00:03A 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.
00:12And now at least one of those issues might have been solved.
00:15How?
00:16By literally turning moon rocks into oxygen.
00:18According to the conversation, the moon surface regolith contains largely silica, aluminum
00:23and 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 O2 to
00:38keep billions of people breathing for 100,000 years.
00:41Sounds pretty good.
00:42But there's 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 useful
00:56building material on the moon.
00:57The only real hurdle in the oxygen making process?
01:00Getting an industrial sized electrolysis machine?
01:02From here, all the way to the moon.
