NationStates Jolt Archive

Find an Oxygen Source for NASA on the moon and win $250 000!

Source (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/05/25/moondust.oxygen/index.html)

NASA seeks oxygen source on moon
Wednesday, May 25,

(CNN) -- NASA has offered a $250,000 prize to any scientist who discovers a way of extracting breathable oxygen from moondust.

The competition is the latest in NASA's "Centennial Challenges" series, which aims to stimulate the development of technologies useful to space exploration.

To claim the MoonROx prize, scientists must develop and demonstrate hardware capable of extracting at least five kilograms of breathable oxygen from a simulated lunar soil made from volcanic ash in an eight-hour period.

MoonROx stands for Moon Regolith Oxygen -- regolith being the loose layer of rocks and debris covering the surface of a planet or moon.

The MoonROx Challenge was announced by NASA in partnership with the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI). Entrants have until June 1 2008 to collect the prize fund.

Craig Steidle of NASA's exploration office said that the use of resources on other worlds was a key element in the organization's vision of space exploration.

It hopes the prize could lead to the development of a sustainable source of oxygen that could support permanent lunar bases and provide the fuel for vehicles that will land on and launch from the moon.

Unveiling a new vision of NASA-led space exploration last year, U.S. president George W. Bush said that a moon colony could be used as a "stepping stone" for missions into deeper space.

Bush said the soil of the moon contained "raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration -- human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond."

While ways of extracting oxygen from regolith already exist, so far nobody has come close to producing the large quantities that would be needed by NASA.

"Oxygen extraction technologies will be critical for both robotic and human missions to the moon," said FSRI Executive Director Sam Durrance, a former astronaut.

"Like other space-focused prize competitions, the MoonROx challenge will encourage a broad community of innovators to develop technologies that expand our current capabilities."

NASA launched the Centennial Challenges in March in the spirit of past competitions that have fostered technical innovation in the aviation and space industries. In October SpaceShipOne claimed the $10 million X-Prize after becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to successfully reach sub-orbital space.

The first two challenges focused on developing technologies towards building a space elevator that could put satellites into orbit.

"For more than 200 years, prizes have played a key role in spurring new achievements in science, technology, engineering and exploration," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Craig Steidle.

"The innovations from these competitions will help support advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic concepts like space elevators and solar power satellites."

It's all very exciting, isn't it? So NSers, we want to claim this prize. How are we going to extract oxygen from the surface of the moon! I for one think they should take my mother up, she'll produce a lot of hot air... No, more seriously I propose bacteria. We need to find some that produces oxygen as a waste product. I know they existed in high numbers in the past (it's why the oxygen content was so much higher). What do you suggest?

Oxygen from moondust? Hmm. We could always hire a girl I use to know who could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch! :D

Damn, i can't help myself but to that that with those 250,000$ win, i have to think of our weird old fellow Kend Hovind... :rolleyes:

Damn, i can't help myself but to that that with those 250,000$ win, i have to think of our weird old fellow Kend Hovind... :rolleyes:
Huh? Care to elaborate?? :confused:

^'Find Oxygen Source for NASA' the title should read

Source (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/05/25/moondust.oxygen/index.html)


It's all very exciting, isn't it? So NSers, we want to claim this prize. How are we going to extract oxygen from the surface of the moon! I for one think they should take my mother up, she'll produce a lot of hot air... No, more seriously I propose bacteria. We need to find some that produces oxygen as a waste product. I know they existed in high numbers in the past (it's why the oxygen content was so much higher). What do you suggest?

The problem would be more like getting water. The moon is, to my knowledge, lacking water. I know oxygen is important, but water is also important...

Damn, i can't help myself but to that that with those 250,000$ win, i have to think of our weird old fellow Kend Hovind... :rolleyes:

I'm sorry, but my brain can't process this... :(

The problem would be more like getting water. The moon is, to my knowledge, lacking water. I know oxygen is important, but water is also important...

