the regolith to 950 C and immerse in a bath of molten calcium chloride salt. Then you use electrolysis to break up the metal oxides into oxygen and pure metals.
This is going to require energy on a massive scale. You're also going to need a way to dump all that excess heat (water cooling isn't an option on the moon). You'll get oxygen, yes, but it's not exactly something you can hook to a space suit.
-JS
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Solar is probably a better option on the moon. During the day you can concentrate solar to get high temperatures (no clouds, so solar furnaces work during the entire day). Solar power could also generate electricity.
During the lunar night you would likely shut down production and rely on nuclear or batteries for utility power. (not sure if the normal base utility power is easier to support with nuclear or battery at the scale needed).
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During the lunar night you would likely shut down production and rely on nuclear or batteries for utility power.
If you have the capability for nuclear power and electrochemical batteries then using solar power is just a waste of time and resources. That is true on the moon, on Mars, and on Earth.
Some of the metals that will be extracted from this process will be uranium and thorium, this is fuel for your nuclear reactors. If people believe nuclear fusion will be a source of energy someday then consider that mining the moon will release the heavy hydrogen isotopes embedded in the moon dust from the solar wind impact
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Solar may require less launch weight than nuclear for the same power output. For deep space nuclear is a win, but at earth distance, I doubt it. Solar cells can be extremely thin and light. A reactor needs radiators and those may end up being heavier.
Its a much larger scale technology to mine fissionable materials on the moon. Probably easier to make solar cells out of local materials, or possibly solar concentrater for solar thermal
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Solar may require less launch weight than nuclear for the same power output.
No, it wont. I recall a talk from Andy Weir while on his tour for his latest novel Artemis where he talks about how if people are going to use solar power to produce aluminum on on the moon then it just ends up being cheaper to ship up the aluminum. You don't want to listen to him because he's not enough of a scientist for you? Fine, go listen to someone else. Even Elon Musk is not a fan of launching solar panels to space, and he makes both solar panels and rockets for a living.
NASA doesn't like to use
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You are conflating a few different things.
No, I did not. If that's your response then you didn't even read my comment before replying.
Melting lunar rocks into "bricks and glue" does not produce oxygen, and they need oxygen. Liberating the oxygen from the rock will also liberate the aluminum, thorium, and uranium. They can breathe the oxygen, make stuff out of the aluminum, and use the thorium and uranium as fuel to power systems that keep the process going.
Melting rocks to make bricks may be simpler to do but it does nothing to make air to breat
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Spirit and Opportunity ran just fine on Mars on solar panels.
The clueless blindseer again ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
No, it's not harder to mine for fissionable materials, it's everywhere ....
Definitely harder than mining material for solar panels
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Spirit and Opportunity ran just fine on Mars on solar panels.
Your point? I said as such earlier. They also stopped working after a dust storm covered the solar panels.
If a rover loses power and dies on Mars then this is merely considered the end of the mission. If a person loses power and dies on Mars then there's going to be an inquiry, people could lose their jobs, and possibly end up in prison for manslaughter. A rover is not a human and so NASA was saving what little plutonium they had for more critical missions, choosing solar power with a small radiothermal
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Solar power works "just fine" for unmanned missions, and nuclear power is just better.
Better is a stupid word to use in such circumstances. The differences in missions are just to big.
Opportunity and Spirit are to small to host any meaningful nuclear reactor ... so: solar was best for them. Keep in mind, they ran many years longer than planned. The moon has no dust storms ... so ...
To have an advantage with nuclear power you need odd requirements, as in having a relatively huge probe. Using the residue heat
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If a moon base is using solar power for anything then it's going to be very minimal, far from a primary energy source.
If I were going to the Moon any time in the next 20 years, I'd take enough photovoltaics for primary power. The KRUSTY reactor design still involves moving parts and liquid sodium. Anybody going to the Moon now should definitely take one with them, but they definitely shouldn't depend on it for primary life support. The one thing we know about space is it causes new engineering to fail in new and interesting ways.
Also, why bother with a solar concentrator when the light can be used to grow food?
Because supporting life in a vacuum requires more than just food.
