| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/20/2008 7:48:48 PM | Was wondering what you think of mining the moon.
There are actual plans to be doing this by 2020.
Now, one thing that I think is great are the plans to use a fissionable material, He3, to replace nuclear power plants. And then there are a number of other materials on the moon which could be a great resource for the future.
But I have concerns as to what will happen.
We tend to go ahead and do things with the best intentions, but things wind up biting us in the ..., you know where. And considering how tied in the earth is with the moon, well, there could be unforeseen consequences that one can't even imagine.
But hey, what do you think?
rt2 | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/20/2008 11:26:24 PM | I doubt anything we do to the moon would affect the Earth too much. Look at what we've done to the Earth, with the best (and sometimes worst) intentions. It has had no effect on the moon.
The moon as a source of fuse-able/fusable material (He3) is only useful once we actually nail down the finer points of nuclear fusion. However, it is also an excellent source of raw material with no ecosystem whatsoever and is an excellent platform to conduct launches of missions to other places in the solar system as well as radio and optical astronomy. I think it would be great if we finally left the next, even if it is only up to the next branch at first. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 6:40:22 AM | The moon is at the bottom of a gravity well. Not as big as the Earth's well, but a well of appreciable size. In the near term, any "mining" of the moon would only be for materials to use on the Moon. There won't be an exporting in the near term. An older name for this is In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Somebody got unhappy with that name and came up another name. So, there are a couple of things to look for as far as search engines goes.
There is essentially no weathering on the Moon. Any process which fractures material generates sharp edges, which stay there. This is quite different from Earth, where sharp edges are rounded over, ground down, eroded, ....
If you had to use a single kind of rock to describe the lunar surface, basalt seems to work well. To me, it is an Iron-Silicon-Aluminum-Titanium sub-oxide. It is a sub-oxide, since it is deficient in oxygen, due to being in a radiation (UV, solar wind, ...) rich environment in high vacuum. The least stable elemental oxide of the 4 (Fe, Si, Al, Ti) is iron (Fe). If you heat a regolith sample up, the other 3 elements will tend to reduce the iron by taking away its oxygen. Regolith happens to contain elemental iron, so it has some magnetic properties. It is easy enough to get metallic iron out of regolith, that it has been proposed that if you were to make solar cells out of the oxide part of the "soil" (about 5% efficient I believe), you would use iron for the conductors.
A lot of the mechanical, civil, electrical engineers see iron on the moon and think steel and industriaization. It isn't steel, there is no carbon. And it probably should be treated as a ceramic. At the temperatures of lunar night, iron and most iron alloys are brittle. Most cryogenic steels contain significant nickel.
In the process of redistributing the oxygen in regolith to produce iron, it is possible some oxygen would escape. I suppose you could regard this as pollution. If you know it is going to happen, there is the chance you could try to collect it. Oxygen is kind of useful for other things. The things which cause concern for pollution on Earth don't seem to be present. There is no water or weathering to cause mass transport "downhill". The most prevalent transport mechanism on the Moon is ballistic from impacts, which can carry material just about anywhere on the Moon. Rocket exhaust also causes transport, but not as far. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 8:28:21 AM |
The moon is at the bottom of a gravity well. Not as big as the Earth's well, but a well of appreciable size. In the near term, any "mining" of the moon would only be for materials to use on the Moon. There won't be an exporting in the near term.
What he said - the only sensible reason to consider mining on the moon is for building things on the moon - although using the moon as a base for further exploration is a possibility (and I believe is the current plan). What we really want is to be out of that gravity well entirely, but launching from the moon is a definite improvement over launching from Earth.
Whether it's worthwhile all depends on the relative effort to work in different places - is it less trouble to set up manufacturing on the moon than it would be to ship material up from Earth? I'm skeptical that the moon could pay off that way, but we'll never know for sure unless somebody looks into it seriously. It's worth a few missions and probes to find out, I say.
Would it ever pay to mine material on the moon and ship it back to Earth? Doubtful. I can only picture it if the Moon turns out to have exceptionally large quantities of some element that's rare but valuable here, like Niobium or Tantalum. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 9:32:50 AM | Some excellent stuff... I know Nb can be alloyed with Fe and B to make magnets, but what's Ta used for?
