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LCROSS finds water on the Moon

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George Orwell

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Nov 13, 2009, 6:02:56 PM11/13/09
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html?ref=science

Startling. I reckon a lot of nations will set off for the Moon. The
U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the E.U. as well.


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Jonathan

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Nov 14, 2009, 4:33:05 PM11/14/09
to

"George Orwell" <nob...@mixmaster.it> wrote in message
news:5f4ca2394553a65c...@mixmaster.it...

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html?ref=science
>
> Startling. I reckon a lot of nations will set off for the Moon. The
> U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the E.U. as well.


I thought I heard them say they found 25 gallons!

Now, they've finally found a reason for building
a lunar colony, for no other reason but because
they ...can.

BradGuth

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Nov 15, 2009, 6:04:53 PM11/15/09
to
Our NASA LCROSS team is on serious drugs, as in cover thy butt with
all the hype and spin they can muster, or else. They must think BHO
is easily snookered and dumbfounded past the point of no return.

Because guess what folks, there’s water to behold from creating any
crater, mostly because basalt always has at least 50 ppm to begin with
(<750 ppm). Secondly, keeping warm is not a problem, as is with
keeping yourself and whatever technology cool. Stirling energy
conversions from photons to electrons is really going to become nifty
when there’s such a terrific thermal differential to begin with.

At 3e-15 bar, any form of water becomes nearly explosive in how it
would unavoidably react to such extreme vacuum, and there’s all sorts
of secondary IR that even manages to get into the deepest of polar
craters from time to time, sufficient thermal energy to boil off most
any raw/naked volume of ice at that extensive of vacuum.

The 50<750 some odd PPM of water that’s sealed in surface and crust
basalt is one thing that’s likely sure enough there to behold.
However, raw/naked ice under a crystal dry layer of physically dark
dust is not likely to exist/coexist unless that moon either isn’t very
old, and/or there’s water that’s still leaking out from a substantial
reservoir or aquifer inside the moon.

AP / “The lunar crash kicked up at least 25 gallons and that's only
what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact, Colaprete
said.”

And yet there’s still no UV florescence imaging or public view of
those original gamma spectrum readings. So, it’s still pretty much
insider and/or need-to-know business as per usual, whereas raw/naked
ice in the vacuum of space apparently doesn’t have to go by any pesky
laws of physics or need of independent peer review.

The LCROSS 20 meter crater is basically giving up 1e3 m3 worth of
displaced and/or partially vaporized basalt that’s mineral saturated
and supposedly containing <250 PPM water. That’s roughly <3.5e3 tonnes
worth of lunar basalt w/minerals to start off with, and by taking a
little over 11% of that as having been vaporized is perhaps what our
NASA has claimed as having given off measurable water that such frozen
basalt should have. I think it vaporized closer to 25% if not as
great as 33%, which means the h2o content of that basalt wasn’t as
great as 100 PPM.

I would favor that our moon is about as dry as things get, though I’ll
give a very remote possibility of there being an underground artisan
cache of water that has been gradually leaking out and into just that
continually frozen crater, is at least technically possible, although
it's extremely unlikely those unavoidable h2o vapors weren't easily
detected by astronomers and their various sensitive spectrometry as of
at least decades ago.

Here's yet another image of the sorts of crystal dry minerals that our
moon has to offer. These hue saturations are not bogus/false colors,
just the original colors as having been enhanced, similar to the nifty
eyecandy that Hubble gets published and accepted all the time.

Moon in color (natural but obviously cranked up)
http://deepskycolors.com/pics/astro/2008/10/10-12-2008_MoonColor.jpg

In LRO UV fluorescence imaging, this amount of mineral hue secondary
reflectance should be at least ten fold better yet, and a good
thousand fold better resolution when obtained from just 50 km. Any
sign of water vapor as coming off such a naked surface of crater
shadowed ice would have been unavoidably unmistakable.

So, apparently our NASA gets to lie, and we don't, because at roughly
100<250 ppm of what's supposedly h2o within moon basalt, as such it
would have only required vaporizing a few hundred tonnes of basalt in
order to provide 25 gallons (94+ kg) of water. In other words, at 250
ppm it would only require vaporizing 400 tonnes of basalt in order to
release 100 kg of its water, along with releasing at the very least
1000 kg of sodium (though many areas of the lunar surface are rich or
saturated in sodium to the tune of <50,000 ppm), plus there's many kg
worth of other minerals and of course there's 30,000<100,000 ppm O2 =
12<40t that shouldn't have been all that unexpected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt
Basalt generally has a composition of 45–55 wt% SiO2, 2–6 wt% total
alkalis, 0.5–2.0 wt% TiO2, 5–14 wt% FeO and 14 wt% or more Al2O3.
Contents of CaO are commonly near 10 wt%, those of MgO commonly
in the range 5 to 12 wt%.