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The KRUSTY reactor design still involves moving parts and liquid sodium. Anybody going to the Moon now should definitely take one with them, but they definitely shouldn't depend on it for primary life support. The one thing we know about space is it causes new engineering to fail in new and interesting ways.
Then take two. Or five. If there's a failure of the one and only nuclear power plant they have on the moon then solar power isn't going to save them during a night that lasts 300+ hours. At that point they will just have to suit up and blast off for Earth.
The problem with solar power is that there's no using a backup solar panel in case the sun sets, there's an inherent common mode of failure. A failure mode that is known to happen with regularity, and for long durations.
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The problem with solar power is that there's no using a backup solar panel in case the sun sets, there's an inherent common mode of failure. A failure mode that is known to happen with regularity, and for long durations.
Predictable nonfunctional periods are not a failure mode, despite your best efforts to frame everything your way.
Every robotic Lunar lander took along batteries to get through the night. Any long duration human outpost will damn well have batteries too. A lot of them. Whether it's solar or not. When your life depends on keeping the power on, you take every option to see it stays on. No one living in space in the next 50 years is going to be able to just go about their day, oblivious to life support sys
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You're also going to need a way to dump all that excess heat (water cooling isn't an option on the moon).
Two words: Space Fan
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Re: It's not quite that simple... (Score:2)
Nitrogen isnâ(TM)t really a problem. Itâ(TM)s inert and we donâ(TM)t use it up so any amount we transported up there we could continue to use indefinitely. Itâ(TM)s only real purpose is to dilute the oxygen and itâ(TM)s not the only inert gas we could use for that. In fact helium which is abundant on the moon is used as a. Substitute for nitrogen for both diving and medical reasons. It would make sense to use helium instead of nitrogen as the primary inert gas on the moon.
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Bloody Slashcode! The form of nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere, typically distinguished as "dinitrogen", is inert. It is pretty much useless to all living organisms (in large amounts it is a poison ; get above about 3000mbar dinitrogen pressure and you'll start feeling it's toxic effects.) For use as a nutrient - essential for making proteins and nucleic acid nucleotide pairs, for example - you need it as amines (
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The rare thing on the moon is nitrogen.
Hydrogen and carbon are also in short supply. In some distant future, an industrialized moon is importing liquid hydrocarbons. Cue middle-eastern political intrigue.
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The trick been "enough" energy and on "the moon".
Who said space suit? (Score:2)
Also, son, do you know how much energy that solar fusion reactor puts out?
And for a small team of a dozen people and closed loops, it's not gonna be *that* much energy.
Anyway, do you have numbers, or are you just one of those pushovers who prefer to not even think about attempting anything solely on the grounds of it requiring thinking?
Interesting link, also Gizmodo (Score:4, Interesting)
Simulated moon dust [gizmodo.com] kills cells and damages DNA.
tldr:
We’ve long known that moon dust could cause trouble. During the Apollo missions, astronauts complained of sneezing and watery eyes after tracking dust from their spacesuits back into their ships. Scientists need to take moon dust and rocks into account when designing lunar landing equipment because it sticks to everything. No mice or humans were sent to the moon for this new study. Instead, scientists grew both human cells and mouse cells in the lab and exposed both to a simulated lunar dust. In both cases, the moon dust could kill the cell or damage the cells’ DNA.
Yeah, of separate cells. (Score:2)
No a body with a skin an other systems that exist to protext said cells.
Go sprinkle some salt on a few cells from an inner organ, and see how long they last.
The asbestos-like properties will likely be more of a problem.
If anything, they need a clean inside/outside separation. Which the new space suits that mount to a wall concenitently provide.
It's almost as if they had thought about such things and as if that was their job.
useless (Score:2)
Of course you can extract metals from their oxides with fiendish amounts of energy input, it's how we do it here on Earth too for many metals like aluminum and titanium.
So they're heating the stuff to 950 deg C (1750 F) with a catalyst? Not impressed.
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"Fiendish amounts of energy input" sounds all horrible, until you factor in that giant ball of thermonuclear fire that's outputting horrendous amounts of energy for free. All you have to do is collect it.
Is that all? Tell me something, what do those collectors weigh? How much power and energy can we expect? How does that compare to nuclear power? Do the math and you will find solar power completely inadequate.
