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Water Found Deep Inside the Moon

477 points by chenster 9y ago

kin 9y ago
Unrelated to the article, but WOW did anyone else see the giant full view height ad video at the top? I have ad blocker off for NatGeo. It's followed by a giant banner. I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting and most of us don't even notice 'cause we have ad blocker.
- overcast 9y ago
  What's more amazing is that they never learn. As if blasting us with more and more ads that take over your entire browser. Will somehow put everyone at ease. The advertising industry is the next big reboot on the web as far as I'm concerned.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    The advertising industry's policy seems to be that the well is infinitely deep, and therefore no amount of shitting into it is too much.
  - nolok 9y ago
    I'm not sure what you expect them to learn. Only use "cleaner" ads ? It will pay less, ads don't pay much any more, you need the big, splashy, if-possible-exclusive-and-targeted ads to get money now. Offer subscriptions ? They already do that, and they publish quality original content, so it's not the case of journal-X publishing the same press release as everyone and complaining that people don't subscribe. At this point, they can only do two things with people who don't subscribe: block them from accessing content, thus losing lots of traffic and conversion possibilities, or show them intrusive ads, make a little money off of them, and hope a few subscribe. One argument could be that "those ads are turning people off of subscribing and ultimately makes them lose money", but in every debate on this matter I have never seen it substantiated with actual numbers, and especially in the case of a household name like National Geographic I sincerely doubt it, at least not in any meaningful way.
    - overcast 9y ago
      People didn't start using ad blockers, because sites had a couple well placed ads. If everyone is blocking your ads, maybe it's time to change all those reasons you gave me for "how they work".
      - nolok 9y ago
        I think you misattributed or misundertood my intention here. I am in now way arguing that those more and more terrible ads did not cause the surge in ad blocker usage, and what I said is not affected in any way by how many people are using ad blockers on NG. Fact is, revenue per ad viewed has been crashing down for all type of ad. A site like NG can either block their free access and force a subscribe (lose attention and name recognition), give it for free fully but remove incentive to subscribe (lose revenue), or change their ad type to more intrusive ad that pay more to compensate. I'm sincerely open to discussion if you disagree, about what they could potentially do that isn't one of those three, but the revenue per ad viewed falling is not in their control, it's a global market trend since several years.
        overcast 9y ago
        How about, beautiful, site specific, non-intrusive, relevant ads? Charge less if you have to. Enough with the Tabula bullshit, and Amazon selling me something I already purchased(why is this even a thing). You'd be surprised how many loyal people to a site would be willing to white list, knowing the advertising isn't going to shit on their experience.
        criddell 9y ago
        If they continue down the current path, they are going to die one way or another. At some point the people working there are going to stop being proud of their work when it's presented in such a shit fashion and they will stop writing for NG. I understand that business needs may require a publication to lower their standards but it seems like they have dropped below where the floor should be. When I load the page, there's a giant Microsoft video at the top of the screen. Microsoft should be ashamed of that as well.
- dchuk 9y ago
  Maybe ads are getting more aggressive because we are all using ad blocker?
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    The inverse is also possible.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Co-evolution.
- nolok 9y ago
  > I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting I would certainly argue the way this comment (and many others in a lot of threads about ads here or elsewhere) seems to imply that ads are at their worst ever. I mean either people forgot or are too young to remember, but in the 2000's alone ads had both their "pop up and sound and unclosable javascript spam" and their "flash everywhere turning your modern supercomputer speed into that of a 80's calculator" eras, and probably a lot of other ad-cancers that my brain chose to forget. The entire reason the ios/flash debate happened was because 1 - flash was on every page and ad, 2 - flash was eating every resources you would throw at it and still need more. I mean, I agree totally that the web without ad blockers is insane, but I think many also see how it used to be as much better than it actually was.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    Ads were terrible, they continue to be terrible, they used to and still do provide most of the money needed to run sites, and it's still hard to get users to pay for content like articles on the internet. We still haven't solved these fundamental problems with funding quality content on the web. There are models that kinda work, but ads sadly seem to work the best in terms of giving everyone access "without paying", even though you're paying with your privacy, time, and eyeballs. Many people prefer this vs something like paywall games or subscription-only services.