High alumina basalts have aluminium contents of 17–19 wt% Al2O3;
boninites have magnesium contents of up to 15% MgO. Rare
feldspathoid-
rich mafic rocks, akin to alkali basalts, may have Na2O + K2O
contents
of 12% or more.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1995/95JE00503.shtml
"Calculation of oxygen yield (as released by hydrogen gas reduction
of ilmenite) show that (1) beneficiated basalt will provide the most
oxygen (8–10%)"

~ BG

Jeff Findley

unread,
Nov 16, 2009, 10:41:03 AM11/16/09
to

"Jonathan" <Ho...@Again.net> wrote in message
news:f76dnQ3JSvG-v2LX...@giganews.com...

>
> "George Orwell" <nob...@mixmaster.it> wrote in message
> news:5f4ca2394553a65c...@mixmaster.it...
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html?ref=science
>>
>> Startling. I reckon a lot of nations will set off for the Moon. The
>> U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the E.U. as well.
>
>
> I thought I heard them say they found 25 gallons!
>
> Now, they've finally found a reason for building
> a lunar colony, for no other reason but because
> they ...can.

Maybe, if the required hardware can be developed and can be proven to
operate long enough to produce more than its own weight in water. If it
can't do this, shipping water from earth is going to be cheaper.

There isn't a lot of experience with operating equipment on the moon for
long periods of time. Mining the moon for water is going to require mining
a lot lunar rock. Apollo experience proved that lunar dust is *extremely*
abrasive. Add that to the requirement to operate such machinery in vacuum,
and you've got to design some pretty sophisticated joints that can stay
lubricated and not wear out prematurely.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon


BradGuth

unread,
Nov 16, 2009, 5:32:57 PM11/16/09
to
On Nov 16, 7:41 am, "Jeff Findley" <jeff.find...@ugs.nojunk.com>
wrote:
> "Jonathan" <H...@Again.net> wrote in message

>
> news:f76dnQ3JSvG-v2LX...@giganews.com...
>
>
>
> > "George Orwell" <nob...@mixmaster.it> wrote in message
> >news:5f4ca2394553a65c...@mixmaster.it...
> >>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html?ref=science
>
> >> Startling. I reckon a lot of nations will set off for the Moon. The
> >> U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the E.U. as well.
>
> > I thought I heard them say they found 25 gallons!
>
> > Now, they've finally found a reason for building
> > a lunar colony, for no other reason but because
> > they ...can.
>
> Maybe, if the required hardware can be developed and can be proven to
> operate long enough to produce more than its own weight in water.  If it
> can't do this, shipping water from earth is going to be cheaper.

Yes in deed cheaper, and 100% reliable to boot.

>
> There isn't a lot of experience with operating equipment on the moon for
> long periods of time.  Mining the moon for water is going to require mining
> a lot lunar rock.  Apollo experience proved that lunar dust is *extremely*
> abrasive.  Add that to the requirement to operate such machinery in vacuum,
> and you've got to design some pretty sophisticated joints that can stay
> lubricated and not wear out prematurely.
>
> Jeff
> --
> "Take heart amid the deepening gloom
> that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
> Lampoon

A serious solar farm of mylar mirrors could vaporize lunar basalt
rather nicely.

At one kg per 100 m2 mirror wouldn't be so unlikely. A full tonne of
such mirrors is thus offering 100e3 m2 of reflected and focused solar
energy into a bedrock area of perhaps 4 m2.

At only 90% efficiency is still offering 3.4e6 w/m2, which at 3e-15
bar should vaporize something.

~ BG

BradGuth

unread,
Nov 16, 2009, 5:35:38 PM11/16/09
to

Our NASA LCROSS team is on serious steroids and/or hard drugs, as in
cover thy butt with all the media hype, spin and eyecandy meds they
can muster, or else.

They must think our president/BHO and his staff of well educated
advisers are easily snookered and dumbfounded past the point of no


return. Because guess what folks, there’s water to behold from
creating any crater, mostly because basalt always has at least 50 ppm

to begin with (<750 ppm). Secondly, keeping yourself warm is really


not a problem, as is with keeping yourself and whatever technology

cool. For those polar crater locations, Stirling energy conversions


from photons to electrons is really going to become nifty when there’s

such a terrific thermal (light to dark) differential to begin with.

