MMM Classics Year 10: MMM #s 91-100 - Moon Society

MMM #95 - MAY 1996
Towards a Calendar for the Moon
While there well be reasons why some future Lunan
pioneers might want to use the familiar international calendar
of Earth, reasons for starting fresh with their own date keeping
system may be more powerful. On the Moon, the pace of
Earth’s seasons will be irrelevant. Timing of local sunrise and
sunset will dominate everything. BELOW: sample permanent
calendar customized for local sunrise/sunset pattern.
[Republished in MMM Classics #6]
MMM # 51 DEC ‘91, p 5 “Ice Found on Mercury!”
[Republished in MMM Classics #7]
MMM # 67 JUL ‘93, pp 3-8 “Water & Hydrogen: lunar
industrial grease”; “Hydro Luna”; “Reservoirs”;
“Settlement Water Company”; “Xeroprocessing”
[Republished in MMM Classics #8]
MMM # 78 SEP ‘94, p. 3 “Why hotter Mercury may have
polar ice while the colder Moon may have little.”
Compared to the Moon, Tatooine, of Star Wars I
fame, would be a paradise oasis world. Away from the lunar
poles, you can encircle the Moon, a 6,800 mile trek, without
finding water. The closest thing to even the false comfort of a
mirage will be Earth’s blue oceans hanging tauntingly overhead
in the black Nearside skies, some 238,000 miles away.
At the poles the story may be different. Volatiles such
as water and carbon oxide molecules released on impact from
rare cometary bombardment during local nightspan may have
found their way to the safety of polar permashade coldtraps
before local dawn, there to freeze out on the floors of craters
For more Lunar Frontier calendar options, fi below whose interiors never see the rays of the Sun. The jury is still
out on this, though indirect readings from Clementine over
the lunar south polar region have been very teasing. Most sober
[Continuing a New MMM Series]
estimates have been that the various loss mechanisms likely to
be in effect (erosion from the solar wind, cosmic ray
bombardment, micrometeorite rain) are likely to swamp the
assumed rate of accumulation. That is, any ice deposits would
be ephemeral and erode away or sublimate over time.
There is no one making such an estimate who would
not be delighted to be proven wrong. Hopefully, we will not
The primitive roots of “Lunan” Culture, II have long to wait. Lunar Prospector, next in line in NASA’s
Last month we talked about the brute physical realities Discovery Mission series, is due for launch next summer,
that will begin shaping Lunan culture from the day of our equipped with precisely the right instruments to give us a
return and the establishment of the first overnighting definitive answer to the question. Any ice deposits Lunar
beachhead outpost — fractional gravity, naked exposure to the Prospector might miss are probably too skimpy or thin to be
cosmic elements, and the natural quarantine between outposts. of near term economic value.
We continue the story with those brute physical facts The positive finding of substantial ice fields at the
that will insert themselves, if not on day one, then shortly there poles of Mercury, a world much closer to the Sun, has encour-
after to begin carving nascent Lunan culture even more deeply. aged many. But Mercury’s accumulation mechanisms may be
— The Moon is a very dry world. And its mineral assets lack significantly stronger. We simply have to wait and keep our
several of the industrially strategic elements Earth’s more gen- fingers crossed, determined, should the results from Lunar
erous endowment has lulled us into taking for granted. Prospector prove negative, to make the best of “Plan B”.
“Plan B” is to scavenge the hydrogen nuclei or
protons adsorbed to the fine particles of the upper meter or so
of the regolith, thanks to the incessant buffeting of the lunar
surface by the Solar Wind over the past 4 billion years plus.
Hydrogen is present in this surface layer on the order of 1 ton
of hydrogen per 10,000 of rock powder (regolith) along with
lesser amounts of other volatiles: carbon, nitrogen, helium,
neon and other noble gasses. 10,000 tons of regolith is the equivalent
of the material removed from an excavation 3 meters
deep by 30 meters wide and 40 meters long. Equipping all our
by Peter Kokh
‘lith-moving equipment to heat the material handled in order to
Relevant Readings from Back Issues of MMM
extract these gases for later separation would be a prudent and
[Republished in MMM Classics #3]
provident strategy. We have called this process “primage”.
MMM # 23 MAR ‘89, pp 4-5 “Gas Scavenging”
Just how much water does this hydrogen source
[Republished in MMM Classics #5]
represent? One ton of hydrogen with 8 tons of oxygen (super
MMM # 44 APR ‘91, pp 5-6 “Ice Caves”
abundant) yields 9 tons of water. If we could extract all the
Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 45