The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

comstar03 · 2004-11-05 19:58:23

Grypd,

If you look at the detail of the Chinese Programme outlined in those documents, you work out that the chinese are looking long term space advancement and permanently linking space infrastructure with cina on earth.

Survey Satellite

The satellite is to be launched into lunar orbit for comprehensively probing into rich resources on the moon such as He3, Fe, Ti and water-ice, as well as its surface condition, landforms, geologic structure and physical fields through remote sensing.

The satellite will also provide a 3D Mapping of the surface of the Moon and China has plans for droids doing surveys on the moon and also expanding this into a moonbase.

The first round of Country Propaganda, ( who is supreme in space has begun. ) So but 2010 we will have the Russian, Chinese, Europeans, Americans and Private Enterprise Droids moving over the surface of the Moon.
Going to get crowded.

Rxke · 2004-11-06 05:00:19

A bit offtopic, but this night I woke up with a 'solution' to the problem of mining the (speculative) ice deposits...

The problem mining in those eternal dark places is the extreme cold that would make metals brittle etc., no?

Well, given that a base will probably positioned on one of the 'eternal light' peaks, why not use a (set of) mirrors, to reflect the sun towards a robotdiggerr to heat it? Use a beacon on the robot in tandem with mirrrors that follow its movements and you're set...

John Creighton · 2004-11-06 11:44:15

why not use a (set of) mirrors, to reflect the sun towards a robotdiggerr to heat it?

Wound you lose much water due to evaporation this way? I wonder if the low pressure in the atmosphere or lack there of will cause lubricants that don’t freeze to evaporate?

Grypd · 2004-11-06 15:14:35

Depending on what sort of hydrogen deposit we discover will dictate how it is harvested. If it is permafrost or methane ice then put a dome of plastic over the source and catch the vapour given off by heating. If it is a substantial supply of water ice then slicing blocks may be the best option. But still I think the former will tend to be the case.

Rxke · 2004-11-06 18:40:55

I was thinking about the same lines... Put some kind of canopy over the roving extractors, to minimise losses.

Methane, huh? I'm glad you thought about that possibility too! Always thought it a bit strange there's no mentioning that possibility in articles, maybe because water has more 'public apppeal'
In fact, it would be great to find out there's methane instead of H2O...

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-06 20:02:33

Methane is a pretty unstable molecule relativly speaking, it would get blasted by the solar wind & ultraviolet radiation, nor would it settle in the soil since it would boil off easily. Its a pretty sure bet that there isn't any on the Moon.

Putting domes over the huge expanse where you will harvest the snow on the Moon isn't real practical either, especially since the vacuum pumps would have a hard time collecting any of the super-rareified gasses. Don't forget that the Moon is essentially airless, and vacuum pumps are less and less effective as the pressure drops. Plus the dome wouldn't hold up well to solar radiation or meteoroid damage.

What you ought to do is just make sure you get as much as you can out of it when it goes through the soil oven, there really isn't much more you can do for it.

Rxke · 2004-11-07 02:59:34

D'oh! It was late, i meant ammonia... Really did, now i'm wondering how I got so confused... There are ammonia-rich comets, no?
Wouldn't ammonia be a lot more stable in the dark region?

Ammonia would be cool for the nitrogen...

And not a huuuge canopy, a small one... Just a 'bit' bigger than the roving extractor, let the thing dig in the heated environment, volatile stuff escapes, when you reach a certain vapourpressure, pump it.

Austin Stanley · 2004-11-07 03:49:30

I agree with GCN on this one. Domes aren't a bad idea on mars, where there is an atmosphere to speak and the water concentration is much greater. You wouldn't have to dome huge sections, just move the dome after you have collected a good amount.

On the moon things are diffrent. A soil oven is a much better choice, and would necessarily have to be extreamly complicated. For example, you could dumb you water bearing soil into some sort of transparent container, then just focus a series of mirrors on into heat it greatly and collect the vapor. With the moons extreamly long days, there is no reason you couldn't do this in very large quantities at once (maybe put a stirrer in it to shake it up every now and then), and get a good amount of water without to much trouble, that is if you could find good water bearing soil.

As for what the hydrogen readings on the moon actualy are, I think water is the realy the most serious option, if the readings are correct and they actualy are detecting hydrogen. The O-H bond in water is like the secound strongest bond possible for hydrogen (only H-F is stronger IIRC). So water tends to be pretty stable and resistant to cosmic radiation. Not that there are not other possibilities but water (possible trapped up in a mineral) is the strongest one. The only other possiblities I could think of is HF, but hydroflouric acid does not form strong hydrogen bonds like water does and so whole molecules of it could wind up lost out into space. Most covalent compounds are even more unlikley as the hydrogen would simply be ionized off even easier then a crystal of HF would be.

