Astronaut health
It is imperative that today's return-to-the-Moon planners recall experiences from the Apollo era, said Larry Taylor, Director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. One problem that was not well anticipated was the ubiquitous, adherent, abrasive, and floating dust problem, he advised.
Taylor emphasized that the most critical effect of lunar dust, however, may be on astronaut health.
With each Apollo mission to the Moon, Taylor said that astronauts remarked about the "gun powder" smell when they took off their helmets inside their lunar lander after climbing back in from a moonwalk.
Several astronauts reported respiratory or eye irritation. It was evident that there was something unusual about the lunar dust, Taylor pointed out. "We've got one hell of a lot of it that's going to be dangerous on the Moon."
Taylor flagged the possibility that ultra-small particles of the lunar dust are capable of moving from human lungs directly into the blood stream. Moreover, these fine particles consist almost entirely of glass containing myriads of nanophase metallic iron-a constituent that might interact with a person's hemoglobin and spur oxygen-depravation effects.
One of the most essential tests to be performed with a first lunar lander in the near-term, Taylor observed, is the chemical reactivity of pristine lunar dust in the size range that can be inhaled by lunar visitors.
Dust-busting idea
Arguably, framing the Moon as some sort of toxic wasteland would be a bit of a stretch.
Countering the pervasive nature of the dust, however, will take some doing-specifically if the lunar landscape is to be reworked with resource-processing paraphernalia and dotted with living quarters.
Habitats will need to be overpressurized to account for inevitable leaks, especially around entrances, Taylor suggested. Fine particles of dust suspended in electrostatic levitation around the Moon, he pointed out, would need to be dealt with so as not to muck up lunar-based astronomy of the surrounding cosmos.
But then there's the ultimate in dust-busting ideas. Enter the suck-it-up and deal with it Lunar Soil Magnetic Collection device-the LSMAC for short.
Working with Taylor on the dust mover scheme is Benjamin Eimer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee.
LSMAC draws upon the elemental iron particles-literally sucking up the lunar soil similar to your autumn leaf sucker, Eimer said. This can be done in similar fashion to the way maglev trains and coil guns work, making use of electro-magnets to pull an object along.
A magnetic system like LSMAC at work on the Moon, Eimer said, would not only pull the iron-tainted soil down a tube but also effectively capture the dust as well. The operation of this "coil vacuum" equipment on the Moon is foreseen as a kind of electronic conveyor belt.
Conceptually, Eimer and Taylor reported that a lunar surface-mining operation could use the LSMAC to gather and transport soil-plus dust-across stretches of moonscape to processing plants. This method of handling and collecting lunar surface materials would help keep in check the stirring up of dust in the process.
"The lunar dust gets into everything and it is harmful in just about every way," Eimer concluded. "That's the take home message ... some form of mitigation, of controlling the dust on the Moon is necessary."
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