This bring to mind an old thread on space elevators and sky hooks - to cut transport costs to make things more economic. Could some of the waste oxygen from manufacturing not be used with native hydrogen (if any) for use in rockets? I think that's one of the most attractive things to NASA, ESA, etc about working on the moon, if it's practical. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 9:40:20 AM | | if they ever make a major mistake and the moon blows up, that's it for the earth as it will wobble in space and land could be freezing one day and baking hot the next... | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 10:07:36 AM | | I don't see how blowing up the moon would steal angular momentum from the Earth. or significantly perturb our orbit. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 10:17:42 AM |
if they ever make a major mistake and the moon blows up...
Blowing up planets and moons is a staple of science fiction, but it's a pretty ridiculous one.
The amount of energy it would take to move the entire mass of a planet out of its own gravity well (which is what "blowing it up" really amounts to) is so huge that the idea is pretty much inconceivable, unless you have on hand a missile with the mass of a planet.  | |
|
timj82
|
Joined: 11/16/2007
Msg: 9 | |
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 1:33:43 PM | | too bad we cant take the excess water from planet earth and take it to the moon | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/21/2008 1:52:20 PM | We have excess water? The problem with the moon is that it doesn't have enough gravity to support an atmosphere. Water boils in a vaccuum and the high UV flux from the sun would break apart the water molecules and the component hydrogen and oxygen would escape the moon.
There is some water on the moon, frozen at the poles in certain craters and probably overhangs that have perpetual shadow. This could be useful to exploration or mining crews, depending on the amount. | |
|
| |
Nergal
|
Joined: 4/29/2007
Msg: 12 | |
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 5:03:43 AM | Related Story
MIT to lead development of new telescopes on moon
David Chandler, MIT News Office
February 15, 2008
NASA has selected a proposal by an MIT-led team to develop plans for an array of radio telescopes on the far side of the moon that would probe the earliest formation of the basic structures of the universe. The agency announced the selection and 18 others related to future observatories on Friday, Feb.15.
The new MIT telescopes would explore one of the greatest unknown realms of astronomy, the so-called "Dark Ages" near the beginning of the universe when stars, star clusters and galaxies first came into existence. This period of roughly a billion years, beginning shortly after the Big Bang, closely followed the time when cosmic background radiation, which has been mapped using satellites, filled all of space. Learning about this unobserved era is considered essential to filling in our understanding of how the earliest structures in the universe came into being.
The Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology (LARC) project is headed by Jacqueline Hewitt, a professor of physics and director of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Science. LARC includes nine other MIT scientists as well as several from other institutions. It is planned as a huge array of hundreds of telescope modules designed to pick up very-low-frequency radio emissions. The array will cover an area of up to two square kilometers; the modules would be moved into place on the lunar surface by automated vehicles.
Observations of the cosmic Dark Ages are impossible to make from Earth, Hewitt explains, because of two major sources of interference that obscure these faint low-frequency radio emissions. One is the Earth's ionosphere, a high-altitude layer of electrically charged gas. The other is all of Earth's radio and television transmissions, which produce background interference everywhere on the Earth's surface.
The only place that is totally shielded from both kinds of interference is the far side of the moon, which always faces away from the Earth and therefore is never exposed to terrestrial radio transmissions.
Besides being the top priority scientifically for a telescope on the moon, this low-frequency radio telescope array will also be one of the easiest to build, Hewitt says. That's because the long wavelengths of the radio waves it will detect don't require particularly accurate placement and alignment of the individual components. In addition, it doesn't matter if a few of the hundreds of antennas fail, and their performance would not be affected by the ever-present lunar dust.
The new lunar telescopes would add greatly to the capabilities of a low-frequency radio telescope array now under construction in Western Australia, one of the most radio-quiet areas on Earth. This array, which also involves MIT researchers, will be limited to the upper reaches of the low-frequency radio spectrum, and thus will only be able to penetrate into a portion of the cosmic Dark Ages.
According to prevailing theory, this unobserved span of time in the universe's infancy includes a period when dark matter--an unknown component of the universe that accounts for a majority of all matter--collapsed from a uniform soup of particles into clumps that formed the scaffolding for all the structures that emerged later, from stars and black holes to entire galaxies. All astronomical observations made so far only reveal the results of that whole formation process--except the cosmic background radiation, which only shows the raw material before the process began. The whole gestation and birth of all the kinds of objects seen in space today, which all took place in the Dark Ages, has so far been hidden from view.
The new observations could test current theories about how the universe formed and evolved into its present state, including the theory of cosmic inflation first proposed by MIT Professor Alan Guth.
In addition to their primary mission, the new telescopes would also be useful for studying huge eruptions from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, which can sometimes disrupt communications and electrical grids on Earth. They could also study space weather, the radio emissions from other planets and emissions from collisions between galaxies.
