Last week brought us the exciting official news of water on the Moon. This news is scientifically critical and, more importantly, economically astounding. From a scientific point of view, we now know that the water is interlaced with the lunar soil in many locations, perhaps as remnants of comet collisions with the lunar surface.
From an economic point of view, water on the Moon is the equivalent of finding "gold in the hills of California." Translation: there is the potential for a California gold rush to hit the space community in the years ahead, and the teams building robotic exploration vehicles in the Google Lunar X PRIZE are constructing the shovels and picks on the leading edge of this potential boom.
So what's so interesting about water on the Moon? After all, it's in boundless supply on Earth. The value of water is its actual physical location on the Moon, a place that is very expensive to travel to. The utility of the water is both as a propellant for rockets and for the maintenance of human life in space. With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink. As it turns out, hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) together are also one of the most efficient propellants we know. The Space Shuttle Main Engines (some of the most powerful rocket engines in existence), for example, burn O2 and H2 to blast our astronauts off the Earth into orbit. You can think of water as the petroleum of spaceflight. Rather than oil that powers our cars, H2 and O2 power our rocketships.
Today's launch costs are, unfortunately, extremely expensive. On the average it costs something on the order of $20,000 per pound to get supplies into low-Earth orbit (where the International Space Station is located) and, optimistically, 10 times to 20 times that cost -- or approximately $400,000 per pound -- to land something on the Moon's surface.
So the cost of transporting water to the lunar surface, or oxygen, or hydrogen, is about $400,000 per pound or $25,000 per ounce -- about twenty-five times the price of gold today!
Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration. Who will set up the first water mining plants? Given low-cost availability of water, hydrogen and oxygen, what type of off-Earth economies and exploration will this enable? The question is not too dissimilar to those questions asked when oil was discovered buried deep under the Earth or under the oceans. We eventually designed the technology to mine and extract this precious resource. It's what we do as humans and entrepreneurs.
I'm excited for all of the teams building vehicles for the Google Lunar X PRIZE. This is a $30 million competition funded by Google and operated by the X PRIZE Foundation. We've offered up a large cash bounty for the first team to privately build and land a robot on the surface of the Moon that can travel and send back photos and video. Think of these vehicles as a low-cost 'prospector' looking for information and valuable data.
Thus far, over twenty teams from eleven nations have registered to compete. When they are successful they will demonstrate the ability to reliably travel to the lunar surface and explore for less than a tenth of the current costs envisioned by government programs. Everyone will benefit and these Google Lunar Teams will be on the cutting edge of a gold rush.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of the story of water on the Moon, which happens on October 9th of this year. On this day, a NASA mission called LCROSS will collide (catastrophically) into the Lunar South Pole with the hope of discovering large quantities of water. This LCROSS collision is targeted on one of the permanently shadowed craters. At the same time a lunar orbiting observing satellite will be taking photos and searching for H20 in the plume resulting from the collision.
If you've been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.
Johann Hari: It Is Five Minutes To Environmental Midnight. We Need To Act - Urgently
Barack Obama is a highly intelligent man who has appointed some of the best scientists in the world to explain to him what needs to happen now. But he is trapped in a political system soaked in petrol.
1. About half the human race is nuts
2. The aliens are secretly making us do this
3. There's some hidden geopolitical agenda behind it all
4. It's all about national prestige
5. It's all about adventure
6. There are very real scientific --- and economic --- reasons to do so
Pick one. I choose #6 (although #1 may well be true).
Some company somewhere "sells" plots of land on the moon. One can buy one with designated coordinates as being their land, photos of that land, certificates of ownership, etc. Someone (a German man, I believe) bought some and then sent letters to NASA and the White House informing them that the given coordinates demarcated his land, and that he was open to negotiations to lease it to the US should we ever return to the moon or otherwise seek to use "his" land.
Or is my time-line still off by a few billion years?
Creationist please refrain from answering.
Or is there more that I missed about the amount that's there?
Most plentiful at the poles where some craters are in darkness 100% of the time. A great boon for those who would like to see a lunar outpost.
