How will we have a bunch of commotion up there and not kick up a lot of dust that doesn’t fall out of the air quickly?
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There is gravity on the moon. There is insufficient atmosphere or wind to keep the dust particles suspended. All the astronauts would have to be wearing protective suits and breathing gear. Of course, dust can fall into exposed mechanisms and equipment, but that is a problem already solved on earth.
>How will we have a bunch of commotion up there and not kick up a lot of dust that doesn’t fall out of the air quickly?
There’s *always* a large cloud of dust surrounding the moon.
Even the very first mission had huge problems with dust getting in everything.
The new missions aren’t going to actually change anything.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/dust-floats-above-lunar-surface-electrostatic-dust-transport-reshapes-surfaces-of-airless/
Yeah, I’ve read it’s a huge problem. Not necessarily for that reason though.
>Dust mitigation has been an issue for NASA since Apollo. When astronauts were entering and exiting the lunar module, dust got everywhere – it clogged mechanisms, interfered with instruments, caused radiators to overheat and even tore up their spacesuits.
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>“We learned from Apollo that lunar dust can be less than 20 microns (about 0.00078 inches) in size,” said Sharon Miller, the passive dust shedding material program’s principal investigator at NASA Glenn. “The dust is very fine, abrasive and sharp, like tiny pieces of glass, making it more of a dangerous threat than just a simple nuisance.”
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>Fifty years later, the challenges of dust are greater for long-term exploration and sustainability on the Moon, as well as future human exploration of Mars.
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>[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/glenn/2021/dust-an-out-of-this-world-problem](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/glenn/2021/dust-an-out-of-this-world-problem)
The moon dust is tiny and super sharp. Chews everything up. So yeah, dust is a big problem.
Any moon base will have some sort of serious dust filtering. Earth dust/sand is worn down by air and water. Moon dust is very sharp and nasty to breathe.
To make it even worse, the moondust gets constantly bombarded by the solar wind, so it’s got a small electrostatic charge. It clings to everything.
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