The present plan is for a one-year study to develop a detailed plan for the telescope array, whose construction would probably not begin until sometime after the year 2025, and is expected to cost more than $1 billion. The project to develop the plan is led by MIT's Hewitt, with a team that includes MIT professors Jeffrey Hoffman of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Maria Zuber, chair of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, as well as others from MIT and scientists from Harvard, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of California at Berkeley, University of Washington and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To develop this detailed plan, NASA is awarding a grant of $500,000, to be divided between the MIT-led team and a second team that is independently developing a similar proposal, headed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory.
| |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 6:58:15 AM | Canning oxygen for use on the space station, and high orbit construction platforms would be of great benefit to us, if we did it from the moon. Far cheaper in fuel prices.
All kinds of raw materials to use and refine.
What makes me wonder a bit is the dust...get a bulldozer shoving dirt around, dust is going to rise and form a visibility barrier. Not enough gravity to pull it down very quickly. Most of it would drop ok, but the finer stuff could prove to be a nuisance.
We could probably remote operate a lot of machinery right from here..just have teams go set things up and have a "caretaker" unit stationed there to do repairs on an "as needed" basis.
Lots of thing we could do...but I'd hate to see a big Exxon sign on the moon "Food, Fuel, Restrooms" on it!  | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 7:31:12 AM | If neodymium is around, you expect the rest of the "rare earths". On Earth, they aren't all that rare, however finding ore bodies (enhanced concentrations) is rare. I can't say I've run across reports on rare earths on the Moon however. They would be handy for some things.
Tantalum is a refractory metal, very high melting point. It turns out to be quite corrosion resistant.
In terms of dust, static electricity has an influence as well as the low gravity field. You might be able to manipulate some dust with static electric or magnetic fields.
I don't think the Moon makes a good supply base for other places (like Earth orbit) until a person sets up something like a tether or a mass driver. Using chemical rockets to get into and out of the well is going t0 require too much reaction mass.
There are also some astronomy interests at the poles. Places in permanent shadow are very cold, which is good for infra-red astronomy. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 11:47:34 AM | I find the idea of mining the moon quite plausable. Without an atmosphere and much lower gravity, it would be possible to use electromagnetic launchers to send materials to earth or elsewhere with very little on-board propellant. The same launchers could be used to send people and mined material back to earth and on long range exploration. Power for the launchers could come from solar panels not hampered by an atmosphere.
He3 in theory would be well worth "mining". An official with China's space program has stated as few as three shuttles of He3 shipped back to earth per year could supply ALL of man's energy needs. He3 is rare on earth because of the atmosphere but still not exactly in abundance on the moon. It is formed in solar flares. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 2:23:22 PM |
What makes me wonder a bit is the dust...get a bulldozer shoving dirt around, dust is going to rise and form a visibility barrier. Not enough gravity to pull it down very quickly. Most of it would drop ok, but the finer stuff could prove to be a nuisance.
Probably best in the presence of water like asbestos removal. But would a vacuum work?
Mining the moon has been talked about for decades now. From what I hear making bricks would be better and easier. Bake them in a solar kiln. Sort of like back to adobe huts! LOL. The only thing I question about this idea is their porosity since they'd obviously need to be able to hold an atmosphere sooner or later. But I suppose they could be coated or sprayed with something to help that out.
| |
|
| Mining the Moon? Random entry
Posted: 2/22/2008 5:12:30 PM | Isn't size/shape/material important so that something doesn't burn up on re-entry (or entry) into the earth's atmosphere?
How come we had to intercept a satellite, why didn't we just "guide" it to land somewhere?
How would you get this mined material into the earth's atmosphere, and to land somewhere remote (and not ocean, it probably doesn't float) and recoverable? | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 5:51:40 PM | | I think the main problem, asides from the difficulties in terms of physics of getting things into space and setting up a prescence on the moon, is the massive capital cost and amounts of investment that would be required to set up mining operations on the moon. Future projections of the world economy indicate many trillions will need to be spent on infrastructure on things here on earth, in areas ranging from energy to adapting to climate change. I think mining the Moon might be viable in the extreme long term, but it will probably be a project for our descendants in the 22nd and 23rd centuries. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 6:01:13 PM | I believe that mining the moon is inevitable. I also believe that the "majority" of this will be for the benefit of creating some kind of "lunar expansion." If we do find that there is water on the moon, there is evidence that there is buried ice on the moon's poles, then it will undoubtedly be used as a launching pad for space travel.