Water is Hydrogen and Oxygen, Hydrogen is much lighter (and I think is actually a component of rocket fuel, but I'm not so sure) so if they bring their own hydrogen they can mix it with the oxygen and make their own water I guess...

The problem would be more like getting water. The moon is, to my knowledge, lacking water. I know oxygen is important, but water is also important...
The current theory is that there is a considerable amount of water ice on the moon in craters and other places not reached by sunlight. Hmm. It's relatively easy to get oxygen from water. :)

Huh? Care to elaborate?? :confused:

Sure, there was a dubious guy named Kend Hovind who made the claim that heh would reward $250,000 to anyone who would come up with 'proof for evolution'. However, this was made in a way (with his weird conditions) that it was essentially impossible except for with a time machine.

It just came into my mind because he offered exactly the same amount of money. Although, it's questionable he really had the money. In the case of NASA i'm at least halfway sure they have. ;)

Anyways, i'm sure this contest is a bit more serious than that one of Mr. Hovind. :p

The current theory is that there is a considerable amount of water ice on the moon in craters and other places not reached by sunlight. Hmm. It's relatively easy to get oxygen from water. :)

Well, that's the point. If there really is water inside the polar craters, then we could indeed get the oxygen from water. If there's not, we have a problem since we would have to import it from elsewhere, which would be not exactly economic...

Well, that's the point. If there really is water inside the polar craters, then we could indeed get the oxygen from water. If there's not, we have a problem since we would have to import it from elsewhere, which would be not exactly economic...
What conditions are required to turn oxygen solid?

On first thought, winning oxygen from dust seemed ridiculous. But take a look at this bit from Wikipedia:

Crust composition:

Oxygen 43%
Silicon 21%
Aluminium 10%
Calcium 9%
Iron 9%
Magnesium 5%
Titanium 2%
Nickel 0.6%
Sodium 0.3%
Chromium 0.2%
Potassium 0.1%
Manganese 0.1%
Sulfur 0.1%
Phosphorus 500 ppm
Carbon 100 ppm
Nitrogen 100 ppm
Hydrogen 50 ppm
Helium 20 ppm

That's sure a lot of oxygen. Would definitely be feasible... I guess it's in the form of oxides, which would just need to be reduced somehow.

On first thought, winning oxygen from dust seemed ridiculous. But take a look at this bit from Wikipedia:

That's sure a lot of oxygen. Would definitely be feasible... I guess it's in the form of oxides, which would just need to be reduced somehow.
Rapid heating?

Sure, there was a dubious guy named Kend Hovind who made the claim that heh would reward $250,000 to anyone who would come up with 'proof for evolution'. However, this was made in a way (with his weird conditions) that it was essentially impossible except for with a time machine.

It just came into my mind because he offered exactly the same amount of money. Although, it's questionable he really had the money. In the case of NASA i'm at least halfway sure they have. ;)

Anyways, i'm sure this contest is a bit more serious than that one of Mr. Hovind. :p

A time machine? For a 250k reward? Let's start building it right away! :D

What conditions are required to turn oxygen solid?

Solid? I reckon that it has a melting point of circa -220°C... i don't know how much that would help, though.

Pff. You got $10 mil just to touch space twice.

This seems a little short sighted, there is a finite amount of moon dust. Seems like there is a lot now, but thats what we said about water and oil. I'm sure there is something I'm not catching, but not totally...

Solid? I reckon that it has a melting point of circa -220°C... i don't know how much that would help, though.
Oh? What's the temperature on the moon in the shade?

On first thought, winning oxygen from dust seemed ridiculous. But take a look at this bit from Wikipedia:



That's sure a lot of oxygen. Would definitely be feasible... I guess it's in the form of oxides, which would just need to be reduced somehow.

Then you need to combine it once again somehow to produce breathable oxygen-2(two atoms). We can't breathe the single atom form, it's actually poisonous.

Oh? What's the temperature on the moon in the shade?

