Asri-unix.1003 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!npois!houxi!ihnss!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC Sat Mar 13 06:54:54 1982 Source of hydrogen Greg Yob (inventor of WUMPUS) says surveys of the moon show there's a thin layer of surface-of-moon (perhaps a millimeter thick) which contains particles of solar wind (mostly Hydrogen) that have collided with the surface of the moon for billions of years and gradually built up. He says there's enough Hydrogen to make it worth extracting. (Recall, we can get lots of Oxygen, Silicon, Aluminum, Magnesium, Titanium, etc. from moonrocks, but there's a problem getting Hydrogen and Carbon, both essential in space industry.) He suggests something like this: A vehicle containing a dome that can be set down in various locations, and a laser to zap the surface under the dome to vaporize the surface. The rock quickly condenses back to dust and quickly falls back to the surface, leaving the Hydrogen as a thin gas under the dome. The Hydrogen can then be pumped out of the dome into a storage container containing some chemical that readily reacts with free Hydrogen. Pumping methods include (1) make the dome collapsable, squeezing the Hydrogen out to another chamber (containing the Hydrogen-liking chemical) [Yob], (2) make the dome a cylinder and put a lid on the bottom to keep the Hydrogen from being pushed back into the surface of the Moon, then push down with a piston to squeeze the Hydrogen out a pipe to the other chamber [Maas], (3) mount a turbine pump inside the chamber, so the gas collides with the spinning turbine and gets deflected circumferentially into pipe leading to other chamber or directly to chemical located around the spinner [Yob]. Thus the hydrogen previously thinly spread all over the surface can be quickly concentrated to this chemical compound which can be transported inexpensively back to the processing station where the hydrogen is re-extracted from chemical, leaving the chemical free to be used again perhaps. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.