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TerenceMulvaney t1_iv10t2j wrote

I'll save you a click. They aren't turning the regolith itself into fuel; they are using it as a catalyst to help crack CO2. Clever chemistry but not a miracle.

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GrandNibbles t1_iv13ua5 wrote

Still cool that the moon has been useful for the first time ever. Other than all the gravity shit it does

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Mad_Dizzle t1_iv1deno wrote

There's been a lot of research done with regolith applications because there's a big focus on "in-situ resource utilization" basically using what you can find in extraterrestrial habitats. The main applications from what I remember is regioith composites being used for construction, as well as processing the stuff to produce oxygen for habitats as well.

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danielravennest t1_iv5e1m1 wrote

I used to work at Boeing's space systems division.

Studies I worked on showed 98-99% of space projects could be built from materials already in space - from the Moon and nearby asteroids. The other 1-2% are either too rare to mine in space or too hard to make up there. It is just easier and cheaper to launch from Earth. This would vastly reduce how much you need to send from Earth, and lower the costs dramatically.

Simple products like water and bulk regolith would be first. Water as water and oxygen are needed for life support, and makes up a high percentage of rocket fuel. Bulk rock can be used for radiation, thermal, and impact shielding. Impacts come from micrometeorites and stuff kicked up by rocket exhaust.

Over time you can add other products, including making parts for your space factories. Then the factories themselves can grow without shipping them all from Earth.

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acksed t1_ivfou76 wrote

Further, use the sun and carbothermal chemistry for refining aluminium, both for construction and burning it in oxygen as a cheap rocket.

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NotAPreppie t1_iv16ymm wrote

I think the implied hope is that they'll find enough CO2 on the moon to use as feed stock to produce O2 and CH4. Just electrolyze some lunar water for the H2 and you'll have entirely in-situ rocket fuel synthesis with a side-helping of excess O2 for the ugly bags of mostly water to breathe.

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WaldenFont t1_iv19ek8 wrote

That line never sat right with me. An entity so alien that it refers to us by our molecular makeup has opinions on beauty?

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daneelthesane t1_iv1kcsg wrote

A crystaline mineral species would see us as disordered, which could be considered ugly. I have no issue with any intelligence having aesthetic values.

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NotAPreppie t1_iv19qim wrote

I'm happy to retcon that as a limitation of the Universal Translator system used on the Enterprise-D.

Or maybe it was just they think that baryonic matter in general is ugly.

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Scholesie09 t1_iv5ir11 wrote

If you saw a rock monster with an unpleasant face you could call it an ugly rock monster and it wouldn't be illogical.

It refers to humans as water based presumably because it's different to what they are, not because they are so advanced beyond the need for visuals.

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SpaceInMyBrain t1_iv3nxrv wrote

But the article references a study showing there is CO2 in lunar regolith, even though that wasn't the source of the CO2 used in this experiment. So, not too inaccurate for a news article. It's extremely unclear how abundant the CO2 is in regolith, or if that finding has ever been duplicated. I don't recall seeing NASA finding that in the many kilograms of regolith brought back by Apollo. Perhaps it's fairly deep and needed an impact blast to bring it to the surface. Hopefully not too deep to be accessible by some kind of strip mining.

If Starship is successful it will bring back lunar soils by the ton, so real progress can be made on this.

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