More Water Ice Found On The Moon

Awesome news. It would be nice if we had some far thinking policy makers that kept tabs on these science advances and updated their policies to reflect them, instead of making sweeping changes based on politics.

The more that we search, the more that we find.

I would remind readers that we should have found this ice decades ago. The Lunar Resource Mapper (LRM) that I worked on before congress cancelled it in 1992, would have definitively found the ice as the same instruments that found the ice on Mars would have been used on the Moon.

The program was cancelled (it was the only funded hardware during the SEI era) under a recission of the budget in the summer of 1992. The reason given was that it would be the "nose of the camel under the tent" by congress at the time.

With the amount of water that we are finding, and with the other resources that we know that are there, we could have an industrial capability on the Moon up and running in a remarkably short time.

The moon has so much to teach us, there is so much unfinished work to do, we barely started, so much to build on.

It screams it's invite to us in the night sky everytime I look at it. It waits and waits and will continue to wait.

Ofcourse all this is moot considering we have been there done that according to the Obama administration :|

Damn the Gravity!

Here is an engine that could use that water!

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/multimedia/highlights/2010-15B.html

The Moon is just begging us to exploit its resources in order to supply fuel depots within cis-lunar space with all of the oxygen and hydrogen that they could ever need. And this could dramatically lower the cost of space travel for both government and private commercial space programs.

NASA could also use these resources to help us get to Mars a lot sooner.

What are we waiting for? Let's do this!

Marcel F. Williams

This is indeed a remarkable discovery, though it may be premature to call it "Water Ice Found", and in any case it's hardly an assessment of the amount of ice there.

One has to wonder how ice in this kind of crater will be harvested. The crater temperature is 20-30K, so it's not a particularly pleasant place to be for humans or robots. I guess either you drag a nuke down there with your bulldozer to keep things warm. Or maybe a long extension cord? Thick socks and long underwear??

Had 1/3 of Constellations yearly budget been assigned to a lean well thought out exploration program of the Moon...we would know a lot more then we know now Robert G. Oler

Cool stuff! So when are the "commerical" folks going to send an LRO probe to look for a good location for a moon base?

Well. as far as commercial they are still just getting to LEO .. I appreciate what all these government funded/commercial companies are doing but, let not get ahead of ourselves 1 launch of a unmanned dummy rocket that spiraled out of control when its control system failed does not a moonshot make.

That being said , wouldn't that make Obama look bad considering his " been there done that " comment if a commercial company listen uh we are going to the moon and your helping fund it.

Damn the Gravity!

Learn about the moon? Exploration? But why Robert?

"Learn about the moon? Exploration? But why Robert?"

Exploration that is affordable and contributes to the base of knowledge in some perspective to its cost...is always a good thing to do. The US has spent not a lot of money probably what it takes to keep the shuttle flying for X number of months...on a probe to Pluto and possibly farther out...It will rewrite the textbooks and while it will pale in comparison to future efforts on Pluto, it will be the foundation for what another "America" does.

The problem with Constellation is that there is no exploration...its a jobs program. Any program that consumes 10 billion and has produced nothing, that needs another 20-30 billion to get to LEO and hundreds of billions to get to the Moon...is not exploration.

Look we are decades from any real reason to send people back to the Moon to do things that our probes cannot do...at a price that is reasonable. Until then enjoy the probes. I do

Robert G. Oler

"Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: Why? We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there..."

Barack 6/15/10 @KSC

We = 12 human beings. 12 that's it.( Astronauts that walked on the surface)
Oh so you want to go to the moon? Just talk to buzz he can describe it for you. :|

Damn the Gravity!