Once any molecules of water/ice are freed at 3e-15 bar, it becomes
nearly explosive in how it would unavoidably react by expanding into
such an extreme vacuum, and there’s all sorts of secondary IR that
even manages to get into the deepest of those polar craters from time
to time, contributing sufficient thermal energy to boil off or rather
sublime most any raw/naked volume of ice at that extensive vacuum, not
to mention the moon itself is also radiating <22 mw/m2 of it’s
residual and/or thorium core heat (thicker polar crust has got to be
worth at least 10 mw/m2).

The 50<750 some odd PPM of water that’s sealed in surface bedrock and


crust basalt is one thing that’s likely sure enough there to behold.
However, raw/naked ice under a crystal dry layer of physically dark

carbon dust is not as likely to exist/coexist unless that moon either
isn’t very old, and/or there’s water or mineral brine that’s still
leaking out from a substantial reservoir or aquifers inside the moon.

AP / “The lunar crash kicked up at least 25 gallons and that's only
what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact, Colaprete
said.”

And yet there’s still no UV florescence imaging or public view of

those original gamma spectrum readings. So, it remains pretty much


insider and/or need-to-know business as per usual, whereas raw/naked
ice in the vacuum of space apparently doesn’t have to go by any pesky

laws of physics, or any need of independent peer review.

The LCROSS 20 meter crater is basically giving up 1e3 m3 worth of
displaced and/or partially vaporized basalt that’s mineral saturated
and supposedly containing <250 PPM water. That’s roughly <3.5e3 tonnes

worth of lunar basalt w/minerals and those ppm of water to start off
with, and by taking roughly 11% of that as having been vaporized is


perhaps what our NASA has claimed as having given off measurable

water, that such frozen basalt by eights should have. I think the
impact vaporized closer to 25% if not as great as 33%, which means the
h2o content of that basalt wasn’t as great as 100 PPM, but then who’s
really counting since ordinary physics and easily peered replicated
science does not matter.

I would tend to favor that our physically dark lunar surface is about
as crystal dry as things within such a terrific vacuum environment
could ever get, though I’ll give a very remote possibility of there
being an underground artisan cache of water or mineral brine that has
been gradually venting/leaking out and into just those continually
frozen craters is at least technically possible, although it's


extremely unlikely those unavoidable h2o vapors weren't easily
detected by astronomers and their various sensitive spectrometry

methods as of at least decades ago.

Here's yet another image of the sorts of crystal dry minerals that our
moon has to offer. These hue saturations are not bogus/false colors,

just the original colors as having been enhanced on behalf of
observationology, similar to the nifty eyecandy that Hubble gets


published and accepted all the time.

Moon in color (natural but obviously saturation levels cranked up)
http://deepskycolors.com/pics/astro/2008/10/10-12-2008_MoonColor.jpg

In LRO UV fluorescence imaging, this amount of mineral hue as


secondary reflectance should be at least ten fold better yet, and a
good thousand fold better resolution when obtained from just 50 km.

With their LRO extended dynamic range, any sign of water vapor (atoms
of h2o) as coming off such a naked surface of any crater shadowed ice
would have been unavoidably unmistakable. Of course this means there
really is not such raw/naked ice to behold.

So, apparently our NASA gets to lie their public funded butts off, and
the rest of us don't, because at roughly 100<250 ppm of what's
supposedly accessible h2o within moon basalt, as such would have only


required vaporizing a few hundred tonnes of basalt in order to provide

those 25 gallons (94+ kg) of water. In other words, at 250 ppm it
would only require vaporizing 400 tonnes out of the 3.5e3 tonnes of


basalt in order to release 100 kg of its water, along with releasing
at the very least 1000 kg of sodium (though many areas of the lunar
surface are rich or saturated in sodium to the tune of <50,000 ppm),
plus there's many kg worth of other minerals and of course there's
30,000<100,000 ppm O2 = 12<40t that shouldn't have been all that

unexpected or hard to detect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt
Basalt generally has a composition of 45–55 wt% SiO2, 2–6 wt% total
alkalis, 0.5–2.0 wt% TiO2, 5–14 wt% FeO and 14 wt% or more Al2O3.
Contents of CaO are commonly near 10 wt%, those of MgO commonly
in the range 5 to 12 wt%.

High alumina basalts have aluminium contents of 17–19 wt% Al2O3;
boninites have magnesium contents of up to 15% MgO. Rare
feldspathoid-
rich mafic rocks, akin to alkali basalts, may have Na2O + K2O
contents
of 12% or more.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1995/95JE00503.shtml
"Calculation of oxygen yield (as released by hydrogen gas reduction
of ilmenite) show that (1) beneficiated basalt will provide the most
oxygen (8–10%)"

Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

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