Amid the hurly-burly of presidential dropouts, attempted presidential assassinations, and novel presidential conventions, the gears of Washington grind on.  A sideline moment of the winding last…

Water purification is a big business on Earth. Companies offer everything from desalination to providing just the right pH level for drinking water. But on the Moon, there won’t be a similar technical infrastructure to support the astronauts attempting to make a permanent base there. And there’s one particular material that will make water purification even harder – Moon dust.  We’ve reported plenty of times about the health problems caused by the lunar regolith, so it seems apparent that you don’t want to drink it. Even more so, the abrasive dust can cause issues with seals, such as those used in electrolyzers to create rocket fuel out of in-situ water resources. It can even adversely affect water purification equipment itself.  Unfortunately, this contamination is inevitable. Lunar dust is far too adhesive and electrostatically charged to be kept completely separate from the machinery that would recycle or purify the water. So, a group of researchers from DLR in Germany decided to test what would happen if you intentionally dissolved lunar regolith. Fraser interviews Dr. Kevin Cannon, an expert in lunar dust mitigation. The short answer is, unsurprisingly, nothing good. Dissolved lunar regolith causes pH, turbidity, and aluminum concentrations all exceed World Health Organization benchmarks for safe drinking water. This happened even with short exposure times (2 minutes) and static pH values, as they used a 5.5 pH buffer in part of the experiments.  They didn’t use actual lunar dust for these experiments, but a simulant modeled on the regolith returned during the Apollo 16 mission. It mimics the regolith that is thought to be most similar to the Artemis landing sites. In addition to the pH changes and the amount of exposure time (which went up to 72 hours), the authors also varied the amount of dissolved oxygen in the system and the particle size of the simulant. Those negative results occurred for every test variation, no matter what combination of the four control variables was used. Ultimately, that means engineers will have to devise a system to filter the water from these deposits before it can be recycled into the overall water system. After taking the first boot print photo, astronaut Buzz Aldrin moved closer to the little rock and took this second shot. His boot was already completely covered in adhesive dust.Credit: NASA The paper explored some potential solutions for that water purification system. Each of the limits that were violated requires its purification methodology. In the author’s estimation, lowering the turbidity is the first requirement. To do so, they suggest doing standard filtration or allowing the dust particles to settle.  Removing aluminum is next in importance, with another experiment showing that plants that grew in lunar soil showed signs of aluminum toxicity. Additional ions, including calcium, iron, and manganese, also need to be removed, as they were above acceptable levels in some test batches but not all. Removing these ions would require a reverse osmosis process or ion exchange. Ion removal is vital to a fully functional electrolyzer system as well.  The authors seemed to be ultimately going after a platform to test and validate water purification processes for future lunar exploration missions. Given the results from their experimentation, there will undoubtedly be future rounds of testing and plenty of technology development to work on solving these technical challenges. Ultimately, astronauts will have to drink water on the Moon – and it won’t be coming just from bottles from Earth. Learn More:Freer, Pesch, & Zabel – Experimental study to characterize water contaminated by lunar dustUT – The Moon Is ToxicUT – Astronauts Will Be Tracking Dust Into the Lunar Gateway. Is This a Problem?UT – Lunar Dust is Still One of The Biggest Challenges Facing Moon Exploration Lead Image:Turbidity samples of some of the dissolved regolith.Credit – Freer, Pesch, & Zabel The post Moon Dust Could Contaminate Lunar Explorers’ Water Supply appeared first on Universe Today.

