Comments on: Lunar samples from Chang’e-5 confirm fuel and oxygen can be mined from surface https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/lunar-samples-from-change-5-confirm-fuel-and-oxygen-can-be-mined-from-surface/ Fri, 06 May 2022 23:45:18 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Gealon https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/lunar-samples-from-change-5-confirm-fuel-and-oxygen-can-be-mined-from-surface/#comment-1324675 Fri, 06 May 2022 23:45:18 +0000 https://behindtheblack.com/?p=84534#comment-1324675 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.

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