Miners hoping to strike it rich during the California Gold Rush at Auburn Ravine in 1852. (Credit: California State Library)
X PRIZE Foundation creator explains the significance of water on the moon in a piece on The Huffington Post:
From an economic point of view, water on the Moon is the equivalent of finding “gold in the hills of California.” Translation: there is the potential for a California gold rush to hit the space community in the years ahead, and the teams building robotic exploration vehicles in the Google Lunar X PRIZE are constructing the shovels and picks on the leading edge of this potential boom.
So what’s so interesting about water on the Moon? After all, it’s in boundless supply on Earth. The value of water is it’s actual physical location on the Moon, a place that is very expensive to travel to. The utility of the water is both as a propellant for rockets and for the maintenance of human life in space. With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink. As it turns out, hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) together are also one of the most efficient propellants we know. The Space Shuttle Main Engines (some of the most powerful rocket engines in existence), for example, burn O2 and H2 to blast our astronauts off the Earth into orbit. You can think of water as the petroleum of spaceflight. Rather than oil that powers our cars, H2 and O2 power our rocketships.
Read the full story.
Similar Posts:
- LCROSS to Search for Water on the Dry Moon
- Lunar Water: Gold Rush? Oil Boom? Both?
- CSA Awards Lunar Power Contract to Hydrogenics
- Diamandis: I’m Betting on Beam Propulsion to Make Space Travel Affordable
- Jack Schmitt on Lunar Water: Don’t Make Reservations for the Moon Just Yet