Rxke · 2004-11-07 04:21:28

So the dome is not a good idea... Anyhow, keeping the excavator rig 'hot' by using mirrors wouldn't waste too much volatiles, if the heat is directed fairly precicely, only the upper layer of the regolith would warm up, and given the low percentage of volatiles, loss will be minimal, and maybe even re-freezing and fall back into the dark environment once outside the lightsource?

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-07 09:02:15

Ammonia is pretty unstable too, and it is plausable that it could survive exposure to solar radiation, but nitrogen in general is one of the rarer elements in the solar system compared to oxygen, and ammonia will boil/sublimate away more easily then water. Neither does it form nice stable crystals readily in the condensed phase, and water will form hydrates better unlike ammonia. It is simply unlikly that any signifigant quantity could remain bound in the Lunar soil, even the water that may be there was likly deposited by a comet impact.

Thats a good idea of using solar heating directly to cook the water out of the Lunar soil, but I think that it will be too hard to direct such energy onto a mobile mining vehicle. In any event, the vehicles should be kept as small and light as practical so operations can be easily expanded, which I think calls for a stationary "refinery."

The system could be devided into three parts, one slow-moving but high-torque digging machine that can remove the first ~50cm of soil and sort the larger rocks out of it, and then pass the Lunar soil off to a large number of small light "ore trucks" that run between the digger and the refinery. The Lunar soil is dumped off into the refinery with large mirrors focusing and directing the sunlight down onto a conveyer belt; the soil is dumped into a flat and wide hopper with a glass lid on top and a quick-connect gas fitting. Either the water vapor is removed after heating by high vacuum pumps or gas is injected prior to heating and the gas/water mixture separated following heating.

The soil could go on to another process where the oxygen is removed from the oxides by microwave or extreme thermal energies and/or then the materials refined for construction (metal, glass, solar pannels).

RobS · 2004-11-07 09:43:50

You'd also want to pass the conveyor belt with the heated waste past the conveyor belt with the fresh regolith to preheat the latter. You may be able to reuse your heat quite efficiently.

The other logical system, if you have a lot of money, is a mobile water extractor with a built in reactor. A one-tonne reactor would produce something like 500 thermal kilowatts; if ten percent is converted to electricity, you have 50 kilowatts of power for running the machinery. You'd then use little battery or fuel-cell powered vehicles to move te water to your storage and electrolysis facility, which could be located on a peak with near-perpetual sunlight.

-- RobS

John Creighton · 2004-11-07 11:11:28

The other logical system, if you have a lot of money, is a mobile water extractor with a built in reactor. A one-tonne reactor would produce something like 500 thermal kilowatts; if ten percent is converted to electricity, you have 50 kilowatts of power for running the machinery. You'd then use little battery or fuel-cell powered vehicles to move te water to your storage and electrolysis facility, which could be located on a peak with near-perpetual sunlight.

If you have to move it to your storage facility anyway why not just move the raw materials to the plant instead of bring the plant along. The bigger the plant becomes and the more processes it includes the less sense it will be to make it mobile.

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-07 12:33:49

I don't know if that will work so well, even though the reactor will be fairly light weight, the associated equipment quickly makes the mass budget for the whole system get big pretty quickly. You need plumbing for the high-temp gasses, you need heat exchangers, the turbine and compressors, electrical generator, coolant reserves, and the biggie: the radiators for heat rejection. Oh and thats before the radiation shielding you would need in the likly event it needs human tending. A stationary nuclear reactor is much preferable.

Although it does take less energy to move only the water and not the dirt, I think that it makes more sense because its easier to make large stationary power plants then mobile or remote-connected ones.

RobS · 2004-11-07 15:08:51

That makes sense, I agree.

-- RobS

SpaceNut · 2004-11-08 12:09:37

The project of constellation is so tightly wrapped with the president vision that it seems to be dragging on and on for not only the design of the CEV but also of the lunar probes.

I look to the future when man can go to the moon and beyound maybe even to mars only to see that in going to the moon either Nasa is relying on other to do the leg work or that all they believe they need will be accomplished by the LRO.

Though Nasa has stated that it would be doing a probe a year to the moon nothing seems to be in the planning stages that at best take more than a few years to a decade before launch can be achieved.

Other stated goals for Mars at least are more firm with probes every 2 years but what each is to have for primary and secondary goals seems to be lost in advance landing or other tools for exploration techniques.

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-08 13:46:39

You are being impatient SpaceNut, Bush's VSE isn't even a year old yet, and it really won't start getting into gear until after the ISS is complete and Shuttle is gone. Right now, finishing the ISS is NASA's priority one job, and it will be until the end of the decade, and VSE work will be a peripheral concern.

SpaceNut · 2004-11-10 07:22:02

Just another article referencing Mining the Moon, the Gateway to Marsand beyound.

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), the using of native materials and energy sources collected and processed to support human and robotic exploration, would be crucial to the success of manned space missions as ISRU-derived materials would replace those that otherwise would have to be hauled from Earth.
Propellant, energy, water and oxygen, building materials -- all these ISRU products were the topic of discussion at the Space Resources Utilization Roundtable, held here November 1-3 at the Colorado School of Mines.

