Friday, November 26, 2010

Lunar Polar Volatiles Explorer Mission Concept Study

A proposed mission to survey for what's inside of those permanently shaded craters on the Moon.  Water is expected to be found amongst other things.  Silver, for example.  Silver is useful for making solar panels.  The lunar craters could be rich in useful materials such as this.

I only scanned the document.  I did find a price tag of over a billion dollars for such a mission.  No wonder people think this stuff is expensive.  In this case, it certainly seems so.  Yet, at a billion dollars, the confirmation of significant amounts of water and other useful materials could justify using this resource to further the exploitation of space resources.

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