    - erikbye 9y ago
      I subscribe to a lot of sites and newspapers and they still show me their ads.
  - psyc 9y ago
    I was there, and I only started using ad blockers a couple of years ago. It is much, much, much worse now.
    - nolok 9y ago
      Different opinions then I guess. I prefer a (collection of) ads that obfuscate the entire page I'm trying to read but doesn't bother me while I look at something else and happily let me close and go away than something that makes everything a hog and crash my browser randomly while I might not even see it because it's five tabs away in the footer of some website.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  Wow yeah I instantly hit "Back" and have now blacklisted national geographic. Seriously, national geographic? Thing's have gotten that bad I am now blocking NG? Sigh. I liked grubbers dubbing of a "dickbar" but this kind of ad deserves its own moniker. PrickPage?
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    NatGeo was purchased by FOX recently, if that insight helps...
- psyc 9y ago
  I just got a new laptop and hadn't got around to installing uBlock yet. I'm comfortable saying the mainstream web is literally unusable without ad blocking. I watched the download notifications in the status bar iterate through dozens of ad servers, for 1-2 minutes, per page. I could barely scroll at all. I couldn't tell where the actual content was. All 3 columns full of ads. You have to hunt for isolated paragraphs of content. The other glaring thing I noticed is the browser becomes a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing. Every site obviously knows everything I'm doing on every other site.
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    > a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing Shouldn't that be impossible? What browser lets one site access another's cookies?
    - b5ec5a483dfd14 9y ago
      https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/ https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/
    - psyc 9y ago
      I mean tracking in general. I feel violated every time FB or Google reveal they clearly know where I've been recently. Afaik, there may not be sharing across domains, but there surely is across pages.
    - nkkollaw 9y ago
      Pixel tracking is trivial to implement.
- david-cako 9y ago
  I don't know, I distinctly remember in the late 2000s there being all these insane "take over the entire page" flash ads for cars on sites like New York Times.
- Facemelters 9y ago
  They are aggressive with ads because everyone is using ad blocker and no one clicks on ads. Content and infrastructure are not free. What do people expect to happen??
0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
> From that point on, lunar water discoveries started gushing. Edit: Just wait till the bottled water companies find out that moon water exists. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/08/18/maine-poland-spring-water-colossal-fraud-lawsuit/579140001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/08/18/maine-poland...).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
grogenaut 9y ago
Is the process of drilling for it less intensive than just making it from the soil?
tambourine_man 9y ago
I've always been more excited about a Moon colony than a Mars one. I mean, compared to Mars, the Moon is ridiculously close. Many of the same benefits Musk seeks (backup for Civilization, excitement) for a fraction of the cost. Low gravity and atmosphere on a dome would be more complicated, but again, compared to Mars, it's right there. It would be a more humble and realistic first step, IMO.
- overcast 9y ago
  Yeh seriously, I've always said it as well. Establish a base there first, figure out what works, and what doesn't work. I really think Mars is just too much, too fast. It's way too harsh, and a one way trip. At least we can realistically send help to the moon. I'm guessing the long 28 day(day) cycle is the biggest issue, along with few natural resources.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Inasmuch as Mars with our current technology offers no back up for civilization, the same can certainly be said for the moon. I would argue over that the moon actually has some benefits Mars lacks, in addition to proximity it has a much lesser gravitational field and therefore a much lower delta V. Moon colony could realistically jumpstart space and vacuum industries beyond LEO, and frankly it would probably give us a chance to test the many technologies we'd eventually need on Mars without having to actually make the trip to Mars. Most of all the moon would be an excellent way station for asteroid mining .
