From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: April 12, 2006 12:33:04 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: NASA to crash probes on moon in water hunt
Hi David;
Ummm .. well the idea behind it is that in the shadowed crater that hasn't seen sunlight, the hydrogen rich material (ice, condensed hydrogen, methane, comet droppings etc etc.) will be either melted directly by the impact or tossed up into the sunlight where it melts in the sunlight.
Nasa expects the 2 kilo tonne impactor to carve a 3 meter by 100 meter trench and excavate about 1000 tonnes of material. I'm a little surprised they are assuming a specific gravity of roughly 3.33 tones per cubic meter for the material they hit. That assumption seems excessive as basalt has a SG of 2.7 to 3.2 and for 3.3 it would have to be composed of peridotite (basically the mineral Olivine). Unless it's got a whole whack of sulphides in it which would skew the density a lot and might spur China to try and claim that section for mining rights :)
TTYL..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
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On 12-Apr-06, at 12:02 PM, David Illig wrote:
Milton Aupperle wrote:
> I saw this mentioned in the sci.astro.amateur newsgroup.
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12257161/
>
> If the plume of the imact does sreach 60 miles up off the moon, it
> might be detectable from earth.
****
There's a science fiction story here. The spacecraft crashes through six feet of ice that was
protecting the last reserve of liquid water on the moon -- kept liquid by some SF heat
source. The last water on the moon -- a huge reserve -- boils off into space before the hole
can freeze over again...
David