Monday, October 26, 2020

Lunar water hype

From HBDChick, they found water on the moon. And yes: water on the moon, not in the craters; we already knew about the craters as, to be fair, the article notes.

I call what Layal Liverpool has printed as an "article" rather than a regurgitated press-release like so much out there, on account she asked around if this water was even practical to get at.

Answer: if we're on a worst-case scenario then no. It was hard even to tell these hydrogen / oxygen ions from hydroxyl. Thousands of kilos of regolith have trapped maybe a liter of the wet stuff. It might even be more efficient to melt the rock in a magnetic field (or whatever process) and trap the hydrogen.

On a better-case scenario, the water may be in clumps. Some stretches will be dry; but there will be buried blocks of ice in all that dust. I prefer this scenario. Just in case, to colonists I'd recommend the craters anyway, to keep out the radiation.

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