4 ms·
UK firm to turn moon rock into oxygen and building materials
- artemonster 6y agoI had the weirdest brain short circuit ever: when reading the title my first thought was: why the hell we need an oxygen supply on earth and how expensive this would be to haul moon rocks to earth to make building materials. And then it hit me...
- ianai 6y agoI did a similar thing. I thought they were saying they were experimenting on moon rocks brought back by NASA at first. I’m guessing it’s a wording thing. On topic, it’s a very cool idea. A friend and I were recently discussing space. Our question was “but what would we be doing on a colony?” Ie what would a colony do to have its existence make sense or be self sustaining? Having a source of oxygen would go a long ways to make the equation make sense.
- Gys 6y agoFor space travel it might be much more efficient to 'pump oxygen' at the Moon instead of bringing it all from Earth.
- ianai 6y agoAgree. That could be a major or the major industry on the moon.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI can imagine they could learn a lot about surviving in space; that alone would be worth it, to advance science. I mean they can achieve a lot of it already on earth (and have, with simulated moonbases and the like), but there's nothing like doing it the hard way. I believe we need a moon base first before attempting to send people to Mars. Both are super dangerous, but at least you can reach and return from the moon within days if need be. I'm afraid the first mars missions will be one-way trips - and the astronauts will be aware of this as well.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThat is the vision of both ULA and Blue Origin. They tend to get overshadowed by SpaceX in the hearts and minds of geeks, but they do have a vision. ULA's vision is "Cislunar 1000"[0], to have an industrial economy on Mars and in orbit, enabled by fuel production on the moon. They hope to reuse their upper stages by converting them into space tugs powered by lunar fuel. The problem with ULA is that they don't have the resources of Musk or Bezos behind them. Rather than creating the future themselves, they need to convince someone (aka NASA) to pay them to create the future. The vision driving Bezos to invest into Blue Origin is the idea of moving industry off of Earth and into Space where it can do no harm. The moon is a focus of Blue Origin. Both Blue Origin & ULA use Hydrogen & Oxygen for their upper stages, so the article isn't particular useful for them. The best way to get Hydrogen on the moon is to electrolyze water, and that also creates oxygen. However, this would be very useful to SpaceX or any other Methane-Oxygen based rockets. There's no known substantial source of carbon on the moon so Methane can't be synthesized there, but Starship uses 3.55X as much oxygen as methane, so if oxygen can be locally produced, many fewer refueling launches from Earth become necessary. 0: https://www.space.com/33297-satellite-refueling-business-proposal-ula.html https://www.space.com/33297-satellite-refueling-business-pro...
- black_puppydog 6y agoExactly the same here. I think when a headline starts with "UK firm to..." I just immediately see Boris Johnson cutting a ribbon when the big "Moon Oxygen" factory is opened. :D
- Gravityloss 6y agoThey already have moon rocks, gifted from USA?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- credit_guy 6y agoThis is pretty much the plot of Artemis by Andy Weir. Second best hard sci-fi novel in my opinion. The best being The Martian by Andy Weir. Arthur C. Clarke takes the next few spots.
- rcgorton 6y agoI'm not sure I understand why power is a limiter. Free solar power and heat during the lunar cycle...