Moon: Oxygen, Oxygen Everywhere, But We’ll Need Hydrogen To
Drink  Posted by on Oct 30, 2009 in Blog, Ice Water, Moon, Solar
Essay | 3 comments   The discovery of water within the lunar
soil earlier set off a buzz amongst the space geek community.
While Luna’s revelation inspired dreams of interplanetary
conquest, the fact is that the Moon’s soil is far too dry for us
to use as a fountain, let alone for watering crop.  Instead of
digging through 10 million tons of soil in order to get 10,000
liters of water, it might be easier (and cheaper) to simply ship
tanks of hydrogen instead.   Unmanned space craft could help
open up the lunar frontier by steadily seeding Luna with
thousands upon thousands of hydrogen tanks upon it’s surface.
Since about 40% of the lunar soil is composed of oxygen, future
explorers could extract it from the Moon dirt, and then mix it
with hydrogen dropped off by previous unmanned rockets.   (Image
Credit: Crystal Links- Lunar Mining)  Water can then be heavily
filtered and recycled, a