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It's aluminum-containing dust, not bulk metallic aluminum. All of the aluminum-containing minerals on the Moon have the aluminum atoms bound to oxygen, silicon,
by sbierwagen 11y ago
It's aluminum-containing dust, not bulk metallic aluminum. All of the aluminum-containing minerals on the Moon have the aluminum atoms bound to oxygen, silicon, etc. Smelting aluminum is expensive because oxygen bonds to aluminum very tightly, and requires a lot of electricity to pull it off.