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.

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