But hey, start off with a negative tone.. That usually gets things done..
Let's start off by doing some math based on real physics. There will be no moon base powered by solar panels. They will have nuclear power. They might have some solar collectors for little things here and there, just like we use solar pocket calculators here and now, but the bulk of their power
Nucler power fanboy detected. (Score:2)
You're so triggered and religious, it seeps out between the letters. The more emotional people argue, the less their view comes from a point of cluefulness.
So just shut it.
We already got a fusion reactor in the sky. Call me when you can build something wven remotely equivalent. In power output, cleanliness, long-term viability, lack of waste, etc. And I will tell you that we already got one that good.
Sun worshiper detected. (Score:2)
You're so triggered and religious, it seeps out between the letters.
Said the sun worshiper.
We already got a fusion reactor in the sky. Call me when you can build something wven remotely equivalent. In power output, cleanliness, long-term viability, lack of waste, etc. And I will tell you that we already got one that good.
Sure, those solar collectors work real nice at local midnight. I'm sure the thoughts of a sun shining on the other side of the moon will keep a lunar base warm one week into a lunar night, with only another week to go.
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Your stupidity is beyond believe.
https://www.amazon.com/Aluminu... [amazon.com]
That makes you a roughly 100square meter solar furnace. With roughly 100kW yield.
Costs nearly nothing and is probably a billion times cheaper than an equally sized nuclear reactor ... ah, not a billion, only 10 million times, my fault.
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very hard, since that "giant magnifying glass" would need to weigh more than a moon base. Unless they build it on site with say.... a nuclear reactor outputting megawatts to melt and refine silicon dioxide. At which point you don't need a huge magnifying glass, do you?
You should be impressed (Re:useless) (Score:2)
So they're heating the stuff to 950 deg C (1750 F) with a catalyst? Not impressed.
They'll have to do this without the carbon electrodes that we use on Earth. Carbon we currently get from coal. Carbon electrodes that consumes the oxygen from the aluminum ores to release CO2. We don't want CO2, we want O2 without the carbon, because O2 is something we need to breathe.
This will likely be a desirable process on Earth because it does not release CO2 into the air, and it doesn't require electrodes made of coal.
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not really, the carbon from those electrodes are negligible part of CO2 load on earth, they don't matter
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not really, the carbon from those electrodes are negligible part of CO2 load on earth, they don't matter
Any process to refine aluminum ore into aluminum metal that does not rely on carbon electrodes does matter. That's because (at least as far as we know now) there's no coal on the moon. This is still an impressive process, even if the likelihood of it being used on Earth is minimal.
This process will also likely be useful on Mars if we were to colonize that planet. We'll need oxygen, aluminum, and more from what we can find there. Like the moon there doesn't seem to be a lot of coal on Mars. Even if ther
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Nonsense, the moon has graphite and Mars has carbonate rocks.
Why are you harping about no coal, it's irrelevant.
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Just have the lunar colony members (Score:4, Funny)
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Just have the lunar colony members get amazon prime memberships. One day shipping for any of their needs.
Given that Blue Origin is still purely suborbital after 20 years, maybe don't hold your breath. Or wait, that'd solve everything! All the lunar colony members just have to hold their breath and wait for Bezos' Blue Origin to deliver.
Flamable? (Score:1)
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quite the contrary: it is a giant heap of ashes
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Ashes burn really well.
Of course the moon is flammable.
Stars are flammable, anything solid was manufactured there; literally from the star's fuel.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Do you understand the diffeeence between ... (Score:2)
... oxydation and fusion, yes?
Can I...? (Score:2)
If I can work out how to generate money from simulated investing, I'll be rich!
Re: Can I...? (Score:2)
No, you'll be simulated-rich! :D
So Andy Weir's book, Artemis is closer to legit? (Score:2)
Producing oxygen and using byproducts as building blocks of the Artemis station was actually key in Andy Weir's book by the same name. This isn't that far of a stretch, but to see his book become closer to reality, I have to be impressed. Though I doubt they will call the station Artemis now after NASA's next mission has that name. I could be wrong though.
just breathe (Score:1)