A Place to Stand

Taken from Asia Times so that we are guaranteed a sensible treatment:

"India's Chandrayaan-1 probe and data from two other spacecraft confirm the presence of water on the moon. Fine layers of "water" particles were found in lunar soil, the discovery was also made from samples brought back from the Apollo missions. However, scientists could not rule out that the moisture identified earlier could have got into samples on their return to Earth.

India's first mission to the moon - made as half the country suffers from drought and struggling farmers commit suicide amid the weakest monsoon in seven years - has proved a success, as remote instrumentation sensing electromagnetic radiation emitted by minerals confirmed the genuine presence of water on the lunar surface. The readings intensified towards the poles and were backed up by data from two other spacecraft, the US's National

Aeronautics and Space Administration's Deep Impact probe and the US-European Cassini satellite.

Liquid quantities are small, yielding around a liter of water from a cubic meter of soil, but they could prove crucial for any future colonization efforts. This week's discovery, which was reported by the Indian Space Research Organization, may spark further interest in lunar exploration"

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Well this is good news since there are an unlimited number of cubic metres & if this is the amount of water on the surface it may well be greater deeper down.

I think the people of India have cause to be very proud of their country today. They have made a genuine & substantial contribution to the human development of space. The belief that there was no water there has been a great brake on the expectation that we could make a sustainable settlement there. The place is now valuable real estate again.

Incidentally on CCNet today I wrote on the subject of alleged resource depletion on Earth "As technology progresses it becomes economically possible to get the material from smaller concentrations. The definition of "ore" is something with sufficient concentration of the desired material for it to be economically mined. It is a moving target because our technology is better than the Victorian's." If the technology exists to get water from stones on the Moon we need not fear running out of anything. To subscribe, send an e-mail to

Labels: space

// posted by neil craig @ 12:29 pm