Lunar samples from Chang’e-5 confirm fuel and oxygen can be mined from surface
Chinese scientists studying the lunar samples returned by Chang’e-5 probe have confirmed earlier studies of Apollo lunar samples that it is possible to extract oxygen and fuel from the Moon’s soil.
After analyzing the Chang’e-5 lunar soil, the team found the sample contains iron-rich and titanium-rich substances, which could work as a catalyst to make oxygen using sunlight and carbon dioxide.
The team proposed a strategy using lunar soil to electrolyze water from the moon and the astronauts’ life support system into oxygen and hydrogen. The process is powered by sunlight. The carbon dioxide exhaled by moon inhabitants can be collected and combined with hydrogen to yield the fuel methane, also catalyzed by lunar soil, according to the study. With this method, no external energy apart from sunlight would be used to produce oxygen and fuel to support life on a moon base, said the researchers.
What is new about these results are the proposed techniques and components used to make the process practical. The science team is now proposing testing it on future Chinese Moon missions
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The only issue though is, in the long term, you still have to import the supply of carbon from Earth or find a source of it on the Moon. If you are using your supply of CO2 to make methane, then you don’t have any CO2 for plants to grow, and so you can’t grow food there. You would be in a cycle of diminishing returns as you burn off your supply of fuel/CO2. So it would have to be replenished from an outside source. The issue could be solved just by importing the food supply from Earth, or strait up shooting blocks of carbon at the Moon with a mass driver. That’d be fun.
But really, the most logical thing to do would be to use hydrogen for fuel and leave your carbon cycle closed, by digging up and using ice on the Moon, if it’s easy and abundant enough to procure.