I'm not sure, but i think it's somewhere around -100°C i think...

My Science knowledge (or complete lack thereof) may help us. :P

I like the bacteria idea. very easy, very doable. Find a small amount of this bacteria, create a perfect living environment for them to breed en mass. However to sustain this environment may/will take a lot of energy. Which brings me onto the subject of cold fusion. Not so easy. But is possible.
Although maybe not ethical, I have a solution. Harvest some cells, again, create a perfect living environment, and let the produce the energy, through the use of Quantum physics (I think it's quantum physics anyway). Basically when two atoms collide energy is transfered. This may be possible to harness (create a canister with the living environment, have it just at the right temp so that the cells move around quickly yet still survive and breed, The canister, when the cells collide with it absorb the energy and transfer it (the canister acts as a battery) alternaively have two canisters, one breeding, one energy, cells breed then go into energy canister which is at a high temperature (thus more energy))

Other than that, a space suit could be designed which, rather like a fish, had gills which filtered for oxygen.

Pff. You got $10 mil just to touch space twice.

This seems a little short sighted, there is a finite amount of moon dust. Seems like there is a lot now, but thats what we said about water and oil. I'm sure there is something I'm not catching, but not totally...

Oxygen is not a resource that is combusted (like oil) or impurified (like water). It is reformed into CO2, from which it can easily be extracted again by photosynthetic plants. I guess once you have an ecosystem up and running, you could stop extracting oxygen from dust, and it would work like it does here - our oxygen levels remain constant, after all.

The initial problem is getting sufficient carbon dioxide or oxygen to the moon in the first place. It'd take craploads of money to bring it up from Earth in those amounts, so I guess it would simplify things if they could just extract enough oxygen from the moon itself to start off such an ecosystem.

This would be about terra-forming. A very interesting prospect, and that they set up this prize seems to suggest that colonization might happen in our lifetime... ;)

Like someone said the oxygen is bound to other atoms/molecules, I doubt there's any free oxygen on the moon.

My Science knowledge (or complete lack thereof) may help us. :P

I like the bacteria idea. very easy, very doable. Find a small amount of this bacteria, create a perfect living environment for them to breed en mass. However to sustain this environment may/will take a lot of energy. Which brings me onto the subject of cold fusion. Not so easy. But is possible.
Although maybe not ethical, I have a solution. Harvest some cells, again, create a perfect living environment, and let the produce the energy, through the use of Quantum physics (I think it's quantum physics anyway). Basically when two atoms collide energy is transfered. This may be possible to harness (create a canister with the living environment, have it just at the right temp so that the cells move around quickly yet still survive and breed, The canister, when the cells collide with it absorb the energy and transfer it (the canister acts as a battery) alternaively have two canisters, one breeding, one energy, cells breed then go into energy canister which is at a high temperature (thus more energy))

Other than that, a space suit could be designed which, rather like a fish, had gills which filtered for oxygen.

Is this science?

It seemed like science-fiction to me. :p

Im sure it would help to find a chemical composition and its relative atomic code. From there I would think that its a matter of dismantling the isotopes until you are left with pure oxygen. They shouldnt have a problem getting to that stage if NASA is a bunch of scientists, I would think one has only to find a way to speed the process up so that the oxygen can be mass-extracted, verses mass produced. Of course, there are possibly thousands of chemicals which produce oxygen as a waste - this isnt what NASA is looking for exactly however.

It's made of cheese! :p
source (http://www.skepticreport.com/funnies/mooncheese.htm)

Oxygen is not a resource that is combusted (like oil) or impurified (like water). It is reformed into CO2, from which it can easily be extracted again by photosynthetic plants. I guess once you have an ecosystem up and running, you could stop extracting oxygen from dust, and it would work like it does here - our oxygen levels remain constant, after all.

The initial problem is getting sufficient carbon dioxide or oxygen to the moon in the first place. It'd take craploads of money to bring it up from Earth in those amounts, so I guess it would simplify things if they could just extract enough oxygen from the moon itself to start off such an ecosystem.