  - athenot 9y ago
    When the topic of Backup for Civilization comes up, instead of Wall-E, I tend to think of Elysium, i.e. the backup option is only for the wealthy, leaving the rest in a worse state. https://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-nasa.html https://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-na...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
lovelearning 9y ago
This was last month. Another analysis this month by a different organization reached the opposite conclusion. [1]: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/analysis-rusty-lunar-rock-suggest-moons-interior-dry https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/analysis-rusty-lunar-rock-sugg...
- HugoDaniel 9y ago
  Lets hope they don't find oil there...
  - jtmarmon 9y ago
    That would be incredible though
    - frandroid 9y ago
      It would be quite difficult to burn oil without oxygen.
  - warent 9y ago
    If they did then it would essentially be proof of extraterrestrial life, no?
  - yohui 9y ago
    As you probably know, that's impossible since fossil fuels (as the name suggests) are formed from the remains of prehistoric organisms. Since the Moon is lifeless, it has no fossil fuels. But I wouldn't mind if the moon did experience a resource rush (unless it sparked a conflict). At least we would finally get to see a moon base.
    - shakna 9y ago
      Fossil fuels are known as biogenic oils or the like. It has been theorised, but neither proven nor disproven, that abiogenic oils might exist. (Earth is likely only the biogenic kind, but other planets may differ). That is to say, petroleum compounds can be formed without the need for biological materials, but rather through pressure, heat, and bedrock.
overcast 9y ago
That's no Moon!
goshx 9y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15092099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15092099
idlewords 9y ago
I know a great place really close to the Moon where there's all the water you want, and you don't even have to dig for it.
bad_user 9y ago
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" novel doesn't seem so impossible now :-)
quoquoquo 9y ago
I wonder why Elon Musk is so obsessed with Mars. Why not allocate the resources that would be spent on covering that massive distance into colonizing a much closer Moon. Bonus points because we get to look at it from Earth. Imagine being able to capture the attention of every moon gazer on earth. Google Adwords for Moon!
pushpen99 9y ago
Water molecules on moon was confirmed by Chandrayaan-I mission launched by ISRO/India in 2009. Strange no mention of that in the article.
mjevans 9y ago
It wouldn't be as sexy as sending astronauts up, but I think we could get a lot of bang for the buck sending up generic robots and some scientific equipment that could also be used to boot-strap a local production environment for some resources. (solar oven/etc) I imagine it would be useful to gather core samples from a variety of locations and catalog the location of resources. I wonder how much of that could be done with higher intensity radar aimed at the surface while in orbit...
gene-h 9y ago
If this is really the case, it's a pretty big deal. While water is important in keeping humans alive, one big near term application is propellant. Being able to make H2-O2 propellant on the Moon could reduce the costs of lunar return missions. There is also something of a business opportunity in using propellant mined on the Moon to refuel satellites in Earth orbit. The delta V cost from Moon-GEO(or pretty much any other orbit) is lower than the cost of Earth to GEO. So if one can get the infrastructure set up it makes sense. But water is useful for other things too. Just having access to hydrogen on the Moon lets us do so many things. This makes it easier to do a number of extractive processes, we can use hydrogen to reduce metals in lunar soil[5], make acids like HCl and H2SO4, make silicone for seals, purify silicon for solar cells and electronics. Of course, we already know the Moon has water, the problem is this water is located in permanently shadowed craters. It's hard to get power in a crater that's permanently in the dark. In addition, aside from crashing a spacecraft into one[0], we haven't explored these craters and don't know what the environment is like. But this new discovery implies that certain surface regions of the Moon could have quite a bit of water. Sure, the water may not be as concentrated as in permanently shadowed regions, but we can get power easier and we understand the lunar surface environment better. Not only that, if the water is in the form we expect, then we have ground truths from the apollo missions from which we can start developing extraction processes[1]. The TRL for robots capable of operating on the lunar surface is relatively high[2][3]. Using specs from top performing team for NASA's lunar robotic mining challenge[] and the estimated concentration of water in regolith, it is reasonable to assume that a rover about the size of China's Chang'e rover could potentially mine enough regolith in about ~75 days to obtain enough water to equal its landed mass(assuming 100% extraction from regolith). Of course the problem is that the water is locked up in glass. We need to grind or melt the glass up to get the water out. Grinding has the potential to be more energy efficient, but I suspect we won't be able to extract very much and melting glass uses quite a bit of energy. We might be able to reduce the amount of energy by using a molten salt flux to reduce the melting temperature. Of course, another option is to be smarter about how we use the energy we put into melting glass. We can recapture the heat and run a stirling engine for electrical power. It would be even smarter to put the spent glass itself to use since we have to melt glass anyway, we might as well form it into something useful. We might use the spent glass to make bricks for landing pads, roads, and other structures [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSS [1]http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/12/24/the-last-great-discovery-of-apollo-lunar-volcanic-glass/ http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/12/24/the-last-... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_program [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_(rover) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_(rover) [4]http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120013082 http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120013082 [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3 [6]http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/ResourcesNearEarthSpace/resources04.pdf http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/ResourcesNearEarthS...
craptocurrency 9y ago
Chanda Mama.
Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
"In 2009, NASA crashed a rocket and a satellite into a crater on the moon’s south pole, in the hopes of picking up additional watery evidence. " NO, In 2008 ISRO crashed Moon Impact Probe (MIP) into lunar surface as part of Chandrayaan-I mission. MIP didn't have any specific role, other than political agenda. The NASA's Moon Minerology Mapper M3 onboard of the Chandrayaan spacecraft was instrumental in providing the first mineralogical map of the lunar surface. Quoting S. Pete Worden, center director at NASA’s Ames Research Center : “NASA missions like Lunar Prospector and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and instruments like M3 have gathered crucial data that fundamentally changed our understanding of whether water exists on the surface of the moon,” National Geographic, having titled the article - 'Get the facts' and blatantly ignoring ISRO's contribution is not healthy. The reason I brought this up is not to score nationalist brownie points, but a credit where it's due. In a country like India, where an organisation like ISRO instills scientific termparment over large population; ignoring it's contribution by global media focussed on science is an insult to entire scientific community.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bb611 9y ago
  I think you're right to ask for credit where it's due, but this is not such a place - the event being referenced is the 2009 LCROSS mission: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/in... I discovered this with a very quick google search of the terms "2009 NASA crash moon"
  - Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
    You are right,the specific case about 2009 crash could be of NASA spacecraft. But what about the entire context of the article ?
marcgcombi 9y ago
It's probably climate change. The increased energy in the atmosphere is driving water molecules into space, which are captured by the moon?
pasbesoin 9y ago
Unless we settle our military confrontations (of varying degrees), any successful political entity is going to have to take a (sufficiently potent) position on the moon, first. Unless it is willing to accept the circumstance of its sole continuation being off-Earth (Mars, in the near term). And has the belief that its off-Earth presence can continue and succeed in the absence of its erstwhile Earth-based counterpart.
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
amazing. Stephen Baxters book 'Space' continues to connect with reality.
Pica_soO 9y ago
I wonder- if you warm it up and freeze it down- wouldnt the water fracture the rock around it?
Iv 9y ago
Calm down. From the article: "the glass beads contain only 0.05 percent water." It is much drier than Sahara sand where soil moisture can reach 1%. Dune's scenario would be a piece of cake compared to what you would need to do to feed a colony off of this water. I suspect that energy-wise it would be cheaper to import water from Earth and recycle like crazy.
- efefefe 9y ago
  >Calm down. It must be tiring to be so logical and parental.
anon_christian 9y ago
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 2 Peter 3:5,6 National Geographic: 'Inner Earth May Hold More Water Than the Seas' http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_wa...
lgats 9y ago
http://i.imgur.com/E4jeTmM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/E4jeTmM.jpg

