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Water on the Moon, Data from multiple missions seems to indicate...
Juramike
post Sep 24 2009, 12:23 AM
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This probably deserves it's own thread. Seems the evidence is not specific to only one mission...

space.com article: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0909...-discovery.html


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imipak
post Sep 26 2009, 01:01 PM
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The solar wind aetiology is certainly interesting, but practical just doesn't come into it.

Apart from the basic arithmetic about theoretical water yield per square meter and energy required to extract it Doug provided, what would such a vehicle look like? Here's an approximate terrestrial analogue, running at a few km/h, taking the top inch or two of a surface and dumping it harvester-style into a following tender (note: no further processing happens at this stage.) These things mass in the order of 20-30 tons, and of course need regular teardown maintenance and rebuild (neglecting the tender and other supporting infrastructure.) What would a soft-landing of a self-repairing, self-powered, autonomous version of such a machine on the moon look like, as a back-of-a-fag-packet concept?

Mars, on the other hand,.. is another thread wink.gif


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Fran Ontanaya
post Sep 26 2009, 09:59 PM
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As a curiousity, would water ice survive a lunar day inside the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module?
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Holder of the Tw...
post Sep 27 2009, 07:19 PM
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QUOTE (Fran Ontanaya @ Sep 26 2009, 03:59 PM) *
As a curiousity, would water ice survive a lunar day inside the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module?

A complicated question. You have fuel tanks, engine parts, batteries and black boxes, various bays, all kinds of nooks and crannies. You'd have to specify a location in the descent stage (preferably saying which descent stage, they are at different latitudes and orientations), and then someone with the proper engineering knowlege (not me) could do a thermal analysis. Since it's mostly metal, you would expect the temperature to even out a lot, and that the noon temperature would probably put the whole thing above freezing. But still, there are going to be hotter and colder areas. And what exactly the ice is attached to will make a difference in conductivity. Also you need to know how much ice. Big chunk, ...little chunk, ...snowflake? What did you have in mind?

