Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

So, going to space to the moon is useful because it enables going further out to space.

And I'm not entirely sure how you turn water (H₂O) into Methane (CH₄). Granted I barely passed freshman chemistry 33 years ago so my chemistry knowledge isn't so good, but as near as I can recall, there is no process that will turn that input into that output.

And again, even if the moon is a source of water, there's not a significant need for any water mining operation at the poles to have a colony around it or even any human staffing. Putting people there on even a semi-permanent basis would likely eliminate any gains to be had from using the moon as a source of water.

Even the space tourism doesn't call for settling the moon. No one lives on top of Mount Everest either.

Could you simply separate hydrogen from the water, using electrolysis, or other methods and then use the Sabatier reaction? [1] Carbon dioxide in bulk may be harder to come by on the moon, however.

Also, the Lunar Gateway [2] is a key part of the plans by NASA/SLS. It's not about settling on the moon, it's about making it a stop off point to refuel or pickup supplies before going on to a further off destination like Mars. Instead of having to have all your fuel and payload when taking off from Earth, you can have a lot of your supplies and weight on the Moon. This means your trip off Earth can be cheaper. Getting out of Earths gravity and getting to escape velocity is the hard part. Getting off the moon is a lot easier.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway

The Sabatier reaction relies on carbon dioxide. For the concept of using it to generate rocket fuel, there's a reliance on atmospheric CO₂ which is viable on Mars but not the Moon (which is why the section in the Wikipedia article is called “Manufacturing propellant on Mars”). And the Lunar Gateway is irrelevant to what I'm arguing, which is that there's not really any reason to settle off-planet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com