477 points by chenster 9y ago

kin 9y ago

Unrelated to the article, but WOW did anyone else see the giant full view height ad video at the top? I have ad blocker off for NatGeo. It's followed by a giant banner. I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting and most of us don't even notice 'cause we have ad blocker.

overcast 9y ago
What's more amazing is that they never learn. As if blasting us with more and more ads that take over your entire browser. Will somehow put everyone at ease. The advertising industry is the next big reboot on the web as far as I'm concerned.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  The advertising industry's policy seems to be that the well is infinitely deep, and therefore no amount of shitting into it is too much.
- nolok 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you expect them to learn. Only use "cleaner" ads ? It will pay less, ads don't pay much any more, you need the big, splashy, if-possible-exclusive-and-targeted ads to get money now. Offer subscriptions ? They already do that, and they publish quality original content, so it's not the case of journal-X publishing the same press release as everyone and complaining that people don't subscribe. At this point, they can only do two things with people who don't subscribe: block them from accessing content, thus losing lots of traffic and conversion possibilities, or show them intrusive ads, make a little money off of them, and hope a few subscribe. One argument could be that "those ads are turning people off of subscribing and ultimately makes them lose money", but in every debate on this matter I have never seen it substantiated with actual numbers, and especially in the case of a household name like National Geographic I sincerely doubt it, at least not in any meaningful way.
  - overcast 9y ago
    People didn't start using ad blockers, because sites had a couple well placed ads. If everyone is blocking your ads, maybe it's time to change all those reasons you gave me for "how they work".
    - nolok 9y ago
      I think you misattributed or misundertood my intention here. I am in now way arguing that those more and more terrible ads did not cause the surge in ad blocker usage, and what I said is not affected in any way by how many people are using ad blockers on NG. Fact is, revenue per ad viewed has been crashing down for all type of ad. A site like NG can either block their free access and force a subscribe (lose attention and name recognition), give it for free fully but remove incentive to subscribe (lose revenue), or change their ad type to more intrusive ad that pay more to compensate. I'm sincerely open to discussion if you disagree, about what they could potentially do that isn't one of those three, but the revenue per ad viewed falling is not in their control, it's a global market trend since several years.
      - overcast 9y ago
        How about, beautiful, site specific, non-intrusive, relevant ads? Charge less if you have to. Enough with the Tabula bullshit, and Amazon selling me something I already purchased(why is this even a thing). You'd be surprised how many loyal people to a site would be willing to white list, knowing the advertising isn't going to shit on their experience.
      - criddell 9y ago
        If they continue down the current path, they are going to die one way or another. At some point the people working there are going to stop being proud of their work when it's presented in such a shit fashion and they will stop writing for NG. I understand that business needs may require a publication to lower their standards but it seems like they have dropped below where the floor should be. When I load the page, there's a giant Microsoft video at the top of the screen. Microsoft should be ashamed of that as well.
dchuk 9y ago
Maybe ads are getting more aggressive because we are all using ad blocker?
- X86BSD 9y ago
  The inverse is also possible.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Co-evolution.
nolok 9y ago
> I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting I would certainly argue the way this comment (and many others in a lot of threads about ads here or elsewhere) seems to imply that ads are at their worst ever. I mean either people forgot or are too young to remember, but in the 2000's alone ads had both their "pop up and sound and unclosable javascript spam" and their "flash everywhere turning your modern supercomputer speed into that of a 80's calculator" eras, and probably a lot of other ad-cancers that my brain chose to forget. The entire reason the ios/flash debate happened was because 1 - flash was on every page and ad, 2 - flash was eating every resources you would throw at it and still need more. I mean, I agree totally that the web without ad blockers is insane, but I think many also see how it used to be as much better than it actually was.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Ads were terrible, they continue to be terrible, they used to and still do provide most of the money needed to run sites, and it's still hard to get users to pay for content like articles on the internet. We still haven't solved these fundamental problems with funding quality content on the web. There are models that kinda work, but ads sadly seem to work the best in terms of giving everyone access "without paying", even though you're paying with your privacy, time, and eyeballs. Many people prefer this vs something like paywall games or subscription-only services.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    I subscribe to a lot of sites and newspapers and they still show me their ads.
- psyc 9y ago
  I was there, and I only started using ad blockers a couple of years ago. It is much, much, much worse now.
  - nolok 9y ago
    Different opinions then I guess. I prefer a (collection of) ads that obfuscate the entire page I'm trying to read but doesn't bother me while I look at something else and happily let me close and go away than something that makes everything a hog and crash my browser randomly while I might not even see it because it's five tabs away in the footer of some website.
X86BSD 9y ago
Wow yeah I instantly hit "Back" and have now blacklisted national geographic. Seriously, national geographic? Thing's have gotten that bad I am now blocking NG? Sigh. I liked grubbers dubbing of a "dickbar" but this kind of ad deserves its own moniker. PrickPage?
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  NatGeo was purchased by FOX recently, if that insight helps...
psyc 9y ago
I just got a new laptop and hadn't got around to installing uBlock yet. I'm comfortable saying the mainstream web is literally unusable without ad blocking. I watched the download notifications in the status bar iterate through dozens of ad servers, for 1-2 minutes, per page. I could barely scroll at all. I couldn't tell where the actual content was. All 3 columns full of ads. You have to hunt for isolated paragraphs of content. The other glaring thing I noticed is the browser becomes a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing. Every site obviously knows everything I'm doing on every other site.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing Shouldn't that be impossible? What browser lets one site access another's cookies?
  - b5ec5a483dfd14 9y ago
    https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/ https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/
  - psyc 9y ago
    I mean tracking in general. I feel violated every time FB or Google reveal they clearly know where I've been recently. Afaik, there may not be sharing across domains, but there surely is across pages.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Pixel tracking is trivial to implement.
david-cako 9y ago
I don't know, I distinctly remember in the late 2000s there being all these insane "take over the entire page" flash ads for cars on sites like New York Times.
Facemelters 9y ago
They are aggressive with ads because everyone is using ad blocker and no one clicks on ads. Content and infrastructure are not free. What do people expect to happen??