I do not think that there will be much mining for the earths benefit as it would cost a fortune to transport the bounty back to earth. The only thing that might is he3 like rt2 mentioned. I have seen the docs on the power issue and can see where power companies would love to get their hands on he3 as it might hold the key for fusion power. This could be a "cash cow" unlike anything we have ever seen. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 6:35:34 PM | If we are going to set up any kind of industry on the moon, it cannot be a case of hauling the stuff up from Earth. How take the smallest stuff up that you can get away with, and you bootstrap. People that are familiar with blacksmithing would know the process. In their case, you need a furnace (solar probably), an anvil and a hammer. And you build tools to build better tools to build better tools until you get to the point where you hit things which can make useful things, and not just better tools. What I think works is if you are sending a stage into orbit that can be hauled to the moon, you might have some members made out of pure nickel, some out of chromium, etc. In your solar furnace, you hammer weld (or cast after a while) part A made out of nickel to part B made out of iron to make an iron-nickel alloy. But if you do things with iron at the beginning, you need to make sure things are warm enough, as it has very little toughness when cold.
It might take 50 years to get there, but I am optimistic. I think 150 years is too long. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/22/2008 6:37:25 PM | Some very good posts here.
Another very exciting prospect of mining the Moon, regards possible sources of water (existing as ice of course).
If that is the case, then that brings up one step closer to establishing a permanent settlement on the Moon, which, with its low gravity, would make an ideal staging post for the rest of the Solar System. | |
|
| Mining the Moon? Random entry
Posted: 2/22/2008 6:48:18 PM |
How come we had to intercept a satellite, why didn't we just "guide" it to land somewhere?
The satellite was not a serious threat. It was shot down by one ship in a class of ships in the US navy using a standard missile so common in the arsenal its called a standard missile. The phased array radar and the missiles on such ships have been deployed for quite a few years. That implies the US has had this capability for years and not discussed it in public although it has been in the tech pubs. Normally dealing with a broken spy satellite would be done discretely, not with the press in tow. It was a political message delivered to any one of a hand full of wacko dictatorships wishing to spend their political capitol threatening the US with long range missiles. Remember the phrase "walk softly and carry a big stick"?
On topic: The return craft could be similar to earlier space craft that used an ablative ceramic glass heat shield and ride down on the shock wave. No reason to assume it would not deploy floats and await recovery. | |
|
| Mining the Moon? Random entry
Posted: 2/22/2008 8:59:45 PM | Ahoytheredave - right on. Though I did hear something about the missile having some modifications, but that might just be bull, you never know. At any rate, forgive me for my cynicism, this was more than likely a message to China, or one of a number of other countries. Yes, we can take satellites out, at our leisure. We've been able to do so for years. Uh huh.
A friend and I had discussed whether or not it was possible that that was left up there without repair as part of a demonstration, but it is hard to accept that.
One other thing that was mentioned earlier about the dust kicked up on the moon is that that dust isn't like dust here on earth, it's sharp and projectile like. At least according to one study I read a while back and some interviews of astronauts who have been there.
I agree that the moon would be a great launching point for ventures elsewhere.
Hope all are having a good one. | |
|
| Mining the Moon?
Posted: 2/23/2008 7:02:28 AM | | It isn't necessarily true that the rebuilding of infrastructure on Earth requires that nothing can be done in space (or in the oceans). They are different technologies and different parts of the economy. I think part of the infrastructure problem on Earth is philosophical, and until the philosophy gets straightened out, there isn't a lot of point in trying to replace infrastructure wholesale. | |
|
| Mining the Moon? Random entry
Posted: 2/23/2008 7:09:38 AM | As I read it, the missile had an optional nose on it. If nothing else, you didn't want an explosive nose on it. It is just a chunk of material. At nearly 10 km/s closing velocity, there is lots of kinetic energy in the collision already, and this keeps fragments more in the plane the satellite was moving anyway. The software in the missile had to be changed as well. There are places on the Internet that show a plot of the satellite height as a function of time. This satellite was coming down, the point was to get to it before it was in atmosphere thick enough to make its path unpredictable. From what I read, this satellite would probably not last another 2-4 weeks in orbit.
The sharpness of the dirt has lots of interesting consequences. It is harder to scoop up, it wears out things faster, it can be piled up steeper, and it cannot be compacted as much. And probably a bunch of other things. | |
|
Home
login 
