Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Saddle Up Everybody, There's Water On The Moon!
Today's exciting space news is that scientists from Brown University have discovered evidence of water on the moon. Here's the headline at Moondaily.com: "Brown-Led Team Finds Evidence Of Water In Lunar Interior." And here's another headline at the Scientific American website: "New scans show evidence of water on the moon."
Wow! This is exciting news! It's time to start the lunar colonization programs! Let's see what the story at Moondaily.com says:
No doubt this will thrill planetary scientists throughout the solar system. But really thrilling news would be that water remains inside the Moon today. If that were the case, perhaps residents of future lunar bases or colonies could drill deep into the Moon and mine the water.
There is speculation about the current presence or absence of water on the Moon in the story.
-tdr
Wow! This is exciting news! It's time to start the lunar colonization programs! Let's see what the story at Moondaily.com says:
"A Brown University-led research team has for the first time discovered evidence of water that came from deep within the Moon, a revelation that strongly suggests water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence -- and perhaps ever since it was created by a cataclysmic collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object about 4.5 billion years ago.Oops. Never mind. Three billion years ago.
"In a paper published in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature, the team, led by Alberto Saal, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown, believes that the water was contained in magmas erupted from fire fountains onto the surface of the Moon more than 3 billion years ago." (Here.)
No doubt this will thrill planetary scientists throughout the solar system. But really thrilling news would be that water remains inside the Moon today. If that were the case, perhaps residents of future lunar bases or colonies could drill deep into the Moon and mine the water.
There is speculation about the current presence or absence of water on the Moon in the story.
"About 95 percent of the water vapor from the magma was lost to space during this eruptive "degassing," the team estimates. But traces of water vapor may have drifted toward the cold poles of the Moon, where they may remain as ice in permanently shadowed craters."We've heard this speculation before and maybe the fact that the Moon held water 3 billion years ago increases the likelihood that there is water ice there now. Let's hope so. Water's pretty darn heavy and a ready supply on the Moon could be very useful.
-tdr
Labels: Luna, Science, Scienceism
Thursday, May 03, 2007
The Birds Of Paradise: Part 3.
While 41 percent of Americans would book a flight to the Moon if they could (here), this bird seems more interested in something closer by.-tdr
Technorati:
Birds, 
space.Labels: Animals, Birds, Luna, Nature, Photography
Monday, March 19, 2007
Good News From China: Lunar Embassy Loses Again.
The Lunar Embassy is an embarrassing joke of a company that purports to sell deeds for land on the Moon and other planets. It operates freely in the United States because a country that popularized the pet rock is not going to worry too much about a company selling phony deeds to property on the Moon.
China has turned out to be a bit less laissez faire. When the Lunar Embassy tried to sell its phony deeds to Chinese consumers, the government shut down the company's operations almost immediately. The Lunar Embassy sued, and then after losing, the company appealed to an intermediate appellate court. "On Friday, the Beijing intermediate court rejected its appeal, saying no individual or country could claim ownership of the moon." (Here.)
The Chinese court's decision on the merits is not the most interesting part of this story. Under current international law, people can't claim ownership of the moon. One day that may change but the Lunar Embassy's novelty act won't be leading the way. If anything, by perpetuating the idea that owning property in space is a novelty gift or a joke, the Lunar Embassy is an impediment to changing the law.
The most interesting aspects of the Lunar Embassy in China saga are how quickly the Chinese government moved to protect its consumers and how the legal proceedings in China mirror our own. There is rule of law in China.
-tdr
Technorati:
China, 
Space, 
Moon.
China has turned out to be a bit less laissez faire. When the Lunar Embassy tried to sell its phony deeds to Chinese consumers, the government shut down the company's operations almost immediately. The Lunar Embassy sued, and then after losing, the company appealed to an intermediate appellate court. "On Friday, the Beijing intermediate court rejected its appeal, saying no individual or country could claim ownership of the moon." (Here.)
The Chinese court's decision on the merits is not the most interesting part of this story. Under current international law, people can't claim ownership of the moon. One day that may change but the Lunar Embassy's novelty act won't be leading the way. If anything, by perpetuating the idea that owning property in space is a novelty gift or a joke, the Lunar Embassy is an impediment to changing the law.
The most interesting aspects of the Lunar Embassy in China saga are how quickly the Chinese government moved to protect its consumers and how the legal proceedings in China mirror our own. There is rule of law in China.
-tdr
Technorati:
China, Space, Moon.Labels: China, Law, Lawyers In Space, Luna
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Energy Sultans Of The Moon?
Dennis Overbye, science writer of The New York Times, recently questioned why America is going back to the Moon when Mars is so much more interesting. (Here.) Robert Zubrin, interviewed in US News and World Report, expressed similar thoughts. (Here.) No surprise that.
Common to each opinion is the belief that the Moon is a dead world with nothing to offer whereas Mars has all the resources necessary for human life and is just a much more interesting place to study. Putting aside the false dichotomy of "either-or" thinking in Moon versus Mars debates, there is something to be said for exploring desert wastelands, as oil company executives will tell you.
An article in the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday (here) described the problems with batteries for cellphones, laptops, and other portable electronics. Fuel cells are being touted as the future power source for these devices. But as the article said about fuel cells, "They are costly to make; their electrodes are usually fashioned from platinum, an expensive metal."
Which brings us back to the future direction of human space exploration.
What if Dennis Wingo is right and there are remains of asteriod impacts under the Lunar surface chock full of platinum group metals? In a future fuel cell economy, the people who control all that platinum could be very rich indeed, even if they do live on an arid, lifeless, little world, orbiting the Earth. And then there's all that sunlight falling on the Moon's surface (here) plus the potential use of Helium-3 for future fusion reactors (here).
Arab princes today have lucked into prosperity and political power by living in a desert wasteland on top of all that oil. Will future Lunar energy princes possess similar political power and bring the Moon to life using the money they make providing platinum, fuel, and power, to an energy-hungry Earth?
-tdr
Technorati: Moon, mars, nasa, energy.
Common to each opinion is the belief that the Moon is a dead world with nothing to offer whereas Mars has all the resources necessary for human life and is just a much more interesting place to study. Putting aside the false dichotomy of "either-or" thinking in Moon versus Mars debates, there is something to be said for exploring desert wastelands, as oil company executives will tell you.
An article in the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday (here) described the problems with batteries for cellphones, laptops, and other portable electronics. Fuel cells are being touted as the future power source for these devices. But as the article said about fuel cells, "They are costly to make; their electrodes are usually fashioned from platinum, an expensive metal."
Which brings us back to the future direction of human space exploration.
What if Dennis Wingo is right and there are remains of asteriod impacts under the Lunar surface chock full of platinum group metals? In a future fuel cell economy, the people who control all that platinum could be very rich indeed, even if they do live on an arid, lifeless, little world, orbiting the Earth. And then there's all that sunlight falling on the Moon's surface (here) plus the potential use of Helium-3 for future fusion reactors (here).
Arab princes today have lucked into prosperity and political power by living in a desert wasteland on top of all that oil. Will future Lunar energy princes possess similar political power and bring the Moon to life using the money they make providing platinum, fuel, and power, to an energy-hungry Earth?
-tdr
Technorati: Moon, mars, nasa, energy.
