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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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Sierra Space successfully tests equipment for extracting oxygen from the lunar soil

In a press release this week Sierra Space revealed that it has successfully tested an extraction system that can gather up the abrasive lunar regolith and then heat it to high temperatures in order to extract and use the oxygen contained in that soil.

Temperatures in which the Sierra Space Carbothermal Oxygen Production Reactor were tested ranged from minus 45 degrees Celsius to 1,800 degrees Celsius. In addition to the challenges of functioning from sub-zero to hotter-than-lava temperatures, the hardware was required to move the simulated lunar regolith – a very abrasive and jagged material because it does not have the weathering processes found on Earth – through its system. The potentially damaging particles were handled effectively by the hardware and gasses were successfully sealed inside the reactor, thanks to Sierra Space’s use of a patent-pending valve design that previously demonstrated functionality to greater than 10,000 cycles.

The tests confirmed that Sierra Space’s system can successfully handle regolith that would be delivered from a lunar rover or robotic arm and automatically bring it into the reaction chamber, perform the carbothermal reduction reaction process to extract the oxygen from the minerals in the regolith, and remove the processed regolith from the system so the operation can be repeated.

This research is similar to the extraction system the Chinese are developing, though it appears Sierra’s system appears considerably closer to a finished product, as it is already being tested.

Genesis cover

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

4 comments

  • Patrick Underwood

    I suspect the processed regolith “slag” is valuable as well–silicon and metals to be separated and refined in another downstream process.

  • David M. Cook

    That “slag”, especially when hot, might best be used as paving to reduce the dust problem. There‘s going to be a lot of it!

  • Patrick Underwood

    “Anthrofuturism” has some interesting videos about lunar development.

  • Mark Sizer

    It’s an impressive test, but do the numbers work? The article doesn’t say how much oxygen from how much regolith.

    My “how much oxygen do people need?” search results are returning numbers in liters (500-600), which is not helpful since gas compresses. Adding “kg” resulted in an oh-so-trustworthy AI summary of “Based on the search results, the estimated oxygen requirement for one person in one day is approximately 1 kg.”

    Making the yuge assumption that’s correct: How much regolith is required for 1kg of oxygen?

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