My guess, and it really is only a guess, is that standing above the lunar surface in roasting sunlight for several earth days will heat up the whole thing enough to do a lot of damage to interior ice.
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Posts in this topic
- Juramike   Water on the Moon   Sep 24 2009, 12:23 AM
- - belleraphon1   From the AP "Three different space probes fo...   Sep 24 2009, 01:10 AM
- - ElkGroveDan   I'd say the timing is now ripe for another ann...   Sep 24 2009, 02:56 AM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Sep 23 2009, 09:56 P...   Sep 24 2009, 04:18 AM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Sep 23 2009, 09:18...   Sep 24 2009, 05:09 AM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Sep 24 2009, 01:09 A...   Sep 24 2009, 05:20 AM
- - elakdawalla   There are two more papers, one by Sunshine et al f...   Sep 24 2009, 03:55 AM
- - Astro0   Dan, We've had the "water on Mars" l...   Sep 24 2009, 04:03 AM
- - nprev   ...killer, Astro0! Suspect that this will all...   Sep 24 2009, 04:22 AM
- - Doc   According to SpaceRef.com, NASA hadn't yet rel...   Sep 24 2009, 12:02 PM
- - djellison   I can only find ISS data from Cassini for the eart...   Sep 24 2009, 12:35 PM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 24 2009, 07:35 AM)...   Sep 24 2009, 05:49 PM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Sep 24 2009, 09:49...   Sep 24 2009, 07:14 PM
- - remcook   It must be VIMS data. I could be very wrong, but f...   Sep 24 2009, 01:12 PM
- - elakdawalla   It is VIMS data, and it is in the PDS. One proble...   Sep 24 2009, 01:41 PM
- - Phil Stooke   I'm giving up on predicting anything - well, e...   Sep 24 2009, 01:53 PM
- - Doc   Might be safe to say that this discovery could be ...   Sep 24 2009, 02:30 PM
- - elakdawalla   Hey, Gordan pointed out to me that he already play...   Sep 24 2009, 03:09 PM
- - Zvezdichko   http://www.isro.org/news/scripts/Sep24_2009.aspx ...   Sep 24 2009, 03:14 PM
|- - ugordan   I revisited the IR channels from the same 4 source...   Sep 24 2009, 04:46 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (Zvezdichko @ Sep 24 2009, 04:14 PM...   Sep 24 2009, 05:47 PM
|- - elakdawalla   QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 24 2009, 09:47 AM)...   Sep 24 2009, 05:58 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Sep 24 2009, 06:58 P...   Sep 24 2009, 06:48 PM
- - volcanopele   Interesting finding. A similar absorption band at...   Sep 24 2009, 05:45 PM
- - Zvezdichko   Scientist: The Moon is very dry. If we have to ext...   Sep 24 2009, 06:06 PM
- - Zvezdichko   A crater and one of the charts which shows water p...   Sep 24 2009, 06:15 PM
- - Zvezdichko   Looks like they did it after the information leake...   Sep 24 2009, 06:51 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (Zvezdichko @ Sep 24 2009, 07:51 PM...   Sep 24 2009, 07:26 PM
- - Phil Stooke   One litre per cubic metre... that sounds way too m...   Sep 24 2009, 07:43 PM
|- - djellison   Like Greg - I'll say up front, I hope I've...   Sep 24 2009, 08:39 PM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 24 2009, 01:39 PM)...   Sep 24 2009, 11:56 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Are you sure the water is limited to the top 2 mm ...   Sep 25 2009, 01:45 AM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 25 2009, 02:4...   Sep 25 2009, 06:46 AM
|- - marsbug   The universe today article mentions that ejecta fr...   Sep 25 2009, 12:01 PM
- - Paolo   They are on Sciencexpress http://www.sciencemag.or...   Sep 25 2009, 06:17 AM
- - glennwsmith   Say what you will about the quantities involved, w...   Sep 25 2009, 01:34 PM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (glennwsmith @ Sep 25 2009, 06:34 A...   Sep 25 2009, 04:43 PM
- - djellison   Sorry - I just don't seen enough to get excite...   Sep 25 2009, 01:50 PM
- - Juramike   Both are very cool. But I think the lunar discove...   Sep 25 2009, 01:59 PM
- - Phil Stooke   "Stu, doesn't TS Eliot have a line about ...   Sep 25 2009, 01:59 PM
- - belleraphon1   For those of us older than Apollo, this is indeed ...   Sep 25 2009, 03:38 PM
- - Vultur   Does this data show anything about ice in the perm...   Sep 25 2009, 04:45 PM
- - elakdawalla   No, almost by definition. All these data are from...   Sep 25 2009, 04:58 PM
- - Enceladus75   This is indeed a pretty astounding discovery that ...   Sep 26 2009, 12:13 AM
|- - Reed   QUOTE (Enceladus75 @ Sep 25 2009, 05:13 P...   Sep 26 2009, 01:00 AM
- - belleraphon1   What a beautiful result. Was there not a mention ...   Sep 26 2009, 12:39 AM
|- - ngunn   QUOTE (belleraphon1 @ Sep 26 2009, 01:39 ...   Sep 26 2009, 09:35 AM
- - Juramike   I wonder if MS analysis could help show where the ...   Sep 26 2009, 12:57 PM
- - imipak   The solar wind aetiology is certainly interesting,...   Sep 26 2009, 01:01 PM
|- - Fran Ontanaya   As a curiousity, would water ice survive a lunar d...   Sep 26 2009, 09:59 PM
|- - Holder of the Two Leashes   QUOTE (Fran Ontanaya @ Sep 26 2009, 03:59...   Sep 27 2009, 07:19 PM
- - remcook   A question (can't access the articles right no...   Sep 26 2009, 01:12 PM
- - elakdawalla   I think people got confused about that -- the dept...   Sep 26 2009, 02:04 PM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Sep 26 2009, 10:04 A...   Sep 26 2009, 04:55 PM
- - glennwsmith   . . . "lunar weather" . . . "toilet...   Sep 26 2009, 03:24 PM
|- - Juramike   QUOTE (glennwsmith @ Sep 26 2009, 10:24 A...   Sep 26 2009, 05:03 PM
- - Zvezdichko   ... I wonder what the name of this forum is.   Sep 26 2009, 03:29 PM
- - glennwsmith   Juramike, thanks for making the connection! Y...   Sep 26 2009, 08:23 PM
- - MarsIsImportant   The solar wind idea is an interesting one. It mig...   Sep 26 2009, 09:25 PM
- - nprev   Not to be a wet blanket about the whole lunar wate...   Sep 26 2009, 11:48 PM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (nprev @ Sep 26 2009, 04:48 PM) So....   Sep 27 2009, 04:31 AM
- - Phil Stooke   That sounds about right to me. After the first co...   Sep 27 2009, 07:37 PM
- - Stu   Lots of interesting blog posts re. the "water...   Sep 28 2009, 04:51 PM
- - Paolo   The series of "water on the Moon" paper ...   Oct 23 2009, 07:19 PM


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