How to breathe on the Moon

[sheeny]

A process has been developed at Cambridge University which can extract oxygen from moon rocks. More here at Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090810/full/news.2009.803.html

Al.

[renormalised]

Interesting article...watch what happens, though. NASA and such are going to get caught up going to the Moon again they'll put going to Mars back decades. They've lost the plot.

[picklesrules]

we need the moon first because its the only place where we can test our technology that will be used on mars missions in very close conditions similar to mars

[renormalised]

That's nonsense....the Moon is nothing like Mars. The closest we can come to Martian conditions is in places around the Arctic tundra region of Canada or the dry valleys in Antarctica. The only reason why they're going back to the Moon rather than Mars is because Bush made it the priority instead of Mars. All the Moon is going to do is get in the way of going elsewhere. That's why Buzz and the other astronauts a few weeks ago were pushing to go to Mars instead of going back to the Moon. We can go back to the Moon later if we want to, and they know it.

[Stuart78]

I reckon they are better off using the moon as a stepping stone to mars, they may find some way to use the moons resources for materials and fuel for the mission instead of using all the energy building the craft here and having to launch it out of earths atmosphere which will use mega amounts of fuel which is wastefull,
so i think this is the plan Nasa has but who knows in these times,
at the end of the day earth is the most beautiful saphire in the solar system and mars is and will always be a deserted wasteland..

[Morepower]

I wonder if they would be better off trying to build the vehicle they need to get to mars at the space station piece by piece and launching it from there ? I think the Moon is a waste of time and money, nothing to see there really. They seem to be clinging to it like a security blanket. Though a base there at a later date could be useful for when we might want to do some of the bigger things.

Does anyone think Terraforming Mars will work ? I'd like to think it is possible to do such things but seeing as how there is basically no magnetic field on Mars wouldn't any atmosphere produced just get blown away by the Solar wind ?

[freespace]

If they can manage to make fuel on the moon, going to Mars would be much easier.

I see the Moon base as a proving ground for many technologies required to keep a Mars crew alive and productive.

[renormalised]

That's a big IF, and in the meantime they just squander opportunity after opportunity. Not that they shouldn't try but to get bogged down in one place and not try and make a jump to the other would be a big mistake. A base or bases on the Moon would be good, but not as a prelude to going to Mars. In conjunction with, yes, but not as a forethought. In any case, we can prove equipment here on Earth just as easily as we can on the Moon. The Moon is reasonably predictable, Mars is not and in that sense far more like the Earth than anywhere else. If you need to test things out, do so in similar conditions (or as close as you can get them). The Moon is far from being either Mars or Earth.