In researching the next post I found this website, www.moonmining.com Pure Gold...er, I suppose that's Pure Moon Dust for the rest of us. Or "Lunar Regolith" for the "scientists" amongst us.
http://www.moonminer.com/Lunar_regolith.html
I have to admire what he has done here. In the introduction he states that "There are no definite processes for extracting metals and gasses from the regolith to be found." I think he is largely correct on that point, but that is where we part ways. The remaining five hundred pages of text are a lot of crazy speculation on blue sky magical thinking about how the human race can eventually reach the stars. The moonmining website is a bit like the goatee-wearing mirror of my whitepaper in the evil anti-universe. This topic deserves an experienced hand and consideration of the technology and resources that could make mining on the moon a reality if enough support ever made it a priority.
The author of this website could, in fact, be the same guy I met at the party in California. I don't know. In all honesty, I will, in fact, be using the references that this author has so diligently researched in advance of my efforts.
Here is another great idea that I love. At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference Fries and Steele from the Carnegie Institute propose sending a rover to the moon with a raman spectrometer to look for meteorite fragments in the regolith.
www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/LEA/.../FriesMDF_Lunar_wksp_07.pdf Warning! PDF
This harkens back to brief but exciting days of my most recent graduate school field work using a portable handheld raman spectrometer to analyze carbonates in the Mojave desert.The absolutely best part of this abstract is that they named the probe Moonraker. Ala James Bond. Brilliant! The next space instrument I dream up to send to Mars shall be called Goldeneye!
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