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SUPPORT LUNAR RESEARCH
Water is the "black gold" of lunar exploration and development. In addition to being drinkable, water can be converted into rocket fuel or used in fuel cells and is an essential ingredient in a number of mining and industrial processes.
Major surface frozen ice deposits have been found within the Moon's polar regions. However, extracting those resources is going to require some heavy industrial infrastructure. Dennis Wingo in his recent review of Paul Spudis's The Value of the Moon, briefly described the requirements:
"In order to mine water in hundred ton lots, you need a lot of infrastructure. You need front end loaders, dump trucks, and a plethora of other surface vehicles, whether robotic or human operated."
It would be as if on Earth, our first oil ever had to be mined from Alberta tar sands, rather than high, quality crude drilled from shallow wells in Pennsylvania.
I have been invited to the 7th Annual Joint Space Resources Roundtable/Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium that will be held this June 7-9 at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado to present an alternative approach based on the early history of petroleum exploration.
In those days, the strategy was very simple: look for oil and gas seeps, then drill there. To apply that strategy to the Moon, we should look for geological features that could have been caused by water and other volatiles outgassing events.
The most likely such features are certain irregularly shaped, rimless "craters" (see photo of the Ina "D-caldera" above), of which about 40 have been identified so far, mostly in relatively easily accessible, low-latitude, Near Side locations. Lunar geologists have long suspected that outgassing events most likely involving CO2 and H2O are responsible for their formation.
I will present evidence that the most similar terrestrial analog are maars (pronounced "Mars") that form on Earth as a result of phreatomagmatic eruptions, whereby rising magma encounters groundwater, causing it to flash into steam, thus blowing off the overlying ground material. An alternative theory is that these formations could be caused by a low-temperature cryovolcanoes not unlike those that have been observed on the Saturnine moon Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft. It could be possible that copious amounts of water and other volatiles could be acquired by simply drilling at these selected sites.
Unfortunately, I make most of my money in the oil and gas industry, which has been going through its worst bust since the purge of '86. As a result, I am pretty much flat broke, thus giving you the opportunity to directly support lunar research with a small contribution that will allow me to present my findings at this important conference. I am hoping for $1000--this would cover my air fare, the $475 conference registration fee, the gofundme fee, and maybe a little per diem. I can stay with friends in the Denver area for free.
This will not be the first SRR/PTMSS symposium I have attended. At the 2013 Toronto conference I presented my theory of lunar electrostatic placer deposits that received the award for best space resources presentation; this eventually resulted in a publication coauthored by Dale Boucher of Deltion and Randy Gladstone of SWRI that has been cited at least twice thus far. In 2014, along with Corey Dyess of American Performance Technologies we got everyone talking about the concept of using internal combustion engine hybrid powered rovers for exploring sunless lunar craters.
I believe the research I have conducted thus far is important and deserves to be publicized. If I am correct, the cost savings for NASA and private space developers will be measured in multiple 10's of billions of dollars.
My abstract and the electrostatic placer deposit paper may be found at:
http://independent.academia.edu/WarrenPlatts
Any support will be greatly appreciated. As a small token, the slide show and any eventual publications that result from this research will be delivered to your inbox. Thank you so much!
Water is the "black gold" of lunar exploration and development. In addition to being drinkable, water can be converted into rocket fuel or used in fuel cells and is an essential ingredient in a number of mining and industrial processes.
Major surface frozen ice deposits have been found within the Moon's polar regions. However, extracting those resources is going to require some heavy industrial infrastructure. Dennis Wingo in his recent review of Paul Spudis's The Value of the Moon, briefly described the requirements:
"In order to mine water in hundred ton lots, you need a lot of infrastructure. You need front end loaders, dump trucks, and a plethora of other surface vehicles, whether robotic or human operated."
It would be as if on Earth, our first oil ever had to be mined from Alberta tar sands, rather than high, quality crude drilled from shallow wells in Pennsylvania.
I have been invited to the 7th Annual Joint Space Resources Roundtable/Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium that will be held this June 7-9 at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado to present an alternative approach based on the early history of petroleum exploration.
In those days, the strategy was very simple: look for oil and gas seeps, then drill there. To apply that strategy to the Moon, we should look for geological features that could have been caused by water and other volatiles outgassing events.
The most likely such features are certain irregularly shaped, rimless "craters" (see photo of the Ina "D-caldera" above), of which about 40 have been identified so far, mostly in relatively easily accessible, low-latitude, Near Side locations. Lunar geologists have long suspected that outgassing events most likely involving CO2 and H2O are responsible for their formation.
I will present evidence that the most similar terrestrial analog are maars (pronounced "Mars") that form on Earth as a result of phreatomagmatic eruptions, whereby rising magma encounters groundwater, causing it to flash into steam, thus blowing off the overlying ground material. An alternative theory is that these formations could be caused by a low-temperature cryovolcanoes not unlike those that have been observed on the Saturnine moon Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft. It could be possible that copious amounts of water and other volatiles could be acquired by simply drilling at these selected sites.
Unfortunately, I make most of my money in the oil and gas industry, which has been going through its worst bust since the purge of '86. As a result, I am pretty much flat broke, thus giving you the opportunity to directly support lunar research with a small contribution that will allow me to present my findings at this important conference. I am hoping for $1000--this would cover my air fare, the $475 conference registration fee, the gofundme fee, and maybe a little per diem. I can stay with friends in the Denver area for free.
This will not be the first SRR/PTMSS symposium I have attended. At the 2013 Toronto conference I presented my theory of lunar electrostatic placer deposits that received the award for best space resources presentation; this eventually resulted in a publication coauthored by Dale Boucher of Deltion and Randy Gladstone of SWRI that has been cited at least twice thus far. In 2014, along with Corey Dyess of American Performance Technologies we got everyone talking about the concept of using internal combustion engine hybrid powered rovers for exploring sunless lunar craters.
I believe the research I have conducted thus far is important and deserves to be publicized. If I am correct, the cost savings for NASA and private space developers will be measured in multiple 10's of billions of dollars.
My abstract and the electrostatic placer deposit paper may be found at:
http://independent.academia.edu/WarrenPlatts
Any support will be greatly appreciated. As a small token, the slide show and any eventual publications that result from this research will be delivered to your inbox. Thank you so much!
Organizer
Warren Platts
Organizer
Brookville, PA
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