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This is really stupid. They've managed to take stuff that's so difficult to find that you literally have to go to the freaking moon to get it, and turn it into
by Traster 6y ago
This is really stupid. They've managed to take stuff that's so difficult to find that you literally have to go to the freaking moon to get it, and turn it into something that is literally everywhere all over earth. What a bunch of idiots.
On a more serious note, is the high energy demands of this process a blocker at all? Or can we just assume that energy (solar) is abundant on the moon?
- NullPrefix 6y agoWhat if, just hear me out, what if the end goal is to use this process one the moon where the input stuff is abundant and the output is going at premium rate?
- Invictus0 6y agoThe parent is obviously being sarcastic.
- satvikpendem 6y agoThat is not obvious from the parent comment at all.
- Traster 6y agoI hereby confirm I was being sarcastic, I really would like an answer to the second part though.
- ct520 6y agoNot sure why this makes me laugh, maybe because I know all to well how you got to be explicit with development teams. On serious note isn’t there some type of future plan to put nuclear reactors on the moon in this decade?
- abnry 6y agoConfirmation not accepted unless notarized.
- garmaine 6y agoI haven’t read the original article, but there have been processes for extracting oxygen from lunar regolith for a half century now. I’m not sure what’s new about this one. In general these processes are energy intensive because they involve temperatures high enough to melt rock. On the Earth that is difficult to achieve because you need to keep the furnace hot. On the Moon with its hard vacuum, a large chunk of rock moved onto insulating material doesn’t radiate much heat. So all you’d need, really, is a large parabolic mirror. The Sun is your power source.
- freen 6y agoThe failure mode of sarcasm is either asshole or idiot. Generally speaking, it’s a high risk, low reward mode.
- hinkley 6y agoWhat stops solar collectors on earth from working consistently is atmospheric interference diffusing the light. If you can figure out how to avoid creating dust clouds on the moon, which is not a small if, solar concentrators could provide a lot of the heat for the process, reducing the power needs to the electrochemical part.
- anoncake 6y agoI think "on a more serious note" implies that what precedes it isn't serious.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nojokes 6y agoHe was obviously sarcastic.
- andai 6y agoSolar is abundant, the panels are not... yet! I wonder if arrays of mirrors (aimed at a heat engine or whatever they use to generate electricity from molten salt) would be cheaper to scale up there.
- rtkwe 6y agoThis process just needs heat so why not skip the electricity step entirely and just have a big refinery follow the sun around the moon. With a 29.5 day... day and a small circumference the you only need to move ~9.5 mph to stay in constant sunlight on the moon.
- chongli 6y agoI wonder if arrays of mirrors (aimed at a heat engine or whatever they use to generate electricity from molten salt) That seems like a great idea. Find a nice big crater in an area that gets a lot of sunlight and polish the walls of the crater into a parabolic mirror. Put your heat engine at the focus and collect tons of energy. The one drawback: how do you provide cooling? Heat engines are only efficient with a large temperature gradient (Carnot's theorem).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ne9xt 6y agoI can’t believe so many people are not picking up your humor! XD
- Traster 6y agoEither people didn't read the article, or assumed I hadn't read the article.
- seneca 6y ago"Cute" reddit-style posts are generally not well received here.
- FaultsOfDang 6y agoWho's fault could this be?
- delecti 6y agoIt's not really fair to pin "fault" on anyone in particular for the culture that develops on any given social media site. These things just kinda emerge.
- artifact_44 6y agoI think hn itself is a counterpoint to your assertion. The toxic culture hasn't really "emerged" here as it has on countless other platforms, due primarily to ruthless call-out/moderation/shadow banning etc.
- krapp 6y agoHumor isn't toxic. What's toxic is the vituperative snark, contemptuous elitism, low-effort cynicism and outright hatred this community breeds and that dang constantly has to put down because (among other reasons) we have to be pedantic humorless prigs about everything. I'll take more dumb jokes over yet another diatribe on how Twitter's latest moderation policy changes will lead to mass graves and white genocide any day.
- whoisthemachine 6y agoWhile I appreciate the humor, the crowd here doesn't typically take to it. To answer your question - I do not have much knowledge of available solar energy on the moon versus the Earth, but I think it's safe to assume it would be much less impeded on the moon than on Earth, which has an atmosphere, magnetosphere, and ozone layer at the very least getting in the way of solar rays.
- jws 6y agoIt looks like about 1/3 more energy per area than the surface of Earth at noon. On the moon you should get about a 50% duty cycle of that as opposed to about 20% on Earth (the edges of the day and weather eat a lot of power), so it's safe to say "about three times as much" energy per year.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rtkwe 6y agoThere's a lot of options for getting that energy on the moon mostly various versions of solar either by traditional solar panels or you could use mirrors to concentrate sunlight to provide heat directly. The latter works pretty well on the moon because the day is pretty long at almost a month. If you get really creative the slow speed means it might be possible to build a giant tracked refinery that slowly circles the moon so it has continuous daylight.
- Zenst 6y agoOh this is probably going to be more practical than another British invention https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=1405575&KC=&locale=en_ep&FT=E https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC... I'd say solar panel output would be way more predictable than upon Earth as no chaotic weather systems at play, also larger unfiltered spectrum would mean panels could be tailor made to get higher efficiency than you get per m2 anywhere upon Earth with its atmosphere.
- dmurray 6y agoWouldn't an unfiltered spectrum mean you'd need to tailor your solar panels less, and likely get lower efficiency (fewer watts of electricity per watt of sunlight) than on Earth? You'd still get more watts per square metre, because the atmosphere wouldn't be in the way.
- Zenst 6y agoI'm sure the moon has it's own environmental factors that would impact materiel choices and make some more suitable than others. So having a wider spectrum of light at suitable levels to tap into, whilst that opens up the possibility to tap into a larger spectrum at the required power levels to generate electricity. It maybe that being able to use some materials have advantages and tap a part of the spectrum that would not be viable upon earth proves more suitable. you can visualise it better here and whilst this is measuring upper atmosphere levels and not space - you get an idea: http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/GenChem2/A2/1.html http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/GenChem2/A2/1.html
- rkagerer 6y agoNot sure, but the article does indicate they're working on reducing energy requirements with a view to making it lunar-feasible. Engineers will tinker with the process by adjusting the electrical current and reagents to boost the amount of oxygen while trying to reduce the temperature needed to produce it. This will help bring down the energy required, which is already at a premium on the Moon.
- anoncake 6y agoThe point is, obviously, to fight global warming. By importing additional oxygen from the moon, we dilute our CO2.
- geuis 6y agoHow this extremely biased and negative comment hasn’t been downvoted, I have no idea. Or perhaps there’s some kind of double sided irony here I’m missing. Either way, what’s being described is a process to refine materials to be used in space, where currently sending similar materials from the is prohibitively expensive.
- thereisnospork 6y agoYou misspelled nuclaer. First step to an exo-earth settlement is going to be sending the biggest reactor that will fit on a rocket. Two of them, actually.[1] Whether its digging, breathing, or making rocket-fuel pretty much everything is going to require, by earth standards, gobs of power. Last thing you'd want to do is operate in a power-starved or even power-adequate environment. [1]Plus, to be fair, enough backup solar or RTG to keep people alive in case of reactor failure.
- anoncake 6y agoIs that feasible? The container for the radioactive fuel must be robust enough to survive a catastrophic failure during launch followed by an an impact on Earth without releasing its contents. Which is possible (RTGs are built that way), but adds a lot of weight.