Scientists discovered a "significant" amount of water- 25 gallons of it--on the moon when the Lcross satellite crashed into a crater near its south pole making a large hole 60-100 ft wide. The water "gives future settlers something to drink, but could also be broken apart into oxygen and hydrogen. Both are valuable as rocket fuel, and the oxygen would also give astronauts air to breathe."(NYTimes) It's sad that the moon has to be wrung dry now. What is the future of our moon? The stray astronaut will go there for a drink of water, the space station will exploit it, and we will have all these probes making more craters on the moon. The sea of tranquility will become like the Chicago Wal-Mart on Black Friday of 2008.
And then, the moon will be colonised. People will fight for rights to explore it. They will fight for the water, and our wars will reach the boundaries of our solar system. Or a new order of pilgrims will make their way there, endure the bitter, harsh realities of the moon and on the Thanksgiving days they will "cook" water. Sigh!
1 comment:
That water's probably toxic as is. You remember Wall-E and what they had to do to escape a ruined Earth? I hope the day never comes when we have to set up colonies on the moon
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