XPost: sci.space.policy
From: schillin@spock.usc.edu
Hop David writes:
>Gordon D. Pusch wrote:
>> wbogen@visteon.com (Bill Bogen) writes:
>>>Did any of the Apollo astronauts ever drag a magnet across the
>>>regolith to see how much, if any, metal particles might be available?
>>>I've seen references to the possibility of Apollo astronauts checking
>>>on a magnetic foot on a Surveyor probe and a paper or two on regolith
>>>composition but not anything on a test of the practicality of easily
>>>accumulating significant amounts of high quality iron/titanium/nickel
>>>"ore" with a simple process.
>> Highly unlikely, since the Moon is as depleted of both iron and
>> "siderophiles" ("iron-loving" elements) as it is of volatiles.
>> Most of the iron near the Moon's surface is likely to be meteoric
>> in origin.
>I can imagine ways for the moon's surface to lose volatiles. How is iron
>depleted?
The Moon was made by blasting off a chunk of the Earth's exterior while
the latter was being formed, and the Earth's exterior was depleted in
iron by the iron being heavy enough to mostly sink to the deep interior.
However, it is a mistake to say that the Moon is as depleted of iron,
etc, as it is of volatiles. There's depleted and there's *depleted*.
The Moon's got plenty of iron for our purposes.
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