0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago

> From that point on, lunar water discoveries started gushing. Edit: Just wait till the bottled water companies find out that moon water exists. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/08/18/maine-poland-spring-water-colossal-fraud-lawsuit/579140001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/08/18/maine-poland...).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

grogenaut 9y ago

Is the process of drilling for it less intensive than just making it from the soil?

tambourine_man 9y ago

I've always been more excited about a Moon colony than a Mars one. I mean, compared to Mars, the Moon is ridiculously close. Many of the same benefits Musk seeks (backup for Civilization, excitement) for a fraction of the cost. Low gravity and atmosphere on a dome would be more complicated, but again, compared to Mars, it's right there. It would be a more humble and realistic first step, IMO.

overcast 9y ago
Yeh seriously, I've always said it as well. Establish a base there first, figure out what works, and what doesn't work. I really think Mars is just too much, too fast. It's way too harsh, and a one way trip. At least we can realistically send help to the moon. I'm guessing the long 28 day(day) cycle is the biggest issue, along with few natural resources.
QAPereo 9y ago
Inasmuch as Mars with our current technology offers no back up for civilization, the same can certainly be said for the moon. I would argue over that the moon actually has some benefits Mars lacks, in addition to proximity it has a much lesser gravitational field and therefore a much lower delta V. Moon colony could realistically jumpstart space and vacuum industries beyond LEO, and frankly it would probably give us a chance to test the many technologies we'd eventually need on Mars without having to actually make the trip to Mars. Most of all the moon would be an excellent way station for asteroid mining .
- athenot 9y ago
  When the topic of Backup for Civilization comes up, instead of Wall-E, I tend to think of Elysium, i.e. the backup option is only for the wealthy, leaving the rest in a worse state. https://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-nasa.html https://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-na...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

lovelearning 9y ago

This was last month. Another analysis this month by a different organization reached the opposite conclusion. [1]: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/analysis-rusty-lunar-rock-suggest-moons-interior-dry https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/analysis-rusty-lunar-rock-sugg...

