Posts mit dem Label lunar werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label lunar werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen

Dienstag, Dezember 29, 2015

vacation on the Moon: |Mond2020


Montag, März 04, 2013

the Gruithuisen Domes |LROC

#LROC #Moon #NASA


An oblique view of the northern portion of the Gruithuisen Gamma volcanic dome. LROC NAC M1106087898LR, north is to the right 

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Continue reading "New Views of the Gruithuisen Domes"

Mittwoch, Februar 27, 2013

Schiaparelli E |Moon

#LROC #Moon #NASA





A recent impact in Oceanus Procellarum produced a spectacular, circular melt pond (27.126°N; 62.068°W).
NAC frame M176684041L, illumination is from the east, north is up, image is ~1.8 km wide 



[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Quelle:
LROC |Continue reading "Schiaparelli E"

Mittwoch, Februar 06, 2013

Meanders in Posidonius |LROC





Small portion of a S-shaped meandering rille on the floor of Posidonius Crater (31.93°N, 29.85°E, 100 km diameter) - a floor-fractured crater. The curves in the rille are very tight. 

LROC NAC M1098658474R
[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].



Continue reading "Meanders in Posidonius"

Dienstag, Juli 10, 2012

wat is a Space Cows?

Slaying Sacred Space Cows:
by dennis ray wingo

I spend a fair amount of time discussing space development with people, in presentations,  blogs, and in personal conversations.  Most people who know me know that one of my prime foci is off planet industrialization, principally beginning with orbital space and then the Moon.  One of the most baffling and tragic responses that I get in this realm is the complete dismissal of the entire concept.  The back and forth in someone else’s blog thread is never satisfying because you cannot develop more than a short stream of thought and when the other person/persons are simply dismissive, no real progress is made.  Thus in this missive I am going to go into some of my basic thoughts regarding lunar industrialization and see if we can get beyond these, in my opinion, misunderstandings regarding how hard it is.
Background
As is my way in developing these ideas lets begin with how things are done here on the Earth and then see how they might develop on the Moon.  I always look at history as a guide.  I grew up near Birmingham Alabama, then called “The Pittsburg of the South”.  Some of my earliest memories are of riding in a car by the big steel mills in Ensley, Fairfield, and downtown (Sloss furnaces) Alabama.
These places always fascinated me as you could see the hot steel ingots being stamped, rolled, and worked from the car.  At Sloss you could see the hot steel being poured from the ladles into molds.  Many of my friends that I grew up with now work at steel mills like Fairfield, ACIPCO, O’Neal Steel, and others.  While I have not worked at any of these myself, I know a pretty good bit about them and have used their products in hardware that we have built, such as our 22,500 lb steel solar/wind trailers.  Figure 1 is a picture of the frame of our solar/wind trailer under construction:


Figure 1: The GSW-7000 Solar/Wind Trailer Frame Under Construction, Centreville Maryland, 2011
The trailer under construction in the picture above is made from standard A-36 steel.  The frame parts are made from tube, “c” channel, flat plate, and square tubes.  All of these parts are welded together using very simple frames, c clamps, and other devices to hold the pieces together while they are welded.  This principle is pretty much how most heavy equipment is built, with the larger production lines being more automated.  The pieces here came from a steel distributor and were cut into the right lengths/sizes using laser and or plasma cutters.
This background is provided in order to convey to the reader a small sense of my history with steel as well as a bit of information on how vehicles are put together in a low production environment.  There is nothing magic about how this is done, just simple steel products welded together by competent people who do this as a living.  I love metals and have spent a lot of my life around heavy equipment and its uses, especially in the coal mining industry.  Thus I can at least speak with some knowledge of the subject here on the Earth.  The interesting part is how to translate this to how we would do such things on the Moon.
Basic Things Needed for Lunar Industrialization
There are four basic things needed for basic lunar industrialization.
  • Raw Materials
  • Energy
  • Manufacturing Infrastructure
  • Workforce
Availability of Lunar Metals
It is well known from the literature (one example) on the Apollo samples (the greatest part of their legacy) that there is meteoric metals and nano phase iron in proportions up to 1%.  Apollo 16 samples, being from a highlands site has the greatest proportion of meteoric materials, which is to be expected as the highlands have the oldest regolith.  Thus if we were to do the most minimal processing of highlands regolith from a site at the North pole (my favored location for many reasons), then we can expect to obtain quite a bit of metal. Beneficiation, or concentrating, of this metal could be accomplished on the Moon with nothing more than an electromagnet and a dump truck rover.   There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that a robotic rover with a magnet could not pick up a minimum of 100 kilograms per hour of this meteoric metal.  This can be done without any of the exotic chemical or other methods of separating metals from their oxides on the Moon.

