Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

tghuverd t1_jay8y9k wrote

There does seem to be ice water on the Moon...and knowing us, we'll suck it all up and then bemoan the fact that it's all gone a century from now. Which will cause an existential crisis for Moon bases that were relying on it.

Is there any chatter about protecting this probably non-renewable resource from rapacious consumption?

0

FlingingGoronGonads t1_jayaw3v wrote

Somewhere, Robert Heinlein is smiling (you might really like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

Seriously though, who is going to be extracting the water just to remove it from Luna? I'm pretty sure that water/resource recycling is going to be a huge focus once the basic surface infrastructure is in place, more so than aboard the ISS. Even if one or two human crew operations are being stupid with it, there is a fair bit of the stuff (considering), it's not going to disappear that quickly.

1

tghuverd t1_jaykcac wrote

I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I expect a focus on recycling for any Moon base, but people are talking about making rocket fuel out of it, and that's definitely a one-shot use. Honestly, you can't make this stuff up 🤦‍♂️

2

FlingingGoronGonads t1_jb06a5t wrote

>people are talking about making rocket fuel out of it

Fair point. It's actually the carbon (as CO2) that worries me in that case - hydrogen should be replenished (albeit very, very slowly), but the carbon is probably from comets, making it acutely precious on Luna. Some have been concerned with preserving the purity of the ice, but you may be right - we can't entirely bootstrap the exploration of the solar system with such a limited resource.

1

tghuverd t1_jbgeryn wrote

>we can't entirely bootstrap the exploration of the solar system with such a limited resource

I doubt we can even bootstrap a Moon base, to be honest. Unless a method to extract necessary resources from solar power and cracking rocks is baked into the initial build, we'll burn through the ice and then flap our arms about in alarm when it starts to run out...then spend a fortune in a rush job to implement the resource extraction at the last minute 🤦‍♂️

2