Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles | Hacker News Reader

Ice confirmed at the Moon’s poles

phys.org

239 pointsdaegloe91 comments

> With enough ice sitting at the surface—within the top few millimeters—water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon's surface.

OR: It could be collected, shipped back to earth, bottled, and sold to the wealthy at ludicrous prices.

Forgive me. It’s been stuck at the back of my brain for 30 years now.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/

That trailer's voiceover is so cheesy, I have to hunt down the movie and watch it. And the movie poster: "See...Great Special Affects!" Clearly, the producers had a lot of self-awareness.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/mediaviewer/rm3916634368

See... Space Herpie the Love Bug!

And see...Ferocious Space Possums!

John Matuszak… had forgotten the guy existed, brings back some memories.

“We’re taking waters. Would you like a water?”

“Why not?” said Novak.

Daizaburo signaled a crab. It began speaking Nihongo. “English, please,” said Daizaburo.

“Antarctic glacier water,” offered the crab. “A deep core from Pleistocene deposits. Entirely unpolluted, undisturbed since the dawn of humanity. Profoundly pure.”

“What a delightful conceit,” said Novak. “Very Vietti.”

“We have lunar water,” said the crab. “Very interesting isotopic properties.”

“Did you ever drink water from the moon, my dear?” Novak asked her.

Maya shook her head.

“We’ll have the lunar water,” Novak ordered.

--Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire.

(I should really reread that. Thanks for reminding me!)

OR, we could call it H2Moon and heavily imply it is moon water but actually just source it from the local water and run it through a filter, even during droughts.

> we could call it H2Moon

The real winner is steak from a cow entirely raised on the stuff. H2Moos.

When can we start?

I think the wealthy would rather take a vacation to the moon.

Likely, but the ice-mining scheme will be much easier to pull off, and will therefore be possible sooner, and is therefore more likely to be the primary means by which these resources are exploited.

To save mass (and thus cost) they'll probably dehydrate the water before shipping it back to Earth. Their target market won't care.

Or they could sell it in different concentrations. You can get 1% moonwater for $1000/bottle, or 99% moonwater for $100K/bottle.

I think you could do better selling it homeopathic. 1x10^-12 is way more expensive!

10^-12 is only a 6C dilution. The dilution advocated by Hahnemann is 30C, which is 10^-60. Oscillococcinum is at 200C (10^-400).

They could also split it up, and ship the gases in compressed form.

Because oxygen and especially hydrogen are such a pain to store compared to water some rocket designs contemplate just leaving all the fuel mass as water and only splitting it into its parts as needed before firing.

Water is also effective at blocking radiation [0][1], making it especially useful when stored around the spacecraft occupants.

[0] https://www.quora.com/Can-we-use-water-or-ice-as-radiation-s...

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/284275main_Radiation_HS_Mod3.pdf (page 4)

Don't you need an energy source to turn the water into its parts? That's the energy you recoup when you burn the hydrogen. Or did I miss the joke?

Presumably this would be done with a small nuclear reactor powering an electrolysis system, in which case it’s feasible. Your savings are in complexity and weight because containing a mass of water is trivial, and naturally dense compared to H or O. As an extra feature you need water anyway, it can be used as a coolant, and you need oxygen which you’re now generating as a byproduct. Presumably for cruising you’d use the nuclear reactor to power an ion drive and only use the Water splitter as needed for maneuvering, launches, and landing.

South pole - perfect place for constant solar power. Just raise it up a little bit.

On the other hand, they also believe in homeopathy, so you would only need 1 litre of moon water to produce billions.

edit: excalibur beat me to it.

Let the wealthy pay tons of money to go work the ice mines in the moon for a few weeks at a time while it has its novelty. Kill 2 birds with one stone.

I like the idea of sploooshing around in a sublunarrean swimming pool at 1/6th g.

