Moon Dust Fuel

Excerpt from the article "Making a mint out of the Moon" By Nick Davidson posted on BBC Horizon. The original article can be found at:
news.bbc.co.uk...

One of the biggest is US space contractor Lockheed Martin, which is currently developing technologies that will enable future lunar residents to exploit the lunar surface.

In particular it is working on a process which will convert moon dust into oxygen and water. It may even be able to turn it into rocket fuel.

WTF?!

You can possibly take "moon dust" and turn it into rocket fuel, but with all the resources on Earth we can't get away from crude oil?! This makes me so mad.

If you read the entire article, it discusses how there may be fortunes to be had from colonizing the moon. One man is already selling real estate via a loop hole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty.

Glad to hear that when there may be money to be made from the moon all of a sudden we can get fuel out of moon dust, but we can get any "decent" fuel out of anything other than oil here on Earth. Governments suck.

[edit on 10-4-2007 because I suck at typing by tyranny22]

[edit on 10-4-2007 by tyranny22]

It doesn't say we can, but that we may be able to in the future.

Either way though, it sucks for the Moon, because as soon as we get there, we'll trash it the same way we've trashed this planet.

Actually what I find really funny is that the international community is not recognizing any sale of the lunar property as being valid. So that would mean that if you purchase a piece of it, it could be that you just wasted your money. However, if they do, then it could also mean that is the next land rush/grab. Kind of unique quandry there. But if they can utalize the moon and other stuff up there to make life better on earth, hope they can do it with out messing up things down here.

yeah, it's kinda like "The International Star Registry" where you can have a star "named" after you. Although, it's not recognized by anyone other than The International Star Registry.

I think there can be ups and downs to both sides of moon colonization. but, it just really bothers me that there's even speculation that they may be able to produce fuel from million-year-old dried, frozen dust.

Why have we never heard of Lockheed attempting to make rocket fuel out of nutrient rich soil here on earth?

Oh, that's right. It's because the public would be outraged that we were not producing a down-graded consumer fuel that could power cars, trucks, etc. from the same nutrient rich soil that was being used for "rocket fuel."

[edit on 10-4-2007 by tyranny22]

yer that want to extract helium 3 from the moons surface so because it is a cleaner and less polluting fuel.

You can do the same on earth, though why you'd want too, I have no idea. You wouldn't want to burn what is essentially a Rocket Fuel in your car either.

We got lots of Oxygen and Hydrogen already in other forms that makes it much easier to synthesize HOH fuel then it would if we were to use soil. Air has lots of Oxygen and Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It's a lot cheaper to get H2 from Water or Oil then it would be to get it from Soil.

On the He3 front, we don't exactly have an incentive to mine that stuff yet as we don't even have Hydrogen Fusion commercialized. Considering the startup temperature is something like 10 times more for Helium-3 then it is for Hydrogen, it's gonna take a bit more time to exploit that then say, Hydrogen Fusion. They are both clean fuels, it's just the He-3 has a higher energy potential then Hydrogen.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by sardion2000]

[edit on 10-4-2007 by sardion2000]