00:00A moon base is very much in humanity's future, but it's not without its problems.
00:08We need to be able to find or make water and air on our only natural satellite, and now
00:13at least one of those issues might have been solved.
00:15How?
00:16By literally turning moon rocks into oxygen.
00:19According to the conversation, the moon's surface regolith contains largely silica,
00:22aluminum, and iron and magnesium oxides.
00:25While that might not sound like a massive discovery, all of these minerals contain oxygen
00:28in solid form, at least in part.
00:31So how big a part?
00:32Apparently, the moon's regolith is about 45% oxygen, or what experts say is enough
00:37O2 to keep billions of people breathing for 100,000 years.
00:41Sounds pretty good.
00:42But there is still the not-so-little matter of getting that oxygen out of the rock and
00:46into our lungs.
00:47The good news is we already have a process for that, which is actually used when producing
00:50aluminum.
00:51The better news is that by extracting the oxygen, we would be creating aluminum, a no-doubt
00:55useful building material on the moon.
00:57The only real hurdle in the oxygen-making process?
01:00Getting an industrial-sized electrolysis machine?
01:03From here, all the way to the moon.
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