Michael Wallis wrote: > > Henry Spencer wrote: > > > NASA looked at this for SEI, and concluded that supplying one lunar > > mission a year with LOX/LH2 required a 400kW electrolysis plant running > > continuously in LEO. > > They decided what? Are THEY daft? How big a settlement are they > looking to supply? How much recycling are they expecting to do > on-site? This is ridiculous. And even if you needed that much, ship it > to Luna as water and split it on the surface. You'd need a decent > power plant on the moon anyway, and you've lots of space to set out > solar arrays if you don't like SNAPs or GE's 300kW refrigerator sized > power plants. > > > The practical way to ship hydrogen at room temperature is probably as a > > metal hydride or related compound. There are hydrides which have slightly > > more hydrogen per kilogram than water does, *and*, more important, will > > decompose on mild heating. > > Now if they just had lots of oxygen too they'd be useful. 8-)
Lunar soil has silicon, oxygen, and a couple of useful metals. No carbon, nitrogen, or hydrogen, though. You could _build_ stuff with local resources; you would need imports to actually establish a biosphere. -dave w _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
