Posted on 10/21/2010 12:05:30 PM PDT by Fractal Trader
Scientists have discovered significant amounts of water on the moon—about twice the quantity seen in the Sahara Desert—a finding that may bolster the case for establishing a manned base on the lunar surface.
In an audacious experiment last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 5,600 miles an hour, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris thrown off by the impact. They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.
View Slideshow
Jack Pfaller/NASA NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its Centaur booster rocket crashes into the moon in this artist's illustration.
NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last October. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published Friday in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected.
"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.
The presence of so much water strengthens the argument for establishing a manned lunar base from which to launch other interplanetary adventures. Water is crucial because its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are key ingredients for rocket fuel.
[SNIP]
On the moon, a bottle of water would run about $50,000, according to NASA, because that is what it costs, per pound, to launch anything to the moon.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“”It’s really wet,”
It sure doesn’t look it...
How much would it cost to send Obama ?
Moon, schmoon, we don’t have time for such nonsense. We’re busy helping muslims feel good about themselves!
- signed, NASA.
which means that the evo-fairies think that there MUST have been life on the moon, MUST have been...........!!!
/sarc
Not if it were part of a private enterprise mining operation.
It costs $50,000 for NASA to send it there...what if someone else does it for us? Like SpaceX for example?
I blogged about NASA Administrator Bolden's buffoonery when he said this to the American media. What surprised me is that Bolden is not your basic liberal retard but is finished a distinguished military career as a Major General. He ought to have had far more common sense than to fall into the trap that the pansy, limp-wristed Obama set for him. http://defenseconnections.blogspot.com/2010/07/nasa-cutbacks-and-buffoonery-to-boot.html
Methane? Mercury? Ammonia? Are we sure the rocket didn’t really slam into Los Angeles somewhere? Maybe NASA is really measuring the air quality over L.A.!?!?
Great! Let’s fake another moon landing in Burbank.
Great! Let’s fake another moon landing in Burbank. (Actually, outsourcing it to a Bollywood studio would save the U.S. taxpayers some serious cash.)
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Idiots couldn’t just simply say about 200 pounds of water would yield about a gallon of water?
The moon apparently caught its fair share of flood waters.
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