That's actually a very interesting idea I have never thought about? How slow would the water fall down and when splashed? Would you have to be careful not to smack the water a whole bunch least you suspend to much mist in the air to make it hard to breath for a while? What would it look like to splash around? I would love to see some cool physically based gpu renderings of what hydro stuff would look like in low g.

Quite a few of the consequences are discussed here: https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

Lol...of course there is a xkcd for the topic... I should have known. Thanks for the great link.

Great read.

See Passengers scene where the gravity system breaks.

A local source of water would make the hotel much cheaper to run.

Imagine how much you could charge for return tickets.

sounds like the plot to the next great american western film

I doubt it. It lacks atmosphere.

I went on a vacation to Bora Bora once and upon seeing restaurant prices of $40 per person I walked two miles to the grocery store, bought a pack of hot dogs for $15 and boiled them in the coffee pot. I am not sure what food would cost on the moon, but I would definitely bring hot dogs.

I am technically considered wealthy (3% or higher). But definitely clip coupons and save money where I can.

Forget about Lunar Water man, that's so 2002.

Let's distill moon stuff and make MOON BEER and MOON VODKA.

Oh yeah, <<Celebrate with a shot of "Yuri G." the world's first and finest Moon Vodka>>

That would be... a moon shot.

I see the slogans now: "same great Vyatutas, but from space!"

It comes with a bent swizzle spoon just to confuse people.

> "the worlds' first and finest Moon Vodka"

ftfy

Even sand from the moon would sell for a lot of buck, no need to transport that little water from the moon to Earth where it's abundant, but im sure people would buy end drink that for ridiculous amounts of money.

Your own Personal Moon Sand is incredibly precious... and incredibly attractive to thieves. Let us store it for you. And what safer place to store it than the Moon? And why go there when it would only facilitate theft of your own Personal Moon Sand? Taking orders now.

And also own an acre of land on the moon. Sale is on a first come first serve basis. Only $24.99 per acre *other fees may apply

https://lunarembassy.com/

I'd like to take a loan of that precious Moon Sand, fully backed by your holdings... since most people won't ask for repayment at once, can I have 6 Moons worth?

Wrong journey, nobody's contemplated that. The idea is taking water from the Moon to space, rather than earth water to space at vastly greater fuel cost.

Fiji Water already exists.

If it funds space exploration and development, why not ?

Nestle is going to try to buy Moon land now.

"...sold to the residents of Flint at ludicrous prices." FTFY

Another cool thing one could build on the moon is a rail cannon to bombard Earth. Moon's gravity well makes it relatively easy to hurl stuff from there to here, and the stuff _accelerates_ as it approaches Earth, assisted by earth gravity. The scenario is explored in detail in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

Just got off the phone with Elon, he’s on it...

So, moon base at a pole can have: 1. Direct sunlight at all times 2. Direct LOS comms to Earth 3. Access to water.

Am I correct?

Direct sunlight: Wikipedia says maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light#On_the_M...

Wrong on #1: moon doesn't have direct sunlight at all times.

https://imgur.com/a/rOyNvDG

Aren't poles always illuminated?

"No peaks of eternal light have been positively identified on the moon, but many peaks have been detected that, via simulations based on imaging and laser and radar topography, appear to be illuminated for greater than 80% of a lunar year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light

Answering my own question: no. Poles would be always illuminated if Sun, Earth and Moon would be rotating along the same plane.

Just a question, is there any reason why whenever we detect frozen water its on the north pole or south pole of any circular object in solar system? I guess ones of them is sun heating up everything in the equator region.

That's... pretty much the only reason you need. No heat == cold. If you were asking why the poles are always aligned such that they don't point at the sun, https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-planets-in-our-solar-syste...

You've pretty much nailed it. In the high latitudes, sunlight strikes the ground at a steep angle, so there's less of it per square inch. If that leads to the temperature staying below freezing year-round, you get permanent ice caps.

(I think there's an extra twist on the Moon; the lack of atmosphere means that direct sunlight is blazingly hot even at the poles, but also that shadowed areas stay much much cooler since there's no moving air to distribute the heat evenly. Lunar ice doesn't form a continuous cap, but nestles in the bottoms of polar craters where the light never reaches.)