Melting and Forming the Metal

There are different ways of melting metal but they all require energy.  For the Moon there are two easy ways to do it.  The first way is to simply use the sun and all you need to do it is a fresnel lens.  Here is a video of a guy who does just that, with a very simple and lightweight system:


Here is a second and much faster method using a parabolic mirror:


If you notice the video closely you will see that they only used a small fraction of the available light on the parabolic mirror to melt the steel.  At the lunar north pole where up to 100% of the time it is sunlit (Northern hemisphere summer) there is plenty of sun to support a continuous operating foundry.
The second means, using indirect sunlight in the form of electrical power, is achieved by using an induction furnace.  The next video shows that:


So what we have here are two different methods of melting metals that would be directly applicable to melting metals on the Moon, even with a lot of rock contamination, which since rock is lighter, floats to the top and is scooped off as slag.
The next video shows metal pouring and forming.  The sand mold method of metal casting is as old as the Hittite empire, long before Rome.  The video here is from a British television program called “Metal Monkeys”.


Remember at the beginning of this article where in figure one the trailer is made from welded pieces of steel?  It is quite simple using the sand mold process to make the basic parts that go into the trailer frame construction.  On the Moon it would be done using sintering of the regolith using microwaves after forming the desired part:  Figure 2 shows my concept of the induction furnace and mold that would be used to build structures on the Moon:

Figure 2: This shows a vacuum induction furnace on the surface of the Moon that would be used to melt and pour metal. Click to Enlarge.
Uses of Metal On the Moon
There is no end of the uses of metal on the Moon.  For simple parts and objects the manufacturing infrastructure is minimal.  All that was used in the construction of our trailers in figure 1 was saw horses to hold the frame, C clamps to hold the pieces together while they are tacked together, and then a bridge crane to lift the assembly and turn it over during the production process.  Obviously you need a welder as well, but on the Moon welding is very easy and you could use a laser welder, which requires a lot of power but little in the way of consumables or good old concentrated sunlight again.
Figure 3 shows an Eagle Engineering design of the LOTRAN rover on the Moon:


Figure 3: LOTRAN Rover, made from aluminum tubes as can be seen in the drawing -- Click to Enlarge
Figure four below shows a lunar habitat with structure holding up the weight of the regolith radiation shielding:

Figure 4: 
From Eagle Engineering, Lunar Habitat and Support Structure for Regolith Shielding -- 
Click to Enlarge
In figure 3 and 4 there are many of the structural pieces that, rather than being brought up from the Earth, could be derived from local ISRU derived metals.  Even the habitats themselves could be made mostly from locally derived metals.  There is a class of steel called “Maraging Steel” that is a high nickel alloy that is very close to what you would have available from meteoric and nano phase iron derived from the regolith.

Slaying Sacred Space Cows With a Gestalt Tempered Blade

One of the sacred cows that drives the demand for a heavy lift vehicle is that ISRU is not ready for prime time, that it is too hard, and that it is something that will happen in 20, 50, or 100 years, pick your time.  A friend of mine who was on the Augustine II commission told me that Norm Augustine simply would not allow any discussion of ISRU as an enabling technology for transforming the Constellation program.  He said that he simply did not believe it was possible.  In another blog forum recently when I brought up the possibility of making rover parts from ISRU derive metal, the person I was interacting with simply refused to carry on the conversation as for me to even mention that was to shift the discussion into the non-credible.