This would be about terra-forming. A very interesting prospect, and that they set up this prize seems to suggest that colonization might happen in our lifetime... ;)
I was going to have a problem with this, but then I finished reading...I guess the prize should be "a way to get oxygen from dust that is less of a pain in the ass to get to the moon than the 'seed' oxygen would be." But, you know, worded in scientest...

This would be about terra-forming. A very interesting prospect, and that they set up this prize seems to suggest that colonization might happen in our lifetime... ;)

Terraforming? It's questionable if it will work. I'm sure it wouldn't work in the case of the moon (which has too little mass for that), and it's even questionable if it would work in the case of Mars (although it is the best candidate of terraforming we know). In any case, Mars is generally preferable of the moon since it definitly has water...

The problem with the bacteria-idea is that you would need a large amount of water and carbon (for growth). Sure, with photosynthesis, you would only need CO2, but with 100ppm of it on the lunar surface, you would have to "import" a lot. You would also need a pressure-chamber, where the water would be liquid, even without an adequate atmosphere.
To win oxygen directly from the soil, where it is most likely in form of oxides like FeO2 (commonly known as rust) or other molecules, you'd first have to split those. This would either require special chemicals, of which one would need a constant supply (and which would generate an equal amount of waste); or through physical reactions, which are in turn highly energetic, so you'd have to plant the lunar surface full of solar collectors for it to work.
They wouldn't give away 250.000 dollars if the solution was easy, would they?

EDIT: And all these theories take into account that lunar oxygen is of the same isotope as earthen.

Then you need to combine it once again somehow to produce breathable oxygen-2(two atoms). We can't breathe the single atom form, it's actually poisonous.
Oxygen atoms form O2 molecules spontaneously, so it wouldn't be a problem.

EDIT: And all these theories take into account that lunar oxygen is of the same isotope as earthen.

Well, Earth oxygen is 99% isotope 16, and i can't imagine this to be much different in the moon. Besides, i don't think the isotopes of oxygen are that different. The only chemical element where isotopes are chemically quite different is hydrogen (see deuterium).

Terraforming? It's questionable if it will work. I'm sure it wouldn't work in the case of the moon (which has too little mass for that), and it's even questionable if it would work in the case of Mars (although it is the best candidate of terraforming we know). In any case, Mars is generally preferable of the moon since it definitly has water...

Okay, an atmosphere might not stick to the planet, yes. I meant "terraforming" in the loosest sense, in this case setting up a working system under large domes or something like that, not changing the entire atmosphere.

The problem with the bacteria-idea is that you would need a large amount of water and carbon (for growth). Sure, with photosynthesis, you would only need CO2, but with 100ppm of it on the lunar surface, you would have to "import" a lot. You would also need a pressure-chamber, where the water would be liquid, even without an adequate atmosphere.
Carbon asteroids, anyone? it's a long way to the asteroid belt, but there probably are closer asteroids. Don't know if NASA has the capasity to haul asteroids to the moon, but it's worth a thought.

Well, Earth oxygen is 99% isotope 16, and i can't imagine this to be much different in the moon. Besides, i don't think the isotopes of oxygen are that different. The only chemical element where isotopes are chemically quite different is hydrogen (see deuterium).
Isotopes aren't chemically different at all; that property is derived from their number of protons, which is always the same for isotopes of the same atom. They differ in their mass and stability, and the percentage is hugely affected by radiation. While on Earth, 99,98% of all hydrogen has the mass of 1, most of it in the Sun has a mass of 2 (heavy hydrogen or deuterium).
Also, a different isotope of nitrogen is proven to stabilize some hormones, which can in turn imbalance an organisms hormone-level.
I must note though, I don't know if such an effect is proven for oxygen-isotopes.

