Moon's glass beads contain enough water to support a mission

Scientists in China have found glass beads contained in lunar soil might hold enough water to provide a resource for future lunar missions. The results, published in Nature Geoscience this week, stem from data collected by China's Chang'e-5 mission, and suggest the Moon's surface holds much more trapped water than previously …

[lglethal]

Interesting. I wonder how you would go about converting the beads into water? And what is the left overs (tails) of the process?

I'm getting a mental image of a Harverster just running along the surface of the moon, sucking up the beads, and spitting out the waterless beads out the back like some sort of combine harvester. And then coming back a month later after the beads are replenished by the solar wind. Farming Water on the moon, why not?

[A. Coatsworth]

But what if the giant sandworms start to attack the water harvesters?

[Phil O'Sophical]

BBQ?

[MrDamage]

Use them to catch the bigger fish Quigon mentioned.

[lglethal]

That's why we have Ornithopters watching out, ready to lift the Harvester from the surface before the Worms attack.

Havent you watched that documentary, what was it called again, Dune?

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Do you want sandworms? Because that's how you get sandworms.

[werdsmith]

Extracting water and oxygen from Lunar regolith is not really a new idea. Loads of work already done. ProSPA experiment carrying lab-proven experiments to trial on the Lunar surface was supposed to go in 2025 on Luna 27, but I guess a new plan is needed now certain countries are on the naughty steppe.

[cookieMonster]

“ on the naughty steppe”

Bravo, well played !!

[b0llchit]

A lot and just a little

...lunar soils may reach up to 2.7 × 1,014 kg

Wow! That would be a whole 2,727.8 kg of water! That is what a household uses in two weeks or so (depending where you live and so on).

I guess that it should read 2.7×10¹⁴ kg, which would make a bit more sense. However, it still would be just about 7 liters per square meter, which is not a lot if you actually want to extract enough for settlement. If we assume an effective requirement of 100 m³ per person, then you would need a square kilometre harvested per person. Not easy.

[Ball boy]

Re: A lot and just a little

They need 100m³? Up to a point: you could consider recycling what you collect. I would imagine the idea would be to take a little up with them then harvest additional, allowing for a more efficient recycling process or additional usage for people and processes.

Also, are we talking Earth Kg or moon Kg here? There's a subtle difference. Perhaps we would be better off measuring the potential volume in...err...volumetric units!

[nintendoeats]

Re: A lot and just a little

Why would there be a difference between a Kg on the moon and a Kg on Earth?

[b0llchit]

Re: A lot and just a little

The Kg (Kelvin gram) is substantially hotter in the sun than in the shade. The moon is hotter in the sun than the earth. Therefore, water will breach the Kg scale in the moon in its unclouded view during daytime.

The kg (kilogram), however, is the same on both moon and earth.

[NoneSuch]

Re: A lot and just a little

How to calculate weights on the Moon:

Weight on Earth

------------------------- X 1.622 m/s^2 = Weight on the Moon

9.81m/s^2

So 100Kg on Earth is 16.53Kg on the Moon.

Mass is how much matter is in a body. Weight is the amount of force acting on a mass due to acceleration due to gravity.

[b0llchit]

Re: A lot and just a little

Please tell me about this new type of physics that can change the mass of objects without adding or removing stuff from it. I'd like to do that too and sell it to NASA, ESA and all other space agencies and then exploit in any other way commercially too. It would make me a gazillionaire for sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A lot and just a little

Take a bowl of antipasta, mix it with a bowl of regular pasta, and all its mass is converted into energy.

Also known as Fusion Cuisine.

[muddysteve]

Re: A lot and just a little

Fission chips is much more violent and exciting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A lot and just a little

"Ball boy" - you still have 4 mins to edit this before the SI Police arrive!

Hint: Kg are the same everywhere...

[Ball boy]

Re: A lot and just a little

Better not edit it - that'd leave a trail of confusing responses!

Perhaps I didn't word it well: I meant to point out that 1Kg of water on Earth won't be the same volume as 1Kg of water on the moon. We measure water usage, generally, by volume - so using the volumetric measurement for the potential available would have been a better choice, surely.

[b0llchit]

Re: A lot and just a little

Just to be clear... the "Kg" does not exist. It is the "kg" (note the small letter 'k').