After reading this somewhat long post I hope that the reader will get the idea that obtaining, melting, and forming metal is no big deal.  As someone who grew up with and continues to work with steel I find it astonishing when otherwise intelligent people simply dismiss the possibility with a wave of the hand.  There is absolutely nothing precluding a metals centric ISRU implementation on the Moon that would have an immediate upstream effect on the entire architecture for lunar/Mars exploration.
In all of the discussions about heavy lift, I have never been able to find anyone who can list more than a few payloads that require a heavy lifter.  These are things such as a habitats, pressurized rovers, power systems, and humans.  With a robust implementation of ISRU coupled with the landing of modest equipment with existing vehicles, the need for heavy lift is completely eliminated.

That is a sacred cow worth slaying…
Quelle:
Dennis Wingo is an advocate for the discussion of ways and means for the economic development of the solar system, to the benefit of the Earth. He writes the euphonious blog Dennis Wingo.


Freitag, Juni 08, 2012

Pyroclastic Excavation |Moon

Explore the pyroclastics in the full LROC NAC frame, HERE!

An impact excavated low-reflectance pyroclastic formation, part of a landmark region of the Moon's nearside characterized by dark mantling deposits east of Copernicus. LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M170613335L,, LRO orbit 10277, September 14, 2011. Image field of view 418 meters, angle of incidence 13.03° at 0.49 meters resolution from 44.83 kilometers. View the larger 500 meter field of view in the LROC Featured Image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
Lillian Ostrach
LROC News System
Some regions of the Moon exhibit dark mantling deposits that were formed by fire-fountain style eruptions, similar to Strombolian or some Hawaiian eruptions. Unlike the effusively emplaced mare basalts, pyroclastic eruptions were more energetic because the erupted material contained more volatiles and formed volcanic glass beads. In some cases, pyroclastics are found in small, localized areas, surrounding a vent such as in Alphonsus crater or in Schrödinger basin.



Today's Featured Image is located within a larger regional pyroclastic deposit (5.470°N, 352.014°E; low-reflectance material) south of Sinus Aestuum, and is centered on a small impact crater (~170 m diameter) that excavated fresh pyroclastic material from depth. Since this crater is located within a regional pyroclastic deposit, the freshly-exposed pyroclastics appear lower reflectance than the surrounding surface, possibly as a result of ejecta emplacement from impacts (both near and far afield) that deposited higher-reflectance material and mixed the regolith (impact gardening).



LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) monochrome mosaic centered on the regional pyroclastic deposits south of Sinus Aestuum and east of Copernicus. Asterisk notes
location of the field of view highlighted at high resolution in the LROC Featured Image released June 7, 2012. View the larger context image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State Universi
Understanding the distribution, extent, and thickness of pyroclastic deposits can help constrain the volcanic history of the Moon and answer questions regarding the volatile content of the early Moon. For example, Apollo 17 samples of pyroclastic glass from the Taurus-Littrow Valley confirmed that fire-fountain eruptions occurred on the Moon and that the glass beads were rich in titanium as well as small amounts of zinc and sulfur (volatiles). More recently, scientists have improved upon the measured values for volatiles, such as carbon dioxide, water, fluoride, sulfur, and chlorine, in the pyroclastic glasses returned from the Apollo missions. Isn't it amazing how much we can learn from the Apollo samples?

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Montag, Mai 21, 2012

Tycho |The Other Side


LROC Second Tycho oblique


Summit of Tycho crater central peak seen from west-to-east; the rough material on the floor of the crater in the upper right formed as a massive pool of impact melt solidified. LROC NAC M181286769L,R

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].


Quelle:
#NASA, #JPL, #GSFC

Freitag, Mai 04, 2012

Melt on a Rim




Impact melt started to flow back into the crater cavity before it solidified. Downslope is to the upper right, image width is 500 m, NAC M170205366L

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].


