Ackerman, Evan. “Rocket Mining System Could Blast Ice from Lunar Craters.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, IEEE, 18 June 2021, 14:47 GMT, spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/space-robots/rocket-mining-system-could-blast-ice-from-lunar-craters.
Article title:
Rocket Mining System Could Blast Ice from Lunar Craters
Rendering: Masten
My summary of the article:
It may be the case for humanity that the day when we must evacuate Earth to live somewhere else comes. That 'somewhere' may be our own moon, Mars, or anywhere else. The problem identified by Ackerman, the author of the article, is that in such circumstances, we can no longer rely on resources that are from Earth, since that means that humanity is still depending on Earth. Thus, to sustain human presence outside of Earth, humanity must be able to utilize resources from the new celestial body and extract what we need from it.
An example of such extraterrestrial celestial body is Earth's moon. Specifically, NASA is interested in extracting water ice from the Moon's south pole and turning it into essential resources such as breathable oxygen, rocket fuel, and pure water. In hopes of finding a creative way to do this, NASA launched a competition to find an innovative solution to "Break the Ice Challenge".
One of the teams in the competition has a promising solution to this problem, that being using a rocket engine as a drill. Literally, their idea is to heat the lunar soil with rocket plumes, collect the debris (including dust and ice particles from destroyed lunar soil) from it, separate the ice particles from the dust, and collect it. The name of this method is Resource Ore Concentrator using Kinetic Energy Targeted Mining—ROCKET M, and although this idea seems like an unnecessary technological overkill, Masten, the aerospace company that proposes this idea firmly believes that their methodology is in fact superior to other conventional ways of mining in terms of cost, effectiveness, and practicality.
My response to the article
As a rocket enthusiast, I only considered rockets as a way of propelling upwards into the sky and beyond, and nothing else. Thus, to read about a company that is trying to think outside the box by utilizing rockets to dig down rather than propel upwards was very interesting. The concept itself seems very interesting as well, since it takes into account that conventional ways of 'diging' – via literally drilling and shoving piles of soil away – is very difficult in an extraterrestrial environment, given that the atmosphere, the soil itself, and the arsenal of available equipments are different to those on Earth.
One aspect of ROCKET M that I am slightly skeptical about is the fact that it considers 'water' as an ultimate source of basically everything that is needed. The article mentions details about how water can be used as a source of oxygen, drinking water, and even rocket fuel. Firstly, oxygen can indeed be extracted from water by electrolysis, but I am not sure whether the amount of water extracted from lunar soil will be enough to provide oxygen for breathing. Secondly, how, fundamentally, water can be used as 'rocket fuel' is a mystery for me, since water itself cannot be a source of fuel in terms of combustion or other chemical procedures, at least to my understanding. I will have to research more about this to resolve my curiosities. Other than these few points of inquiry I have about ROCKET M, I truely believe that the work being done by Masten and NASA is noteworthy.
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