{"id":1216337,"date":"2025-02-17T16:33:53","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T21:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1216337"},"modified":"2025-02-17T16:33:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T21:33:53","slug":"turning-the-moon-into-a-fuel-depot-will-take-a-lot-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1216337","title":{"rendered":"Turning the Moon into a fuel depot will take a lot of power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>If humanity is ever to spread out into the Solar System, we&#8217;re going to need to find a way to put fuel into rockets somewhere other than the cozy confines of a launchpad on Earth. One option for that is in low-Earth orbit, which has the advantage of being located very close to said launch pads. But it has the considerable disadvantage of requiring a lot of energy to escape Earth&#8217;s gravity\u2014it takes a lot of fuel to put substantially less fuel into orbit.<\/p>\n<p>One alternative is to produce fuel on the Moon. We know there is hydrogen and oxygen present, and the Moon&#8217;s gravity is far easier to overcome, meaning more of what we produce there can be used to send things deeper into the Solar System. But there is a tradeoff: any fuel production infrastructure will likely need to be built on Earth and sent to the Moon.<\/p>\n<p>How much infrastructure is that going to involve? A study released today by PNAS evaluates the energy costs of producing oxygen on the Moon, and finds that they&#8217;re substantial: about 24 kWh per kilogram. This doesn&#8217;t sound bad until you start considering how many kilograms we&#8217;re going to eventually need.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2025\/02\/turning-the-moon-into-a-fuel-depot-will-take-a-lot-of-power\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2025\/02\/turning-the-moon-into-a-fuel-depot-will-take-a-lot-of-power\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If humanity is ever to spread out into the Solar System, we&#8217;re going to need to find a way to put fuel into rockets somewhere other than the cozy confines of a launchpad on Earth. One option for that is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1216337\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1216337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1216337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1216337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1216337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}