Asri-unix.1133
net.space
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC
Fri Apr 2 00:54:09 1982
Another source of hydrogen?
Recall that most materials we'll need for space industry and
life-support are already known to exist on the moon, but hydrogen may
be hard to find locally. We've suggested the polar regions of the Moon
which might have water-ice, the outer surface of the Moon which may
have atoms of hydrogen from the solar wind accumulated over 4 billion
years, and more distant sources such as asteroids comets and Jupiter.
Here's a new idea I came up with tonight: Once we get an SPS working,
suppose we build two large electrodes and charge one positive and the
other negative. Then free electrons will be attracted to the positive
one and free protons to the negative one. The electrons merely flow
through our circuit where they combine with the protons to form
hydrogen which we then collect somehow. Thus instead of collecting
atomic hydrogen, we collect hydrogen which has been ionized by the
solar ultraviolet radiation (plus some stray protons). Anybody want to
speculate on whether this idea could be made to work cost-effectively?
One idea for collecting the hydrogen after the protons have been
grabbed: If the protons embed themselves in the surface of the
negative electrode, we may simply run the device for a while to
collect a considerable quantity of embedded hydrogen, then turn the
device off, cover the electrode with something (to make a sealed
chamber with the electrode as one wall), zap the electrode with a
laser to boil off the hydrogen, collect the hydrogen from the chamber
in any of the ways suggested earlier for boiling hydrogen off the
surface of the moon, then remove the cover and turn the electric
charge back on to collect another batch. Anybody have other ideas?
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