The absence of oxygen-bearing atmosphere on the moon has been a great challenge to the feasibility of establishing a lunar base. Ferrying stored oxygen to such a base is feasible — but a costly proposition, at up to $100 per ton. Thus, the space agencies have been looking for ways to extract oxygen from the moon's own surface. In 2005, NASA established a $250,000 prize for a feasible, scalable method of oxygen extraction, but even with the prize money raised to a million dollars last year, no one has succeeded. Until now.

A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge has built a reactor that strips oxygen from moon rocks, in much the same way metal is extracted from terrestrial rocks. Their machine is able to extract nearly 100 percent of oxygen, yielding one ton of oxygen for every three tons of moon rocks.

The best part of the process is the expense of operation. The reactor could be shipped disassembled, and built on the moon, and it uses roughly the same amount of energy as a home water heater, energy which could be supplied by solar panels or a nuclear reactor placed in the base. The European Space Agency is now working with the team to create a larger, remotely operable prototype, and bring us one step close to a lunar base.

How to breathe on the Moon [Nature via Popular Science]

Japan has made the development of space elevator technology a priority as part of the country's long-term space development plans. The Japan Space Elevator Association was created to promote and educate the public on the creation of a space elevator:

Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons — will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.

The JSEA believes that the entire space elevator could eventually be constructed for as little as one trillion yen (less than $10 billion). The elevator presents certain engineering challenges that have yet to be solved, but Japan is drawing on a wide range of industries to tackle them:

The biggest obstacle lies in the cables. To extend the elevator to a stationary satellite from the Earth's surface would require twice that length of cable to reach a counterweight, ensuring that the cable maintains its tension.

The cable must be exceptionally light, staggeringly strong and able to withstand all projectiles thrown at it inside and outside the atmosphere. The answer, according to the groups working on designs, will lie in carbon nanotubes - microscopic particles that can be formed into fibres and whose mass production is now a focus of Japan's big textile companies...

Equally, there is the issue of powering the carriages as they climb into space. “We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains,” Professor [Yoshio] Aoki said. “Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route.”

At July's 2008 Space Elevator Conference, the Japanese team made a splash by presenting a working model of a space elevator constructed from Lego blocks. The JSEA will be hosting its own space elevator conference in November and is working to launch its own space elevator games in 2009.

Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars [Times Online]

Honeybee Robotics, which has been contracted to develop tools for the eventual lunar outpost, is creating an excavation mechanism with an eye toward employing lunar dirt for as many uses as possible:

Once the device has sucked up lunar dirt, or regolith, this material could be conveniently diverted and used as a protective covering over homes (regolith is good for shielding from radiation). The dirt could also be processed to extract the oxygen bound up in its minerals…

[I]nstead of carting up heavy water, astronauts could travel with hydrogen, and then add oxygen later. Since oxygen is the heavier ingredient in water, and it can be extracted from the surface, this approach saves precious cargo weight.

And once a store of water has been created for the lunar colony, most of it can be recycled without having to create more from scratch.

But the panacea of moon dust is not without its drawbacks:

Moon dwellers will also have to contend with the ubiquitous dust on the surface of the moon, which gets into everything and can wear down joints and connectors and prevent sealing off doors. It also poses a health risk to people, as it can cause breathing problems and is difficult to filter out of habitats.

How to Build Lunar Homes From Moon Dirt [LiveScience]

Image by Jeroen Lapre.