Re: Terraforming the moon, before doing Mars or Venus

Mike Williams

Brad Guth

From:	Mike Williams
Subject:	Re: Terraforming the moon, before doing Mars or Venus
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 05:52:00 +0000

Wasn't it Brad Guth who wrote:
>Thanks for the good feedback.
>
>However, only half of our moon gets seriously hot and nasty, whereas the
>other half remains downright cold and nasty (though remaining somewhat
>insulated because it's within a near vacuum). The shift from being too
>hot to getting too cold is somewhat gradual, ideal for solid/vapor phase
>changing.

The fact that the moon gets cold from time to time doesn't help much.
When the atmosphere has leaked away into space during the daytime,
there'll be nothing left to condense at night.

It's no good locking your garage at night if someone already stole your
car during the day.

>With 1.623 m/s and the greater initial mass of using CO2/Rn should stick
>around, even when it gets reasonably hot and nasty, and blown by 600
>km/s solar winds.

The strength of the surface gravity (1.623 m/s/s) isn't the critical
factor. What's more significant is the escape velocity (Moon 2.38km/s,
Titan 2.65km/s).

Mixing the gas you want with a heavier gas doesn't help. The heavier gas
sticks around but the useful gas escapes. The various types of molecules
settle down to having the same average kinetic energy, but that means
that the lighter molecules move faster than the heavier ones. They move
just as fast, in fact, as if the heavier molecules were not present.

There's a piece of JavaScript on this page

that will calculate the average molecular speed given the molecular mass
and temperature. N2 molecules (m=28) on Titan (T=-197C) average 260m/s
which is about a tenth of the escape velocity. CO2 molecules (m=28) on
the Moon (daytime T=107C) average 464m/s which is about a fifth of the
escape velocity. That might sound OK, but not all molecules travel at
the average velocity, some travel faster and leak away. The Earth isn't
able to hold on to hydrogen molecules, and they average about a fifth of
Earth's escape velocity.

Radon atoms would travel at an average of 206m/s on the Moon, which
suggests that you could build an atmosphere of pure Radon.

--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

From:	Brad Guth
Subject:	Re: Terraforming the moon, before doing Mars or Venus
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:40:57 +0000 (UTC)

In other words of your highly critical but most likely correct
interpretations;

It's almost as though you're insisting that no matters what is delivered
and/or created as a vapor of free atoms, regardless of their individual
mass, absolutely every stinking atom gets summarily extracted/blown off
the moon from the solar wind. And, that regardless of what's delivered
and/or created on the spot, that in no possible way would the hot/cold
thermal environment of the moon shift.

Perhaps that's another good reason why essentially naked astronauts
couldn't so easily have walked upon the moon, as besides all of the
horrific secondary TBI worth of hard-X-Rays and of having to dodge every
30+km/s arriving dust-bunny, they'd have to keep leaning their 85%
reflective moonsuits into all that continual 30+km/s (+/- 1 km/s)
orbital wind, plus managing against whatever solar wind is passing by at
600+km/s. Perhaps that's why the bulk of the surface obtained images are
those reflecting at the index of 55%, as opposed to the natural
basalt/coal like actual environment of the moon.

I'd consider the likes of CO2 and Rn as extremely useful gas elements,
as that's all the deployment of robotics care about, and I believe even
O2 is somewhat at the threshold of sticking around once a the thermal
moderation is transpiring as a result of a thousand tonnes of delivered
CO2/Rn is contributed to the remaining basalt vapors created by the
deliver/impact of the CO2/Rn. Of course the CO2 would soon act as a
cloak or thermal conductive layer protecting the thermally conductive
Rn, whereas in time the illuminated side starts sharing a few trillion
BTUs with the nighttime side, eventually the entire moon becomes
moderated enough to hold onto nearly all of the newly created O2
released form impacting the lunar basalt.

BTW; this process of thermal moderation might take only a few months.

Thanks for the JavaScript link. I'll check it out to see where other
elements might become interesting. There might even be something as
nasty as Rn that folks here on Earth would be willing to pay me big
bucks/euros just to get rid of it. Spent nuclear fuel rods could be one
of those items, whereas I could start turning a hansom profit long
before establishing the LSE-CM/ISS.

What sort of heavy elements would a spent nuclear fuel rod vaporise
itself into?

How about VX gas, and/or the combined weapons containing VX?

How about the DNA of a few warlords that suck?

Regards, Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

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