That's true in the inner system but by the time you get to around Jupiter the Sun is dim enough that you can have ice on the surface of bodies without atmospheres.

brundolf's response plus atmosphere, which can diffuse energy from near the equator to other parts of the planet via convection, although Venus ice caps are still colder than Earth's, so not sure anymore... The universe is a complex place.

The ice caps hiding under an atmosphere of burning sulphuric acid at hundreds of degrees!?

I wonder why it took several years for this analysis to be done and published. I mean, the data was presumably collected during 2008-2010 or so.

It's almost as though science is a complex job that occasionally requires a lot of work.

Sure, but eight years?

Edit: What I'm getting at is that this seems a profound result, with perhaps crucial implications. Not some minor detail, of only arcane interest.

> this seems a profound result, with perhaps crucial implications

I'm not sure about this case in particular, but in general this is actually a good argument as to why something would take longer than usual. A lot of work has to be verified, especially groundbreaking work.

How long it "should" take is something that experts in that field might weigh in on. Are you an expert in that field? A related field?

If you have literally zero context why are you raising such a fuss? Do you have any context on how long discoveries take in any scientific field whatsoever?

If only they had a more reasonable budget for their undertakings

I think it's important to question what this means, lest we reward inept agencies with more money. Not to say that the agency that did take this long would necessarily be inept, but if you give access to the sufficient data for let's say a post-doc of appropriate background, would it be reasonable for this single person earning scraps, as post-docs are wont to do, to take e.g. 8 years? It's just quite a peculiar issue.

I'm just guessing but doesn't astronomy usually have way more data than the scientific field has manpower to process and analyse it?

Can we sand someone to double check it?

Joking aside, wow, why can't we send someone to double check it 60 years later.

Wasn't this confirmed several years ago?

From the article: "M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization, was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we'd expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice."

Another source: "near the south pole of the Moon on 9 October 2009 showed the spectral signature of hydroxyl, a key indicator that water ice is present in the floor of the crater (1). Analysis of the results indicates concentrations of roughly 6% water in the impact area, including nearly pure ice crystals in some spots. "

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon.html

I was promised Moon bases, farms and hotels by now and all we got is the information that there’s ice at the poles?!

Water = fuel as much as it is important to life.

Weaker gravity well + infrastructure should = cheaper exploration.

This is interesting, I didn't think of it like that. You're saying the moon should be used as a base because less energy is required to leave the moon. I wonder if those savings amortize the up-front cost of creating a self-sufficient moon base.

I do too. Making that base practical and viable may include too many nasty details. I don"t know.

So moon crater ice sublimates slow enough to not disappear a-la Europa?

That was my argument, before this article was published. The counter argument of course, is that it does sublimate (as water does from comets), but there's a vast amount (remains of a crashed comet, say); plus dust accumulating on the surface seals it fairly well over time. So I'm now guessing we're not talking "a few millimeters of water" as others have speculated, but really large amounts.

How does it not sublimate?

Good. We need strong customs enforcement there too. </snark>

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

    $ base64 -d ~/tmp/wtf.txt
    uZbase64: invalid input

Edit: I suck and forgot to remove the leading stuff. I love the internet today. If anyone is wondering it is SFW.

For those wondering, it's a picture of this thing : http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Snark

On mac others might want to:

    # filename - wherever you pasted the base64 string
    FILE=<filename> && base64 -D $FILE.txt >> $FILE.png && open $FILE.png

* don't do this w/ random stuff off the internet. That could have easily been something other than an image, and `open` will happily open whatever it was regardless of the extension.

You're 100% correct.

I can't edit it now, but you're absolutely right. Horrible gaffe on my part.

For anyone curious: if you copy and paste this in your browser's URL bar it should display the image properly.

But... why?

I guess there's no chance of link rot this way...

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