From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
To: updates@globalserve.net
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 16:13:34 +0200
Subject: Possibly 'Moon Rush' If Lunar Probe Finds Water=20
Found at the site of The Nando Times. URL:
http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/010198/health6_3285_noframes.html
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'Moon rush' could be at hand if lunar probe finds water
Copyright =A91998 Nando.net
Copyright =A91998 Scripps-McClatchy Western=20
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (January 1, 1998 01:42 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net)
- New Mexico scientists plan to do some "water witching" on the moon
next month if NASA's Lunar Prospector is launched on time and
trouble-free Monday. And if the scientists strike it water rich, Los
Alamos National Laboratory space scientist Bill Feldman predicts a
"moon rush" to colonize and exploit the lunar surface during the next
century.
"If we can find sufficient water, it's going to be a land rush like the
Oklahoma Sooners," said Feldman, project leader for the Los Alamos
instrument package that will be aboard Lunar Prospector, which is
scheduled to go into lunar orbit about five days after launch and map
the moon over the course of the next year.
Not only would water be necessary to sustain the life of lunar
colonies, but it could also be used to produce hydrogen for rocket fuel.
"We see the moon as kind of a way-station to the rest of the solar
system," Feldman said early today in a telephone interview from his Los
Alamos home.
The Los Alamos team is working with the mission's principal scientist,
Alan Binder, an independent California researcher, and scientists at
the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
The "divining rods" to find water won't look anything like the Y-shaped
twigs that Old West dowsers claimed could find water underground.
Instead, a high-tech neutron spectrometer, developed at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory and capable of scanning for water on the lunar
surface from 60 miles overhead, will be used.
The neutron spectrometer will try to detect medium-energy neutrons
emitted from the lunar soil, which will indicate the presence of water.
The neutrons would be generated from the bombardment of water molecules
by high-energy cosmic particles constantly striking the moon.
Los Alamos Lab also has gamma-ray and alpha spectrometers aboard the
spacecraft that can detect valuable elements such as aluminum, iron,
uranium and titanium, and gases that might be present in the lunar
crust.
Such elements would be valuable to future human prospectors because it
will be cheaper and more efficient to use local resources to colonize
the moon and explore the solar system than to transport them from
Earth. Some also could be important as shortages develop on Earth.
"Everything looks go for Monday," Feldman said, noting that liftoff is
scheduled for 6:30 p.m. and that the launch window is only two days.
"This has got to work," he added. But he said he remains "very, very,
very nervous" about the $63 million mission, which is one of NASA's
"faster, better, cheaper" scientific Discovery Series.
It is using a new rocket design and a new launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
But the scientists have another reason to be leery.
Feldman and other Los Alamos scientists are still smarting from the
loss of NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft, aboard which they had similar
prospecting instruments. That spacecraft functioned perfectly en route
to Mars several years ago but was lost just as controllers prepared it
to enter Martian orbit.
"It was just devastating," said Feldman, who said he "was in a blue
funk for months."
"You know, you mother, you parent these things for years and do
everything you can to make them succeed," he said.
By LAWRENCE SPOHN, The Albuquerque Tribune
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Copyright =A91998 Nando.net
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