Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Do we really want to start junking up the moon?

Having a pile of junk ready when you want to start a permanent base sounds like it could be useful.

The amount of tools needed to process that junk and make newly usable stuff would be huge and not worth it. Not even talking about the energy needed to take the junk there and land it safely. The article is talking about rocket bodies mostly: they don't have that much useful material.

Please explain that to my wife in reference to my collections in the garage.

"It might be useful some day"

If it's iron or aluminium, someone probably will pay silly (Earth) money for it on the Moon during early colonisation, but maybe not right at the start when there's no bandwidth it facilities for recycling scrap. Right up until the bigger regolith smelters come online.

The box of pre-loved Beanie Babies, perhaps also quite valuable: who knows how much hydrocarbons will be worth in early lunar colonies. Carbon isn't especially abundant in regolith (compared to silicon, aluminium, iron, etc) and has to be baked out as gases. Though I still doubt you'd have takers if the shipping isn't included...

Thank you for inspiring my next project. I shall do all in my power to relocate the contents of my garage to the lunar surface.

Does anybody have Tom Mueller's phone number?

Best I can do is this very old card I found for a Mr von Braun, I think it is. It's in a very, um, spiky font.

That will do. I don't need reusability, and London makes for a decent Plan B target.

Hydrogen moreso!

Oxygen is usually plentiful in various minerals, but hydrogen tends to get blown into space if there isn't a reactive atmosphere to recapture it.

Yes indeed. Apparently some of the carbon will come along with hydrogen as methane when you bake it out of the rock. Separating straight to carbon and hydrogen is a hassle, though, as the carbon clogs the catalyst.

Perhaps crashing a carbonaceous asteroid into the moon or disassembling in orbit and landing the results may work?

Of course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com