Moon Miners' Manifesto

#23 March 1989

Q & A Colonist's I.Q. Quiz

MMM 23

March 1989 

Q & A Colonist's I.Q. Quiz

[1] What evidence is there to the naked eye that the Moon's entire surface is covered with a fine dust layer on a centimeter scale at least?

[2] Were any exposed outcroppings of unfractured lunar bedrock spotted by the Apollo astronauts?

[3] Do we have any idea of the source of the meteorite material that has bombarded the Moon?

[4] What is the "regolith"? How uniform is it?

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[1] The disk of the Full Moon appears to be of similar brightness edge to edge. If the surface was bare rock, the edges would be much darker.

[2] Lava flow outcroppings, both massive and thin-bed (less than 1 meter) were spotted in the west slope of Hadley Rille (Apollo 15 mission).

[3] All sites show a soil component (1.5-2% by weight) derived from meteorite bombardment with the volatile enriched element abundance characteristic of type 1 carbonaceous chondrites (C1). Signatures of other meteorite classes are rare.

[4] Regolith (we predict settlers will abbreviate this to 'lith) is a continuous debris layer which blankets the entire surface of the Moon from a few centimeters to several meters thickness, and ranging from very fine dust (the portion finer than 1 millimeter being called soil or fines) to rocks meters across. Below this are many meters of fractured bedrock, and finally solid bedrock. About 50% of the regolith at any site originates by impact debris from within 3 kilometers, 45% from 3-100 kilometers, 5% from 100-1000 kilometers, only a fraction of a percent beyond that. About 1O-30% of any given maria soil sample is of highland type. Most of the fine pulverizing comes from on-the-spot micrometeorite bombardment, a very slow process taking some 1O million years to thoroughly 'garden' the upper first centimeter.

Contents of this issue of Moon Miners' Manifesto