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posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 09 2017, @11:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-thought-it-was-all-green-cheese dept.

Space scientists have been intrigued for years with the possibility of finding usable oxygen on the moon — not in the lunar atmosphere, since there essentially is none, but in the rocks. As long ago as 1962 ... [NASA researchers] predicted vast lunar processing plants turning out 4,000 pounds of liquid oxygen per month, both for breathing and as an oxidizer for rocket fuel.... Now the Surveyor 5 spacecraft ... reveals it is standing directly over just the kind of rock that would do the job. — Science News, October 14, 1967

Update

The moon is not yet dotted with lunar oxygen factories, but scientists are still devising ways to pull oxygen from moon rocks. One technique, proposed by NASA scientists in 2010, isolates oxygen by heating lunar rocks to over 1650° Celsius and exposing them to methane. Chemical reactions would produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which then react to create water. Passing an electric current through the water would separate oxygen from hydrogen, allowing the desired gas to be captured.

 
Is this just pie in the sky? Cheese? Or is this a viable concept? Read on ScienceNews.org


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday October 09 2017, @10:05PM (1 child)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 09 2017, @10:05PM (#579453) Journal

    It's just expensive. Incredibly expensive. And fundamentally the reason it's so expensive is because so much energy is required to do it.... Just a hunch but it might well be a lot less expensive just to ship the oxygen itself, instead of all the machines and fuel and methane etc. required for this operation.

    I agree, to a large degree.

    But I can't help inferring a little deeper level of assumptions in TFA's statements about the Moon having oxygen: Moon base, research, non-transient human presence. (Colonization, lunar independence, political relations and trade, admittedly nutty far-off stuff.)

    On Earth every green plant from the tiniest algae to the majestic California Redwood is busy scrubbing carbon dioxide and manufacturing oxygen, providing that cheap Terran supply that we start with, while on the Moon, any oxygen is buried deep in the (Rocks|Ice|Whatever).

    Looking at it from a perspective from a Lunie living on the Moon, sure, it's expensive and energy-consuming to cook out the oxygen vs. buying it from Earth, even considering transportation costs.

    But we have made great strides in solar cells and can harvest solar energy more cheaply than ever before, and the Moon gets better sunlight than the Earth (I have seen 27% brighter quoted as a figure in Popular Science [popsci.com]) because it's not filtered through atmosphere.

    At some point, maybe from economies of scale, or from better and better energy technology, perhaps it becomes cheaper and less trouble for the Lunie to mine his own oxygen?

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday October 09 2017, @11:51PM

    by Arik (4543) on Monday October 09 2017, @11:51PM (#579506) Journal
    Perhaps at some point, but I doubt it. Not for oxygen. Maybe for *water* though. Use the water to grow plants, then you get both food and oxygen.
    --
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