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Lunar settlements could face high-voltage sparks.
Lunar colonists could be in for a nasty shock — literally. A team of US scientists has found that the Moon's surface can become charged with up to several thousand volts of static electricity1.
Read the story here.
Posted by Nicola Jones on February 02, 2007
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Seems to me that the "space wind" may be a potential source of energy. Why not utilize it around a lunar settlement to provide power in an analogous fashion to terrestrial winds?-The (surface of the)moon must make one hell of a generator!
Posted by: TheBrain | February 6, 2007 05:30 AM
And people still think humans have landed on the moon. It's amazing how few people know about the Van Allen Radiation Belt. And how we can't penetrate it without getting massive amounts of radiation, enough to kill a man. We would have known about this story if Neil Armstrong & crew actually landed on our Moon.
Posted by: Tyler | February 6, 2007 11:00 AM
Yeah, funny how the article never dealt with the obvious question: why (besides possible 'levitating dust') did the Apollo missions who supposedly spent so much time on the moon have NO problems with this phenom?
Hmmm...Maybe because either the phenom doesn't exist or we didn't really go to the moon?
Posted by: cedric marnetti | February 6, 2007 08:52 PM
someone is very confused about the nature of electric charge, more so than this humble post could ever remedy. you must not employ any sort of science editor. sufice it to say that the problem does not exist.
Posted by: Blind squirell | February 10, 2007 06:34 AM
to tyler and everyone who doesn't believe humans landed on the moon,
We did land on the moon, the proof is in the video. The moons gravitational force is about 1/6 that of the Earths. Therefore, the trajectory of any object on the moon follows a horizontal path 6x greater than its vertical path (relative to earth). Watch the video taken from the moon and pay special attention to the dust leaving the astronauts boots. You will find that they follow this trajectory and that is only possible where gravity is less than that of the earth.
More proof of our landing on the moon is from Apollo 15. Commander David Scott dropped a feather and a hammer at the same time on the surface of the moon and both fell at the same rate. Any high school student can tell you that is only possible in the absence of 'wind resistance' eg it would have to take place in a vacuum. Therefore building a 'moon set' on earth for filming (with a perfect vacuum inside) would be nearly impossible. Even a small dome with radius of 25 ft would have to support 58,000 pounds of atmospheric pressure.
And as for the Van Allen Belt, don't make me laugh. Are you saying then that there are no astonauts on the international space station? That Alan Shepard never orbited the earth? Do you propose that astronauts never actually 'space walked' and repaired the hubble telescope? Because according to you they would have all died as well.
But I'm sure you're right, we must have found a way to alter gravity and build impossibly strong structures while a mild dose of radiation kept us on Earth. Because landing on the moon is just science fiction.
Posted by: dean | February 12, 2007 09:56 PM
I belive the moon will one day soon draw much more pacific water over the americas
because the electric charge
of the power line grid creates a inverse magnetic field and because of static electricty beware of this.
Posted by: aran | February 24, 2007 06:52 AM