

More Water than Ever Found on the Moon - switz
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2104483,00.html

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dctoedt
Brings to mind Robert A. Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ [1] --- the
entire plot turned on the prospect of lunar "society" running out of water
because it used the water to grow grain and then exported the grain "downhill"
to Earth.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress>

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tokenadult
From the submitted article's last paragraph: "None of this makes the moon a
wellspring, and it would have a long way to go before it became a remotely
hospitable place." The remainder of that paragraph speculates away the logical
consequences of that sentence. Overall, the key fact about permanently shaded
areas of the Moon, the places with the most water (and not much at that), is
that they are extraordinarily cold. Figuring out ways to mine and extract the
frozen water in such dark and cold conditions might be a lot more expensive
and technically difficult than simply bringing along water from home.

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bdunbar
_Figuring out ways to mine and extract the frozen water in such dark and cold
conditions might be a lot more expensive and technically difficult than simply
bringing along water from home._

Best guess [1] for cost to lift a kilo/liter to orbit is $20,000 per.

Have to be real expensive to mine water to make it more expensive than
shipping the stuff from the Pacific.

[1] It is surprisingly hard to tease out data on this value: government
accounting is partly to blame. Also: FedEx does not (yet) list their rates for
'delivery to LEO'

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scott_s
I don't think that the 2012 cost of transferring water from Earth is relevant.
If we're in the position of having colonies on the moon, then I assume that
our technology and techniques will have improved to the point that
transferring anything from the Earth to moon will be significantly less.
Otherwise, we wouldn't _have_ colonies on the moon.

This, of course, assumes colonies on the moon. Personally, I doubt we will
ever have them. But if we do, I think it's also reasonable to assume that the
cost will have been lowered significantly.

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bdunbar
_I don't think that the 2012 cost of transferring water from Earth is
relevant._

Think of it as a benchmark.

We know X costs Y, so Z needs to cost less to be viable.

This is useful even if the value of Y declines. It ought to: there is money to
be made in reducing transaction costs.

I'm more bullish on the prospects for living off-world.

If we can get there for a reasonable cost, if it's possible for people to live
there, people will go.

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scott_s
It's an upper-bound, sure, but I don't think it's relevant because I think
that if we have a moon base, it's going to necessarily decrease by orders of
magnitude. At that point, we're dealing too much uncertainty; we don't know
how to mine water on the moon, and we don't know how much the transportation
cost will decrease.

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jerf
It's going to "necessarily decrease" in inflation adjusted terms: Sure. It's
going to necessarily decrease by _orderS_ of magnitude? No, I think that's too
strong. Our most wild technological extrapolations only cover 2 or 3 orders,
tops, and there's no guarantee they can or will be built. I do not see prices
dropping to 2 cents per ton any time soon.

On the flip side, yeah, actually we can make a pretty good guess at how to
mine this water. We actually are pretty good at mining. Run in through a
machine that literally boils it out. Done. Throw the leftover rock in a big
pile. At 2% concentration that's more than enough to get you started, it just
needs energy, which is also fairly easily to get in this context. A real miner
might do something else but that would certainly work.

~~~
scott_s
My claim is that if transporting a liter of water to the moon does _not_
decrease by orders of magnitude, then we won't have colonies on the moon. No
colonies on the moon mean no reason to mine the water.

In other words, I think that the only circumstances in which we would want to
mine water on the moon, transporting water would be orders of magnitude less
expensive than $20,000/liter.

The "unknown" bits I was referring to are the infrastructure required to _be_
on the dark side of the moon.

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thoughtpunch
Beautiful, now let's establish a permanent human presence there and Mars as
well.

~~~
avgarrison
I thought that R. Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near, really had a
compelling argument against space travel in the short term. There's nothing
more ridiculous than sending biological life into space. Let's shed some of
our biological baggage, merge a little more with technology, and then work on
sending a much more versatile and durable human v3.0 into space.

~~~
bdunbar
Kurzweil is a smart guy, but he's wrong on this point.

Space is just a place.

Taking a real long-term view, it's no more ridiculous to live in the Moon, or
Mars, than it was for early man to move out of Africa and settle Europe,
Australia, the Himalayas, California.

Every place man has lived has been radically different from an African
savannah. We get along by adapting, improvising, inventing, using technology.

This is not to discount the hazards, dangers, and exceptionally different
environment found outside our atmosphere.

But it's time for a real, actual Space Age. We'll make it up as we go along,
same as we always have.

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Confusion
You underestimate just how unhospitable space is and how little we are adapted
to living there. The health of astronauts coming back from the ISS has
deteriorated. Their heart has grown weaker, their bones have grown weaker.
Psychologically, they aren't topfit either.

~~~
bdunbar
_You underestimate just how unhospitable space is and how little we are
adapted to living there._

It may appear to be that way from one post. I don't.

 _The health of astronauts coming back from the ISS has deteriorated._

The short-term affects of micro-gravity appear to be un-good, I agree.

Please note I was speaking of settling places with gravity. About that we
simply don't know, yet.

 _Psychologically, they aren't topfit either._

If you spent six months living in an industrial facility the size of a
winnebago you'd be a little off, too.

My expectations of 'the future' are that people will live in bodies with
gravity - the moon, Mars. Off-planet facilities will be what off-shore oil
platforms are today: a place to work, and live short-term, for high pay. Then
you go home to the wife and kids.

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Kilimanjaro
If we could plant the seeds of civilization on the moon in the next 100 years,
that would be a fantastic advancement on conquering mars next and then the
universe.

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orillian
<http://www.boulder.swri.edu/lamp/milestones.html>

for a slightly better read than the Times page. Bigger picture too!

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ramblerman
could you drink it? Bottled moon water, with extra asteroid minerals.