Thanks
This makes all of those so-far science-fiction dreams of exploring and colonizing the solar system and beyond so much more realistic.
This, on top of the discovery of helium-3 for potential nuclear fusion and uranium for nuclear fission. Not to mention the almost limitless potential for solar power on the moon.
Just think, we may actually live to see things Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, Roddenberry, etc., predicted but could only dream about living to see.
I remember watching 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, and having no doubt we'd have colonies on the Moon just like the ones in the movie.
So, okay, maybe it will be 2021 or 2031, and maybe the colonies won't be as sophistcated as the ones in the film. But I'm eating my fruits and vegetables and exercising in hopes of sticking around long enough to see if that monolith really is buried under the lunar soil. ;)
But NGL won't be prospecting for water. Instead, we'll be offering lunar prospectors a Mobile Universal Lunar Exploration Service (MULES). "Mules" is capable of delivering our client's payload quickly into and out of polar craters. Every prospector needs a good Mule!
Mike
And I'm not saying you necessarily won't be able to make money by manned exploration. I just want you to be honest with yourself and with us. If the Rethugs get back in power they will fund all kinds of pentagon wet dreams including space as "the ultimate high ground" (google it). The Pentagon is always a good source of $$ and manned exploration is needed to help the US dominate the world from space. That is until we blow it up or it all comes crashing down in economic and environmental catastrophe. But hey who cares? It will be a wild ride while it lasts.
I give Dynamohum credit for knowing the impotance of the Moon's presence to life on Earth, however. I doubt many people are aware of that fact.
Also, they wouldn't be literally drilling to collect water. The water collects on the surface on a molecular level from solar wind and comets. You know, outside sources. What would really happen is combing over the surface with robotic "sponges."
If life is to survive, it cannot remain on earth forever. For many reasons, practical, scientific and historical, creating a small base on the moon is the first step to exploring the solar system and beyond.
Better yet, the only sensible thing to do would be launching water from the Moon to a fuel depot in low earth orbit, so that spacecraft launched from earth can refuel in orbit and then go on to Mars.
I'm 55, and unlikely to ever see such a mission in my lifetime, so all these Mars robotic orbiters and rovers have been thrilling for me to watch.
I'm betting they'll find fossil evidence of microbial life on Mars eventually, and maybe even life itself underneath the surface. That's where most of the life on Earth exists, and we now see that water is almost certainly present beneath the surface of Mars.
If one of those future rovers finds life on Mars, past or present, that will be the Mars "gold rush" for a manned mission to the planet. I envy those future folks who'll get to witness it.
A trip to Mars isn't going to LEO, only passing through, and if the moon were involved, it would just be as a way station, or perhaps a more direct roel as lift-off site.
So: How much would it cost to get to Mars from Earth direct, how much for Earth>Moon (with already assembled and craft lift-off from Earth), how much for some version of Earth > Moon > Mars with some/all assembly on Moon and lift-off directly from the moon?
Or some variations on those.
Spacecraft need to be larger especially going to Mars.
Good thing that there is real bathroom on the shuttle and spacestation
and there will have to be on or more on a mars spacecraft or moonbase and marsbase..
Also, they wouldn't be literally drilling to collect water. The water collects on the surface on a molecular level from solar wind and comets. You know, outside sources. What would really happen is combing over the surface with robotic "sponges."
If life is to survive, it cannot remain on earth forever. For many reasons, practical, scientific and historical, creating a small base on the moon is the first step to exploring the solar system and beyond.
Kudos for realizing the importance of the Earth/Moon relationship, however. I doubt many people are aware of that.
~MOM~
Don't even THINK about 'going there'.
It does belong to everyone. I'd like to see it be treated as international public lands, like one giant gray Yellowstone Park in the sky. Ideally, this is what will happen. We should be able to visit it and appreciate that beauty first hand, as well as the rest of the solar system. Collecting water from its surface that accumulates from solar wind and/or comets won't soil that beauty and wonder as far as I can tell. It'll just make it more accessible to the lot of us.