Lunar ISRU

Hi Ekkehad,
Out gassing would probably indicate that the crater in question has an ore body rich in whatever was out-gassed buried below it. It would certainly be a good indication to "dig here".

Obital mechanics ought to give a good indication, from the size of the crater, what mass of original metorite material is buried below it, and how far down you'd need to dig to get to it.

The problem is that it's not just hydrogen or water that you need. Sooner or later you're going to need access to practically all of the first 90 or so elements

In the short term, water (and/or hydrogen) is THE most valuable thing that could be found on the Moon.

Long term it is more than elements that are needed. All the elements are available on Earth but we need certain compounds or certain kinds of minerals to actually do useful things. For example we need oil and not just carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to make plastics. And we need bauxite and not just any rock with aluminum in it to make aluminum metal.

Oil, unfortunately is not likely to be found off earth as it is thought to be derived from decaying organic matter.

To grow things you need lots of carbon, nitrogen and water. and a whole heap of minor elements. all scarce as hens teeth on the moon. unless exploration turns up deposits of old meteor cores rich in these elements.

Without the ability to grow things on the moon you're going too struggle to establish any sort of long term presence as all your food and water will need to be carted up from earth at ridiculous prices. Obviously we will have to do this initially anyway. But for the longer term it is essential, I think, to find out what buried resources there may be on the moon just to get some food production happening there to support a larger colony.

The moon doesn't have vulcanism, plate tectonics, erosion, or life forces acting on the lunar regolith to separate and concentrate ore bodies. The only force shaping the lunar surface is meteor impacts. Thus the remains of meteors are likely to be the main source of useful materials (other than those in the regoliths) for some time.

Fortunately you can see exactly where each meteor landed

Growing plants requires nitrates, not nitrogen, unless you are growing only nitrogen fixers, like legumes. For the majority of plants the nitrogen in the air is totally useless. And carbon alone is also useless, You need organic compounds. So, as I say, just finding the right elements is not enough.

I used to think the answer to everything was to shovel moondust into a big calutron, then stick all the elements back together to make the stuff you want. I've grown out of it now.

I think the bottom line is that we need to know more about the moon to assess its resources. We need to start looking closely at structures using seismic tomography and, ultimately, deep drilling.

Venting of water at impact craters is suggestive of the hydrothermal deposits around the top of a plutonic intrusion. If impacts leave a molten mass underground which cools slowly, processes like fractional crystallization just might create concentrated deposits of sorted minerals, similar to a magmatic segregation deposit. Personally I doubt that there will ever be enough activity on the moon to warrant deep mining of anything.

Volatiles will always be a problem on the moon and hopefully we will find some on a convenient NEO. Ammonia and methane would be ideal - that gives you carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. We already have oxygen in the rocks. Then we need a strategy to feed those materials into agriculture, and I think that will involve bugs. Other trace elements needed by plants are leached out of rocks when they come into contact with water, so I am not too worried about those. In short, if you want agriculture in space, I think an old-fashioned approach will actually be easier than hydroponic control-freakery. We will need to take a bucket of nature, like it or not.

I think O'Neill had the right idea about using the moon - pull it apart and use it to build orbital colonies.

Hi all,

I think the most important use of the possible hydrogen signature, especially the one discovered at Shackleton Crater is that it could be mined in either its H3 or ice/water form to create propellant for future space mission. I seen this video on http://www.ted.com that got me interested in this idea http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/141.

After watching that video I put a site together as a way to try to understand the issue http://www.lunarwire.com/. It is much more complex of an idea than I expected lol, but I'm pushing forward to understand it. Any and all comments are welcome.

Shackleton

Great article by Dennis Wingo on SpaceRef.com about ISRU on the Moon...
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1290

Let me suggest the “Hydrogen Farmâ€