Quelle:

Donnerstag, April 12, 2012

Flow Boundary in Mare Imbrium |LROC





The same field of view at a slightly less inclined morning incidence angle (60.84°), LROC NAC M129452673R, orbit 4211, May 25, 2010, resolution 0.46 meters from 37.66 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

A small scarp is exposed in this high sunrise incidence angle (75.95°) Narrow Angle Camera frame, around 95 kilometers north by northeast of Mons La Hire in Mare Imbrium. The area to the east is raised relative to the area on the west of the scarp by as little as 10 meters. LROC NAC M177792062L, LRO orbit 11337, December 6, 2011; field of view 610 meters, resolution 0.6 meters per pixel from 43.86 kilometers. View the full-size LROC Featured Image HERE [NASA/GSFC/ArizonaState University].
Drew Enns

LROC News System




Today's Featured Image shows the boundary of a flow front in Mare Imbrium. Unlike other flows LROC has observed (granular, impact melt), these are lava flows! The flows are about 35 m thick, making them hard to observe unless the Sun is low and casting long shadows.

Apollo 15 imaged the flows early in the lunar morning, when the Sun was low on the horizon to help the low relief flows cast larger shadows!

Combining the observed geometric properties of these flows with viscosities calculated from the Apollo samples allow scientists to constrain how lava behaves on the Moon.

For context, the full, uncorrected approximate 2200 meter width of the field of view swept up in LROC NAC M129452673R. The area of interest is just left of center
[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) context for the LROC Featured Image, released April 11, 2012 and narrowly focused near 30.593° N, 335.302° E. The WAC observation above was swept up from the orbiter during the same orbital pass as that of the Featured Image NAC frame. The large incidence angle brings out subtle changes in
topography, enhancing the Imbrium lava flows. Image field of view is 35 kilometers. LROC WAC M177791761C (604nm), resolution 60 meters per pixel
[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
The Imbrium flows are fairly thick, and the WAC context shows them extending for at least 120 km, but the flows continue for several hundred kilometers. Should we expect this? Because the Moon's gravity is weaker than the Earth's, we can expect lunar lava flows to be ~1.7 times as thick as a terrestrial flow of similar length! 

Flows of similar length on Earth have only been observed in flood basalts, which are large volumes of lava that were erupted quickly. 

This correlation indicates that the lunar lava flows must have erupted quickly as well. Even so, these flows are some of the few examples still visible on the Moon's surface, and it is unclear how their thickness and extent relate to the majority of volcanism that filled in the large basins resulting in the maria.

Check out more lava related feature posts below and explore the lava flows in the full LROC NAC Featured Image, HERE.


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Freitag, März 09, 2012

Flight video of the Moon |DMK 31AU03.AS



Alexander Zaitsev's Moon Flight!! "just enjoy"...

Mittwoch, Februar 22, 2012

Not so Simple!




A step is present in between a small crater's floor and rim. The crater also displays a high density of boulders on its surface. Image width is 330 m, LROC NAC M122700360L

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Rim on a Rim




A small fresh crater is positioned on the rim of Hermann B crater. Material slides down the crater wall to the crater's center, creating small headscarps along the rim. Image width is 650 m, LROC NAC M117867678RE

 [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Sonntag, Januar 01, 2012

GRAIL-A |inorbit



GRAIL-A arrived successfully in lunar orbit, New Years Eve.
GRAIL-B is thirty hours behind, scheduled to arrive for the
tandem high-precision lunar gravity mapping mission on
the first day of 2012, when the United States will have five
spacecraft in orbit around the Moon for the first time [NASA].
Read the full story HERE.

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Samstag, Dezember 03, 2011

Lichtenberg B Flow |LRCO



Starting at the rim of the crater Lichtenberg B, impact melt flowed and formed a channel, pushing boulders aside in the process. LROC NAC M120257109R, image width is 430 m, incidence angle is 57°

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Quell: NASA/GSFC - LROC

Montag, November 28, 2011

Detour! |Moon



A high albedo granular flow traveled down the wall of Dionysius crater. Why is the flow curving around the crater floor?

LROC NAC M111484008R, image width is 500 m [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

quelle: LROC News System

Mittwoch, November 23, 2011

Shades of Grey |Moon




Two streaks of high and low reflectance blocky ejecta from the same crater. A large boulder rests in the low reflectance deposit. LROC NAC M168862555R, image width is 500 m

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].