HugoDaniel 9y ago
Lets hope they don't find oil there...
- jtmarmon 9y ago
  That would be incredible though
  - frandroid 9y ago
    It would be quite difficult to burn oil without oxygen.
- warent 9y ago
  If they did then it would essentially be proof of extraterrestrial life, no?
- yohui 9y ago
  As you probably know, that's impossible since fossil fuels (as the name suggests) are formed from the remains of prehistoric organisms. Since the Moon is lifeless, it has no fossil fuels. But I wouldn't mind if the moon did experience a resource rush (unless it sparked a conflict). At least we would finally get to see a moon base.
  - shakna 9y ago
    Fossil fuels are known as biogenic oils or the like. It has been theorised, but neither proven nor disproven, that abiogenic oils might exist. (Earth is likely only the biogenic kind, but other planets may differ). That is to say, petroleum compounds can be formed without the need for biological materials, but rather through pressure, heat, and bedrock.

overcast 9y ago

That's no Moon!

goshx 9y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15092099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15092099

idlewords 9y ago

I know a great place really close to the Moon where there's all the water you want, and you don't even have to dig for it.

bad_user 9y ago

"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" novel doesn't seem so impossible now :-)

quoquoquo 9y ago

I wonder why Elon Musk is so obsessed with Mars. Why not allocate the resources that would be spent on covering that massive distance into colonizing a much closer Moon. Bonus points because we get to look at it from Earth. Imagine being able to capture the attention of every moon gazer on earth. Google Adwords for Moon!

pushpen99 9y ago

Water molecules on moon was confirmed by Chandrayaan-I mission launched by ISRO/India in 2009. Strange no mention of that in the article.

mjevans 9y ago

It wouldn't be as sexy as sending astronauts up, but I think we could get a lot of bang for the buck sending up generic robots and some scientific equipment that could also be used to boot-strap a local production environment for some resources. (solar oven/etc) I imagine it would be useful to gather core samples from a variety of locations and catalog the location of resources. I wonder how much of that could be done with higher intensity radar aimed at the surface while in orbit...

gene-h 9y ago

If this is really the case, it's a pretty big deal. While water is important in keeping humans alive, one big near term application is propellant. Being able to make H2-O2 propellant on the Moon could reduce the costs of lunar return missions. There is also something of a business opportunity in using propellant mined on the Moon to refuel satellites in Earth orbit. The delta V cost from Moon-GEO(or pretty much any other orbit) is lower than the cost of Earth to GEO. So if one can get the infrastructure set up it makes sense. But water is useful for other things too. Just having access to hydrogen on the Moon lets us do so many things. This makes it easier to do a number of extractive processes, we can use hydrogen to reduce metals in lunar soil[5], make acids like HCl and H2SO4, make silicone for seals, purify silicon for solar cells and electronics. Of course, we already know the Moon has water, the problem is this water is located in permanently shadowed craters. It's hard to get power in a crater that's permanently in the dark. In addition, aside from crashing a spacecraft into one[0], we haven't explored these craters and don't know what the environment is like. But this new discovery implies that certain surface regions of the Moon could have quite a bit of water. Sure, the water may not be as concentrated as in permanently shadowed regions, but we can get power easier and we understand the lunar surface environment better. Not only that, if the water is in the form we expect, then we have ground truths from the apollo missions from which we can start developing extraction processes[1]. The TRL for robots capable of operating on the lunar surface is relatively high[2][3]. Using specs from top performing team for NASA's lunar robotic mining challenge[] and the estimated concentration of water in regolith, it is reasonable to assume that a rover about the size of China's Chang'e rover could potentially mine enough regolith in about ~75 days to obtain enough water to equal its landed mass(assuming 100% extraction from regolith). Of course the problem is that the water is locked up in glass. We need to grind or melt the glass up to get the water out. Grinding has the potential to be more energy efficient, but I suspect we won't be able to extract very much and melting glass uses quite a bit of energy. We might be able to reduce the amount of energy by using a molten salt flux to reduce the melting temperature. Of course, another option is to be smarter about how we use the energy we put into melting glass. We can recapture the heat and run a stirling engine for electrical power. It would be even smarter to put the spent glass itself to use since we have to melt glass anyway, we might as well form it into something useful. We might use the spent glass to make bricks for landing pads, roads, and other structures [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSS [1]http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/12/24/the-last-great-discovery-of-apollo-lunar-volcanic-glass/ http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/12/24/the-last-... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_program [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_(rover) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_(rover) [4]http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120013082 http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120013082 [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3 [6]http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/ResourcesNearEarthSpace/resources04.pdf http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/ResourcesNearEarthS...

