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Comment by excalibur | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

When can we start?

> we could call it H2Moon

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

See Passengers scene where the gravity system breaks.

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

Great read.

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

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>>

> "the worlds' first and finest Moon Vodka"

ftfy

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

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

That would be... a moon shot.

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.

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?

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

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...

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