Quelle:

Freitag, November 18, 2011

LROC Moon |Nature's Art

Western half of an unusual unnamed crater and its ejecta near the center
of Mare Serenitatis. LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation
M139795376L, LRO orbit 5735, September 22, 2010; field of view
600 meters, incidence angle 28° from an altitude of 43.91 kilometers. 
View the full size LROC Featured Image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona 
State University].


Hiroyuki Sato






In many cases crater ejecta patterns on the Moon 
result in natural art.



Unlike the ejecta on the Earth and Mars, ejecta on th
Moon does not interact with an atmosphere.


Thus the final pattern on the ground is solely a reflection the 
dynamics of impact cratering. Today's Featured Image highlights 
the western half of an unnamed crater located in the middle of
Mare Serenitatis. The crater diameter is about
470 meters.


Context view of today's Featured Image, showing a wider view
of the unnamed crater ejecta. Field of view close to the full 
2.2 kilometer width of LROC NAC frame M139795376L.
See the larger context image accompanying the image 
release HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].



As seen in the second picture (a zoom-out of the same NAC frame), one third of the ejecta blanket (the western portion) is missing, probably due to an oblique impact from west to east. In the top image (near the crater center), almost all of the boulders are ejected in the northwest and southwest direction. The fine particles, however, extend out to the west in patterns not unlike a delicate lace. Studying the full variety of craters with distinctive ejecta patterns is key to understanding the dynamics of oblique impact events.


LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) 100 meter per-pixel monochrome
mosaic of the center of the Mare Serenitatis basin. The yellow arrow
and blue square show the location of the LROC Featured Image and
the full NAC observation's footprint.
See the larger WAC context image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State
University].

Explore this beautiful ejecta blanket in the full NAC frame!



Another very familiar crater famous for its asymmetric
ejecta and as a nearside landmark of the Moon in an evening
sky is bright Proclus - with lighthouse rays guarding "the gates"
separating distinctive Palus Somni from Mare Crisium. View 
of the crater from Earth on March 29, 2010 from a 
spectacular full lunar disk mosaic by Astronominsk compared
with LRO Nominal Mission LROC WAC image
[Aстроноmинск (Луна) - NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

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Donnerstag, November 17, 2011

Nature's Art |Moon





Western half of an unnamed crater and its ejecta located near the center of Mare Serenitatis. 
Image width is 600 m, incidence angle 28°,

LROC NAC M139795376L
[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].


Quelle: Continue reading "Nature's Art"

Samstag, November 12, 2011

Astronomy Videos |Mond

Link: Mond Videos





Ausgesuchte Mond Videos auf YouTube!
  • 36 Videos
  • 1:06:48 Dauer

    Viel Spaß! & Danke an Producer!

Dienstag, November 08, 2011

News |Lunar Networks

"Slide show" comparing an illumination model of the lunar north pole region, made using a three-dimensional printer and LRO laser altimetry by Howard Fink of New York University, with standard representations of LOLA data and one LROC WAC mosaic
[Howard Fink/NYU/NASA/GSFC/ASU].

Paul D. Spudis


Smithsonian Air & Space




Of all the wonders depicted in science fiction books and movies, one of the most intriguing is the machine that makes anything
that you need or desire.  Merely enter a detailed plan, or push the
button for items programmed into the machine – dials twirl, the machine
hums and out pops what you requested.  Technology gives us Aladdin’s
Lamp.  A handy device that will find many uses.




We’re not quite there yet but crude versions of such imagined
machines already exist.  These machines are called “rapid prototype”
generators or three-dimensional printers.
They take digitized information about the dimensions and shape of an
object and use that data to control a fabricator that re-creates the
object using a variety of different materials.  Typically, these
machines use easy to mold plastics and epoxy resins but in principle,
any material could be used to create virtually any object.



3-D printers contribute to the advancement our understanding of lunar morphology, as LRO fills long-neglected gaps in lunar morphology. Malapert Massif (85.9°S, 0.42°E). From an 80 meter resolution image of the South Pole region of the Moon built from a 20 meter original supplied by the LRO/LOLA science team [Howard Fink/NYU].