craptocurrency 9y ago

Chanda Mama.

Abishek_Muthian 9y ago

"In 2009, NASA crashed a rocket and a satellite into a crater on the moon’s south pole, in the hopes of picking up additional watery evidence. " NO, In 2008 ISRO crashed Moon Impact Probe (MIP) into lunar surface as part of Chandrayaan-I mission. MIP didn't have any specific role, other than political agenda. The NASA's Moon Minerology Mapper M3 onboard of the Chandrayaan spacecraft was instrumental in providing the first mineralogical map of the lunar surface. Quoting S. Pete Worden, center director at NASA’s Ames Research Center : “NASA missions like Lunar Prospector and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and instruments like M3 have gathered crucial data that fundamentally changed our understanding of whether water exists on the surface of the moon,” National Geographic, having titled the article - 'Get the facts' and blatantly ignoring ISRO's contribution is not healthy. The reason I brought this up is not to score nationalist brownie points, but a credit where it's due. In a country like India, where an organisation like ISRO instills scientific termparment over large population; ignoring it's contribution by global media focussed on science is an insult to entire scientific community.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bb611 9y ago
I think you're right to ask for credit where it's due, but this is not such a place - the event being referenced is the 2009 LCROSS mission: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/in... I discovered this with a very quick google search of the terms "2009 NASA crash moon"
- Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
  You are right,the specific case about 2009 crash could be of NASA spacecraft. But what about the entire context of the article ?

marcgcombi 9y ago

It's probably climate change. The increased energy in the atmosphere is driving water molecules into space, which are captured by the moon?

pasbesoin 9y ago

Unless we settle our military confrontations (of varying degrees), any successful political entity is going to have to take a (sufficiently potent) position on the moon, first. Unless it is willing to accept the circumstance of its sole continuation being off-Earth (Mars, in the near term). And has the belief that its off-Earth presence can continue and succeed in the absence of its erstwhile Earth-based counterpart.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

amazing. Stephen Baxters book 'Space' continues to connect with reality.

Pica_soO 9y ago

I wonder- if you warm it up and freeze it down- wouldnt the water fracture the rock around it?

Iv 9y ago

Calm down. From the article: "the glass beads contain only 0.05 percent water." It is much drier than Sahara sand where soil moisture can reach 1%. Dune's scenario would be a piece of cake compared to what you would need to do to feed a colony off of this water. I suspect that energy-wise it would be cheaper to import water from Earth and recycle like crazy.

efefefe 9y ago
>Calm down. It must be tiring to be so logical and parental.

anon_christian 9y ago

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 2 Peter 3:5,6 National Geographic: 'Inner Earth May Hold More Water Than the Seas' http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_wa...

lgats 9y ago

http://i.imgur.com/E4jeTmM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/E4jeTmM.jpg