NASA has recently scripted a trio of piloted design reference missions to the Moon: a single short stay of 7 days duration near the Moon’s equator; multiple short stay missions, but with astronaut crews having access to other lunar spots; and a scenario whereby explorers stay on the Moon for short and medium-length time periods at one area -- preferably at a lunar pole locale.

comstar03 · 2004-11-10 07:29:22

None of the designs and specs of CEVs and other vehicles are designed for large scale movement of personnel, cargo, equipment or resources to and from the lunar surface without talking about Mars.

So, we are playing "tonka" toys again for expanding into space from all countries. I think its time to rethink their " toy " activities because the end game the people holding the space resources for expansion into space and the future power requirements for humanity on earth.

Grypd · 2004-11-10 16:39:52

It may still be ammonia we discover in those hydrogen signals from the lunar poles or mixtures of both water and ammonia ice. Why, These craters on the pole do not recieve light and are permanently dark, this also means that the solar wind that hits the moon is also missing the poles. The only way that we are able to find out for sure what quantity and actual material is in these craters is to actually look. Only when we have seen will we be able to make plans for the extraction of one of the most valuable resources in the solar system.

ERRORIST · 2004-11-10 17:00:27

It is water with some ammonia also. Comets and asteroids have been hitting the moon for billions of years. Some of it must be left over. 6.6 billion tons of water.

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-10 20:51:02

6.6Bn MT is not all that much if it is spread over thousands of square kilometers as frost mixed with dust.

SpaceNut · 2004-11-11 09:17:36

Yup an until we have a lander capabale of measuring and identifing the quality and mix variety that is present. We can only speculate as to what we can do with it in any form, Ammonia or in ice regolith mixtures otherwise or in any way for future use as insitu resources.

GCNRevenger · 2004-11-11 09:54:24

Provided there are more trace quantities of ammonia in the ice, which is pretty unlikly to begin with since Nitrogen is so rare, there will be one more element the Moon lacks that will have to be imported for the Moon to sustain open-ended human settlement or development: carbon. There isn't much on the Moon at all.

Austin Stanley · 2004-11-11 12:08:35

Well frozen ammonia would be far supperior to water ice anyways. Oxygen is easy to find, and the moon has pleanty of it, but nitrogen is fairly rare out in the solar system (little to none on the moon, mars, and most asteriods), so finding a source of it on the moon would be excelent. Luckily, nitrogen is recycled fairly effiecently by natural systems. We don't even touch the N2 in our air, and plants and animals fairly efficently recycle the nitrogen in there systems, and without any mechanical help from us. Compare this to carbon, which is recycled not nearly as efficently in the ground (although it makes up a much smaller part of the cycle there), and less than optimaly in the air, where it usualy has to be recycled by mechanical means anyways.

In anycase finding ammonia or methane ice on the moon would be great, and the dissasociation of ammonia and methane of there hydrogen should pose little problem. However, water ice is still the most likely prospect. Nitrogen, carbon, and practicly every other element you could consider are just plain more rare in the universe than oxygen. Also in craters sheltered from solar wind and radiation, there is still cosmic radiation to consider. It comes from just about every angle imagniable, and the moon (lacking an atmosphere and magnetic field), suffers more strongly from it than earth. It could cause dissasociation and loss of hydrogen atoms as well.

SpaceNut · 2004-11-11 13:07:45

Reasons to make the mining and processing machine a closed loop process. Lunar regolith goes into a closed or sealed chamber to be processed and out goes the remainder as it goes. Capture released gasses from the chamber for later reprocessing to seperate them. Even the remaining regolith that is to be discarded should be analysed and reprocessed for the metals inorder to make anything our little hearts desire.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#101 2004-11-05 19:58:23

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#102 2004-11-06 05:00:19

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#103 2004-11-06 11:44:15

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#104 2004-11-06 15:14:35

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#105 2004-11-06 18:40:55

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#106 2004-11-06 20:02:33

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#107 2004-11-07 02:59:34

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#108 2004-11-07 03:49:30

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#109 2004-11-07 04:21:28

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#110 2004-11-07 09:02:15

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#111 2004-11-07 09:43:50

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#112 2004-11-07 11:11:28

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#113 2004-11-07 12:33:49

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#114 2004-11-07 15:08:51

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#115 2004-11-08 12:09:37

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#116 2004-11-08 13:46:39

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#117 2004-11-10 07:22:02

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#118 2004-11-10 07:29:22

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#119 2004-11-10 16:39:52

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#120 2004-11-10 17:00:27

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#121 2004-11-10 20:51:02

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#122 2004-11-11 09:17:36

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#123 2004-11-11 09:54:24

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#124 2004-11-11 12:08:35

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

#125 2004-11-11 13:07:45

Re: The need for a Moon direct *2* - ...continue here.

Board footer

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.

Re: The need for a Moon direct 2 - ...continue here.