Re: An oasis on the moon?

From: Greg Kuperberg (greg_at_see-web-page.edu)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 05:18:04 +0000 (UTC)

In article <1109397480.390159.166130@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
 <stevejdufour@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Space Watch: An oasis on the moon?
...
> Yet two American probes -- Clementine in 1994 and Lunar
>Prospector in 1998 -- found evidence that molecular hydrogen might be
>locked in large quantities near the moon's poles. From this data,
>scientists theorized water ice might exist frozen on the floors of a
>handful of very deep polar craters which -- because of their extreme
>high latitude -- remain always in shadow. All told, scientists have
>estimated that as much as 6.6 trillion tons of ice could be available.

This was one of the most hyped science stories of 1998, and it has even
made its way into the Vision for Space Exploration, our national space
policy. The United States is returning to the moon because "[the moon's]
soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into
rocket fuel or breathable air."

But it seems that Robert Zimmerman, not to mention George Bush, is
interested in all of the good news and only a little bit of the bad
news in the "ice on the moon" story. On the experiment side, people
used an interplanetary radar system at Aricebo, Puerto Rice to look for
reflecting chunks of ice to a depth of 18 feet:

    http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Nov03/radar.moonpoles.deb.html

On the theory side, this very nice review article explains how
the hydrogen in lunar ice probably comes solar radiation bombardment:

    http://www.mae.usu.edu/faculty/tmosher/GeneratedItems/media/IceAtLunarPoles.pdf

Both theory and experiment indicate that there is ice on the moon, but
you probably can't just pry it out and brush off the dust. Instead,
it might be a smoosh-in present at a concentration on the order of a few
percent by mass. So, as a thought experiment, imagine thoroughly mixing
two liters of water into 100 kilograms of fine, dry dust. Then consider
the work it would take to get rocket fuel, drinking water, or breathable
air out of that. Then consider the task of taking the equipment for it
to the moon, and operating it there for the duration.

Personally I think that the whole idea of interplanetary radar is amazing
and cool. The same Aricebo technique did find a reflecting signal from
Mercury ten years ago, one that could come from ice on that planet.
So if astronauts don't find an oasis on the moon, maybe they should try
Mercury :-). 

-- 
  /\  Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
 /  \ Home page: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/
 \  / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
  \/  * All the math that's fit to e-print *

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