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Ok, I need some technical brilliance here. Does anyone know of a good way (in theory or practice) that a lunar settlement could manufacture water? If anyone could help I would be most grateful.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Dec 2003
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It describes in detail how oxygen can be extracted from lunar rocks. Note that an intermediate stage of this process involves the production of water...
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There is already a large supply of water that has been deposited on the moon via comet impacts (atleast, the method of deposition is theorized). This water has been preserved in impact craters where sunlight doesn't hit it -- typically towards the poles, I believe.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I may be many years out of date on this, but at one time I learned that what the Moon lacks is hydrogen. (Note that in that article, one of the steps is "add hydrogen" which is not obtained from the moon rocks.) The discovery of water ice at the Moon's poles was therefore really a big deal. There's just loads of oxygen up there. But, unless they've changed their mind about this since I was in college, the only source of hydrogen on the Moon is in the water ice, which means that making water there, if there isn't enough ice available for the purposes of your story, just ain't possible (other than by shipping in the hydrogen for it, which would be lots cheaper than shipping in the water).
If the scientists have decided that my information is out of date, somebody please let me know.
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According to this article by Geoffrey Landis, the surface soil of the moon contains some hydrogen deposited by the solar wind. (And the solar wind is constantly adding more, while some of it is leaking off into space.) It's at a low concentration, but it could be realeased fairly easily.
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Remember, the water needs of any entirely sealed environment are going to be very limited. All the water ends up being recycled with virtually zero loss. Once you have the initial water supply, you only ever need more if you want to expand the colony.
Also keep in mind that burning any material that contains hydrogen creates water vapor as a by-product. Rockets burn hydrogen and LOX because that combination has the best ratio of thrust to mass. So unless you're using nuclear powered rockets, you'll be shipping quite a bit of hydrogen to your colony anyway (probably from somewhere other than Earth, though).
And the quantity of ice in a very small lunar glacier would be more than sufficient to sustain a surprisingly large colony (alliteration, always an alluring alternative).
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