For comparison nearly the same area modeled by laser altimetry (LOLA) above, Malapert from the LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) RDR 100 meter Global Mosaic [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].




What’s the relevance of this technology to spaceflight and to the Moon?  One of the key objects of lunar return is to learn how to use the material and energy resources of the Moon
to create new capabilities.  To date, we have focused our attention on
simple raw materials like bulk regolith (soil) and the water found at
the poles.  It makes sense to initially limit our resource utilization
ambitions to simple materials that are both useful and relatively
massive, which currently have those killer transportation costs when
delivered from Earth.  Bulk regolith has many different uses, such as shielding (e.g., rocket exhaust blast berms) as well as raw material for simple surface structures.





However, once we are on the Moon and have met the basic necessities
of life, we can begin to experiment with making and using more complex
products.  In effect, the inhabitants of the Moon will begin to create
more complicated parts and items from what they find around them, just
outside their door.  The techniques of three-dimensional printing will
allow us to discover what makes life off-planet easier and more
productive.  We will experiment by using the local materials to maintain
and repair equipment, build new structures, and finally begin
off-planet manufacturing.



To illustrate the obliquity of the view angle and the problem posed in gathering information about the tantalizing but permanently shadowed regions of the Moon, Shackleton crater, with the Moon's South Pole on its rim (upper left) together with Malapert Massif on the horizon, seen with Earth as a back drop. HDTV still from Japan's Kaguya orbiter released November 2007 [JAXA/NHK/SELENE].


During the early stages of lunar habitation, material and equipment
will be brought from Earth.  With continued use, particularly in the
harsh lunar surface environment, breakdowns will occur.  Although
initially we will use spare parts from Earth, for simple uncomplicated
structures that are needed quickly, a three-dimensional printer can make
substitute parts using local resource materials found near the
outpost.  Most existing 3-D printers on Earth use plastics and related materials
(which are complex carbon-based compounds, mostly derived from
petroleum) but some processing has used concrete, which can be made on
the Moon from sieved regolith and water.  In addition, we also know that
regolith can be fused into ceramic using microwaves,
so rapid prototyping activities on the Moon may eventually find that
partially melting particulate matter into glass is another way to create
useful objects.





The lunar surface is a good source of material and energy useful in creating a wide variety of objects.  I mentioned simple ceramics and aggregates, but additionally, a variety of metals (including iron, aluminum and titanium) are available on the Moon.  Silicon for making electronic components and solar cells is abundant on the Moon.  Designs for robotic rovers
that literally fuse the in-place upper surface of the lunar regolith
into electricity-producing solar cells have already been imagined and
prototyped.  We can outsource solar energy jobs to the Moon!





These technical developments lead to mind-boggling possibilities.  Back in the 1940s, the mathematician John von Neumann imagined what he called “self-replicating automata,”
small machines that could process information to reproduce themselves
at exponential rates.  Interestingly, von Neumann himself thought of the
idea of using such automata in space, where both energy and materials
are (quite literally) unlimited.  A machine that contains the
information and the ability to reproduce itself may ultimately be the
tool humanity needs to “conquer” space.  Hordes of reproducing robots
could prepare a planet for colonization as well as providing safe havens
and habitats.


We can experiment on the Moon with self-replicating machines because
it contains the necessary material and energy resources.  Of course, in
the near-term, we will simply use this new technology to create spare
parts and perhaps simple objects that we find serve our immediate and
utilitarian needs.  But things like this have a habit of evolving far
beyond their initial envisioned use, and often in directions that we do
not expect; we are not smart enough to imagine what we don’t know.  The
technology of three-dimensional printing will make the habitation of the
Moon – our nearest neighbor in space – easier and more productive. 
Even now, creative former NASA workers have found a way to make this technology pay off.  In the future, perhaps their talents could be applied to making the Moon a second home to humanity.





Originally published October 24, 2011 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon,
Dr. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The opinions expressed are those of the author and
are better informed than average.
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