OK, over dinner I've been thinking about my bacteria idea. We know bacteria can survive on the moon (there was some found on the moon lens) so cosmic radiation won't rip apart their DNA. We have a problem with atmosphere pollutants. We place these pollutants to the surface of the moon under small domes and create a CO2 based atmosphere, of course we'd want other types of pollution, stuff with CFCs to help warm the plant to make it more suitable for bacteria that produce oxygen as it slowly transforms the micro-enviroment.

Carbon asteroids, anyone? it's a long way to the asteroid belt, but there probably are closer asteroids. Don't know if NASA has the capasity to haul asteroids to the moon, but it's worth a thought.
You'd have to think like the NASA-people do: you could either send processed carbon from Earth directly to the moon, which would be much smaller quantities; or build a rocket big enough to propell an asteroid with much greater amounts of carbon, though unprocessed, to the moon. And you would have to deal with the impact.

Isotopes aren't chemically different at all; that property is derived from their number of protons, which is always the same for isotopes of the same atom. They differ in their mass and stability, and the percentage is hugely affected by radiation. While on Earth, 99,98% of all hydrogen has the mass of 1, most of it in the Sun has a mass of 2 (heavy hydrogen or deuterium).
Also, a different isotope of nitrogen is proven to stabilize some hormones, which can in turn imbalance an organisms hormone-level.
I must note though, I don't know if such an effect is proven for oxygen-isotopes.

Well.. isotopes of hydrogen are actually chemically slightly different. Heavy water has a melting point of 3.8°C and a boiling point of 101.4°C. But, the heavier the atom gets altogether, the less significant becomes difference in chemical properties. Hydrogen is prettymuch unique in that respect, if i am not mistaken.

You'd have to think like the NASA-people do: you could either send processed carbon from Earth directly to the moon, which would be much smaller quantities; or build a rocket big enough to propell an asteroid with much greater amounts of carbon, though unprocessed, to the moon. And you would have to deal with the impact.
The impact would be a problem, especially if there would be a chance that it would miss and hit the earth. I don't think you'd need a big rocket to propell an asteroid to the moon. It would just have to nudge it in the right way. The expensive part of space is getting up there.

The problem would be more like getting water. The moon is, to my knowledge, lacking water. I know oxygen is important, but water is also important...

Water can be recycled with distillation or other techniques..

This whole idea is so old fashioned. It's like a giant leap backwards. They decided how to get oxygen from moonrock in the 60's and 70's. Use solar power to make it very hot.

But now that I think about it, building the actual device itself would be a bit of an engineering challenge.

Water has some really nasty properties that we really don't fully appreciate in the enviroment we're blessed with.

Water vapor just goes EVERYWHERE. It sticks in little crevices, and microscopic surface features. A major pain in the ass. So if you've imagine your hypothetical moon base, everytime you add a new object, if it isn't already saturated with water vapor, you'll loose a little water to coating it. Inside and out. Then there's leaking through seals, and accumulating on surfaces created by microcracking, corrosion and normal fretting that might occur. Even if you had a perfect system for recycling water, and none escaped the biosphere, you'd still have a need to replace that lost to new surfaces. Then there's industry.... Somethings got to pay the rent on a moonbase after all. It's small, polar, and sticky. Which is great for a universal solvent that nutures life, but it's almost as bad as hydrogen for staying put.

Fortunately, the moon is big, and even a little bit of water, is a lot of water in that context.

How much energy is required for 1 mole of moon dust to be reduced?
How efficient is a solar panel?..and then the system (reaction chamber?) for the chemical reaction..
How much average solar energy is recieved from the sun over a revolution?...etc...

Is it feasible?

How efficient is a solar panel?..and then the system (reaction chamber?) for the chemical reaction..

You don't use a solar panel. You use mirrors. Very simply put the moon dust in a black box and then shine a lot of sunlight onto it with mirrors. Gas released is then piped off.

Simple, but actually fantasically complicated due to the fact that everything is fantasically complicated on the moon on account of how when things break down you can't take them into the garage and poke around with a screwdriver on account of the fact that you are now dead.