The kilogram is a unit of mass, which is the same amount everywhere in the universe. Even when you use water's volume, it will be exactly the same volume on the moon as on the earth (at equal temperature and pressure).

You are referring to/thinking of the force of attraction between masses. Specifically, the attraction between the mass of 1 kg of water and the the earth at about 5.972168×10²⁴ kg. The net force of attraction, which we generally denote as the gravitational pull of earth, would be roughly 9.81 N of force pulling the 1 kg of water towards the earth. The moon's gravitational pull is about 6 times less than that of the earth. Therefore, the pull of 1 kg of water towards the moon's surface would be about 1.62 N. The mass has not changed. Its perceived weight changed.

[RichardBarrell]

Re: A lot and just a little

Liquid water has about the same volume and density pretty much regardless of gravity or pressure (*). It's almost completely incompressible.

(* The temperature range at which it will stay liquid does change with pressure, of course.)

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: A lot and just a little

If it can be collected after use, then water can be cleansed/recycled. Similar situation on ISS, where waste water that's already had a trip through the digestive tract is captured, cleaned up and recycled to be drunk again.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: A lot and just a little

So like Southern Water, except for the cleaning part ?

[MrDamage]

Re: A lot and just a little

Chances are good you have ingested at least one molecule of water that has passed through Aristotles kidneys.

[b0llchit]

Re: A lot and just a little

Even a bigger chance that one or more molecules of water were once or twice part of dinosaur pee.

[Stork]

Re: A lot and just a little

Did dinosaurs pee? I would have expected them to produce a combined output like the birds.

[RichardBarrell]

Re: A lot and just a little

I guess it would be surprising if theropod pooping didn't work similarly to bird pooping, but there were a huge number of other extinct dinosaurs that aren't ancestors to birds, so who knows if any of them evolved peeing? That anatomy is mostly squishy and doesn't fossilise very well.

[DS999]

Re: A lot and just a little

That's plenty for a settlement. Any lunar colony will be recycling water, so you just need enough for the full cycle from sitting in storage tanks to what is in pipes and in use at any given time, to what is "stored" inside people, plants, soils etc. to what is sent through sewer lines to be treated and put back into the storage tanks at the start of the cycle.

Being able to get water on the moon means they don't have to launch a bunch of it out of Earth's gravity well. Some solar powered drone rover can go collect the 7 liters per square meter until its tank is full, return home to drop it off, then go back out again (or sit idle during the two weeks of lunar night when it can't collect solar energy to operate) until all storage is full. If more people arrive they build more storage tanks and send the rover back out again to collect more water to fill them.

It doesn't matter if the rover is slugging along at 1 kph and takes two days to fill a 10 gallon tank (depends on the amount of power required to process a liter versus what the rover's solar panels can collect while the rover is not moving) the efficiency is irrelevant since it will still be able to collect enough water to meet the needs of an additional person a lot faster than additional people can join the colony. And anyway the storage will be overprovisioned because 1) not having to launch the water means they can have extra so people can have luxuries like hot showers and 2) they will need to account for the possibility of breakdowns or planned outages in the water recycling system.

[Michael Strorm]

That's not what I meant when I asked for...

...a glass of water.

[Pete 2]

Moooon river

> Thought Icelandic glacier water was rare? How about chugging down some Moon water

And it will still be cheaper than branded printer ink

[Dizzy Dwarf]

Re: Moooon river

> And it will still be cheaper than branded printer ink

It's cheaper to buy a new moon each time. Everyone knows this.

[Snapper]

Re: Moooon river

Or a space station!

[blueyedmoose]

Cave Johnson would like to offer some advice

Consuming Moon stuff?

Hmmmm….maybe stick to lemons.

[jollyboyspecial]

They found the glass beads contain between zero and 1,909 μg of water equivalent per gram

Or to look at it another way between zero and 1.9 litres of water per ton of beads?

But that's not to say that you dig up a random ton of lunar soil and get say an average of a litre of water from that soil. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it doesn't say clearly what percentage of lunar soil is actually made up of these glass beads. If say 1% of lunar soil is made up of these glass beads then you would need 100 tons of soil to get between zero and 1.9 litres of water.

It's the zero that's concerning.