Giant lint rollers to collect dangerous Moon dust

Giant lint rollers to collect dangerous Moon dust

space.newscientist.com

Magnetic wands and giant lint rollers may be among the tools NASA uses to keep dangerous lunar dust at bay when it returns to the Moon around 2020.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Interesting none the less! What are your thoughts??

space.newscientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

My thoughts?
What a joke.
Why didnt we need these 'lint rollers' on any of the previous trips to the moon?
How come the footage of the LEM setting down stirs up only a minimal amount of dust, and pictures show that no dust accumulated on the landing gear.
Did the moon get more dusty since we were there last, or....
could it be that we didnt really go to the moon some 40 odd years ago?

I didn't think of it that way, yet it seems legitamate. Who would want to bring moon dust in the spaceship. It would get recirculated through their air transport system and then end up in their lungs. Maybe it's to prevent "Black Lung"?

Dangerous? Moondust? Since when? Thati s simply absurd... they brought back a ton that stuff and nothing has happened. Give me a break. Have we become afraid of everything?

If you read the article it states that the astronauts had trouble breathing because they accidentally deposited dust from their suits inside thier ship. It would be like living in a basement for a few months. Kinda gross!

My first attempt at posting a photo, here goes


Where is the dust that should have been stirred up when this vehicle touched down?

Originally posted by 11Bravo
My first attempt at posting a photo, here goes


Where is the dust that should have been stirred up when this vehicle touched down?

How much thrust is needed to land that type of vehicle on the moon? I can clearly see streaks that look like from jet blast on the bottom left corner of the image.

yeah yeah streaks OK, where is the dust?
I see NO DUST on the landing gear.
ANY thrust would have stirred some dust.

Originally posted by 11Bravo
yeah yeah streaks OK, where is the dust?
I see NO DUST on the landing gear.
ANY thrust would have stirred some dust.

No need to get defensive like a 10 year old, I simply posed a question and an observation.

I think the idea is very cool.
I actually got the image of a moon base with a few big magnetic towers around to hold back the dust.


As to moon dust and the Apoolo landings, i seem to remember reading
somewhere that there was dust, and it was a problem, but you gener-
ally do not see the dust because of the moons lack of atmosphere.

That may not have been the exact reason, I'l have to find the article.


Oh, and you don't see any dust on the landers struts because, unlike
the Earth, there is a very weak gravitational field, and the dust stays
up in the air for a great deal of time in comparison.

[edit on 3/7/2007 by iori_komei]

^ LOL

Cant see the dust because of no atmosphere!
Cant see the dust because of low gravity!

I just have to laugh at that!

Sounds better than just admitting "You know, there should be dust on the landing gear, that is curious to say the least"

As far as Lecter.....you make me laugh too!

Originally posted by 11Bravo
My first attempt at posting a photo, here goes


Where is the dust that should have been stirred up when this vehicle touched down?

I was looking at that photo again, trying to find some dust on the landing gear, and I noticed that the lander appears to have set down on a stick!
Does anybody else notice the stick under the landing gear?

That stick was left by the aliens who were playing fetch with a cupacabra when the LEM suddenly came down...they scampered off to the nearest crater, where Neil & Buzz stumbled upon them a couple of minutes into their first stroll ;-)

Ok, actually the stick is a part of the landing gear as I recall. They put on these prongs to penetrate into the lunar soil in case it was uncompacted and unstable; in this case it was solid and bent the tubes outward upon the LEM touching down.

Ok, thanks Gottago. Do you have a link to back up your ascertion?
Not that I dont believe you, it sure looks like part of the gear, but in my simple mind 'prongs' would serve little if any purpose.
I mean, you have the foot, which has a surface area. How would prongs help provide support?
Also, do you see any dust on the landing gear?

No link, but do a google picture search of the LEM and you'll see the prongs on photos of the LEM in space, etc. I've seen lots of pics of them over the years.

Again, NASA didn't know how compacted the soil would be, so the prongs were added to go into the soil like tent stakes in case it was unstable.

As for dust in the saucer-shaped feet, you've got a near vacuum on the moon, so not a lot of dust is going to be flying around.

Originally posted by 11Bravo
My thoughts?
What a joke.

Originally posted by grover
Dangerous? Moondust? Since when? Thati s simply absurd

The problem is that the dust acts similar to asbestos or dust from sandstone. It would be an abrasive in the lungs and cause tissue scarring over time. The symptoms of breathing it would be similar to breathing in fine sand or asbestos, so the danger is more a long term one for the health of the astronauts then an immediate danger. I am sure that the astronauts that have been to the moon have suffered some decrease in lung function over the years from being in a confined space breathing a fine powder such as this.

Seriously.....WHAT?
Are you saying that somehow the 'moondust' got into their airtanks?
That would be like s scuba diver getting water in his lungs...

Originally posted by 11Bravo
Seriously.....WHAT?
Are you saying that somehow the 'moondust' got into their airtanks?

No the dust from their suits was stirred up in the capsule after they removed them and changed back to their flight suits. Their flight suits have no contained breathing apparatus, they were simple jumpsuits. They certainly did not wear pressure suits the whole time they were in the capsule.

They dressed like this:

Originally posted by 11Bravo
That would be like s scuba diver getting water in his lungs...

It would be more along the lines of someone sand blasting or removing asbestos without wearing a re-breather.

[edit on 3/9/2007 by defcon5]