Our moon with atmosphere?

[mistermack]

O'Reilly? I didn't know that.

Well, it WAS simple to Einstein. I struggle a bit with it though.

[Elessarina]

Maybe we could move some of our Gravity onto the Moon?

We do. That's why the Moon is still there.
And we have some of the Moon's gravity. That's why the tide goes in and out.

Fool!

God does it with his magic armpit hair.. or something..

[mistermack]

Maybe we could move some of our Gravity onto the Moon?

We do. That's why the Moon is still there.
And we have some of the Moon's gravity. That's why the tide goes in and out.

I thought we couldn't explain that?

Oh yeh, just remembered that. duuuuuh.
Who was it? I do have Alzheimers, you know.

[Faithfree]

If the moon had the right minerals, they could be mined, concentrated and made to react so as to give off O2. It would escape pretty quickly, but as long as you kept replenishing the chemicals, you could keep a little atmosphere going. It'd be better to just build pressurized greenhouse-like structures and add to them over time, I think.

The moon is mostly oxygen, well more oxygen than anything else, just like Earth. Unfortunately, it has a rather strong attraction to silicon so coaxing it to escape as a gas may require some trickery. Moving it a lot closer to the sun would work, but wouldn't do much for retaining an atmosphere.

[FBM]

If the moon had the right minerals, they could be mined, concentrated and made to react so as to give off O2. It would escape pretty quickly, but as long as you kept replenishing the chemicals, you could keep a little atmosphere going. It'd be better to just build pressurized greenhouse-like structures and add to them over time, I think.

The moon is mostly oxygen, well more oxygen than anything else, just like Earth. Unfortunately, it has a rather strong attraction to silicon so coaxing it to escape as a gas may require some trickery. Moving it a lot closer to the sun would work, but wouldn't do much for retaining an atmosphere.

I was surprised at the "mostly oxygen" statement, so I googled it. There's a smidge more iron than oxygen (Earth, I mean), but I'm still surprised that oxygen is so high. Anyway, I only did 2 univ-level classes in chemistry, and that was over 2 decades ago, so I'd have no idea how to liberate oxygen from SiO2, if that's what the moon has.

[Faithfree]

If the moon had the right minerals, they could be mined, concentrated and made to react so as to give off O2. It would escape pretty quickly, but as long as you kept replenishing the chemicals, you could keep a little atmosphere going. It'd be better to just build pressurized greenhouse-like structures and add to them over time, I think.

The moon is mostly oxygen, well more oxygen than anything else, just like Earth. Unfortunately, it has a rather strong attraction to silicon so coaxing it to escape as a gas may require some trickery. Moving it a lot closer to the sun would work, but wouldn't do much for retaining an atmosphere.

I was surprised at the "mostly oxygen" statement, so I googled it. There's a smidge more iron than oxygen (Earth, I mean), but I'm still surprised that oxygen is so high. Anyway, I only did 2 univ-level classes in chemistry, and that was over 2 decades ago, so I'd have no idea how to liberate oxygen from SiO2, if that's what the moon has.

I forgot about the big iron core with Earth. Anyway, the moon is mostly made of silicates, ie. silicon and oxygen bonded to an assortment of other elements. The silicon - oxygen bond is cunt of a bond to break, which is why even though silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earths crust, it is a rather expensive and energetic process to extract pure silicon so that our laptops and iPhones work. Take life away from Earth and all of the atmospheric oxygen would be gobbled up by the crust over time.

[FBM]

...Take life away from Earth and...

Shhhh!!! Crumple's logged in!

[Rum]

Maybe we could move some of our Gravity onto the Moon?

We do. That's why the Moon is still there.
And we have some of the Moon's gravity. That's why the tide goes in and out.

I thought we couldn't explain that?

Eh? Nah, it's simple physics. I think.

O'Reilly? I didn't know that.

ISWYDT.

[FBM]

...Take life away from Earth and...

Shhhh!!! Crumple's logged in!

So, anyway, we would probably need to export something nuclear to the moon in order to have the energy source to break the Si-O bonds...tricky. And expensive...

Edit: Shit. Looks like I quoted myself instead of editing my post.

[Faithfree]

...Take life away from Earth and...

Shhhh!!! Crumple's logged in!

So, anyway, we would probably need to export something nuclear to the moon in order to have the energy source to break the Si-O bonds...tricky. And expensive...

We could ship lots of water and life, and let photosynthesis make the oxygen from water. Oh, wait, that's why we wanted the atmosphere there in the first place.

[Rum]

We could send some dinosaurs there to fart the place an atmosphere.

No really. Here:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sorry, Thump, but the gases won't be "left behind" if they don't escape Earth's gravity.

Uh, Gawd? I know this. I'm being facetious. I was hoping my point about "face full of smoke" would draw that into focus.

[FBM]

...Take life away from Earth and...

Shhhh!!! Crumple's logged in!

So, anyway, we would probably need to export something nuclear to the moon in order to have the energy source to break the Si-O bonds...tricky. And expensive...

We could ship lots of water and life, and let photosynthesis make the oxygen from water. Oh, wait, that's why we wanted the atmosphere there in the first place.

I think we could start with the greenhouse-type things I mentioned before, cultivate some algae and whatnot to decompose the lunar soil, then wham-bam, 2,000 years later we'll have something we could breathe.

We could send some dinosaurs there to fart the place an atmosphere.

No really. Here:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792

Yeah, I saw that. Maybe the dinos farted themselves into extinction...lord knows I almost have on several occasions...

[mistermack]

I was surprised at the "mostly oxygen" statement, so I googled it. There's a smidge more iron than oxygen (Earth, I mean), but I'm still surprised that oxygen is so high. Anyway, I only did 2 univ-level classes in chemistry, and that was over 2 decades ago, so I'd have no idea how to liberate oxygen from SiO2, if that's what the moon has.

It's much easier if there is water on the moon. That's why that recent probe was crashed into a deep crater that never sees the sun. The theory is that there would be large deposits of water-ice.

They have declared that they DID detect water in the dust that was thrown up, so they are fairly confident that there are large quantities of water in the deeper craters. There's also water in the surface soil, according to the tests. So oxygen is available in large amounts, by just electrolysing the melted water, using solar panel power.
But it wouldn't stay as an atmosphere, if you released it. It would just escape into space.

If it could be prevented from escaping, you would still have to have a huge quantity of atmosphere on the Moon, for people to be able to live without a pressurised suit, or building.
Without the pressure of our atmosphere, our body fluids will boil at normal body temperature.
So you don't just need enough oxygen to breathe, you need enough gases to give an atmospheric pressure of 1 bar, for healthy living.

And as the gravity is lower on the Moon, that means that the Moon would need two or three times the depth of gases that there are on the Earth.

[mistermack]

ISWYDT.

Yeh, I get it now. Toooooooooooooooooooooooo subtle for me.