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Politics Gaetz Ethics Inquiry Takes Dubious Turn Is an advocate of foreign policy restraint being railroaded? Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images Amid the hurly-burly of presidential dropouts, attempted presidential assassinations, and novel presidential conventions, the gears of Washington grind on.  A sideline moment of the winding last week in Wisconsin was a direct confrontation between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and his pet aversion, the former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.  “What night are you speaking?” Gaetz quizzed McCarthy. “Are you speaking tonight?”  “If you took that stage, you would get booed off of it,” he added. “You would get booed off the stage.” In a game-after interview with CNN, McCarthy shot back: “[Gaetz] looks very unhinged.”  The representative from Florida’s First District, of course, led the successful charge last autumn to defenestrate the then-speaker. Gaetz alleged a panoply of heresies—spending issues, foreign policy, etc—where McCarthy was said to be deficient in comparison to alternatives.  Gaetz eventually backed now-Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).  McCarthy, as of late, has said the story is simpler. The Californian wouldn’t stop a House Ethics Committee investigation into years-old allegations against Gaetz (allegations for which he was never charged). But from the outside looking in, McCarthy’s side of the story would seem no clean tale of moral probity.  Far from being above the fray, McCarthy in private life has initiated a “revenge tour” of sorts, attempting to primary his former foes in Congress.  Perhaps most prominently, Charleston-area Congresswoman Nancy Mace—a former McCarthy acolyte turned ally of Gaetz et al.—survived a primary challenge in June. “I want to send him back to the rock he’s living under right now. He’s not part of America.… I hope I drive Kevin McCarthy crazy,” Mace told the Times. Now the primary effort of the hardliners and the ethics investigation against Gaetz have apparently merged.  Congressman David Joyce (R-OH) is a member of the House Ethics Committee, which is probing Gaetz. The American Conservative found financial disclosures that reveal Rep. Joyce’s campaign and his leadership PAC donated a combined $7,000 to Gaetz’s primary challenger, Aaron Dimmock.   For his part, Gaetz told TAC: “It is no surprise to see Mr. Joyce, a stock-trading member of the ethics committee, funding my opponent. The ethics committee was hand picked by McCarthy and they will do his bidding in elections and in their witch hunt coming after me.”  There is evidence here of a $2,000 transaction from Friends of Dave Joyce (his campaign committee) and then $5,000 from Defending American Values Everywhere PAC (DAVE PAC)—his leadership committee. What comes next is unclear.  Depending on what the committee finds (a source close to the matter indicates the likely timeline is “at this rate” after the election), Gaetz could face expulsion from the House. But the stink of potential conflict-of-interest could corrode the legitimacy of any report.  And the political realpolitik is murky. Gaetz is a stalwart ally of Trump, and if the president is re-elected, it would seem unlikely that the first order of the day would be to punish allies based on a potentially tainted report.  If Trump loses, and the Democrats take the House, the precedent of removing a member of Congress who has never been charged with a crime would also weigh heavily. Recent examples such as Rep. George Santos of New York and Rep. James Traficant of Ohio involved situations in which both figures had at least been charged with crimes.   Most serious: There is the question of why Gaetz has been such a focus.  Since at least 2019, Gaetz has set himself apart in advocating for a hardline position of foreign policy restraint, making him a standout in a Trumpian fray that has countenanced hawkish and even neoconservative elements.  “The ‘fog of war’ is no fog to me, or any of the 700,000 people I serve,” Gaetz said five springs ago, when he was beginning to make his mark on this front.  “It is not hazy,” said Gaetz, whose North Florida district has among the highest concentrations of active-duty military in America. “We see the impact of war every day among the people we love who shape our lives.”  Add in the background of Joyce.  Ohio has rising stars on the restraint right such as the vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Rep. Warren Davidson. And the Buckeye state would seem very much at the center of the new Republican politics, as I wrote for the TAC cover piece in the March/April 2024 issue.  But in other ways, Ohio is a vestige of the old guard.  Joyce has contemporaries such as Rep. Mike Turner, the House intel chair, who represents a more establishment perspective. Turner was a sparring partner with former Fox host Tucker Carlson. Turner’s district features an epic military base, “with over 30,000 employees and an annual contribution of $16.68 billion to our regional economy,” per Turner’s own reporting.    Joyce was a prime advocate of the contentious foreign military aid packages to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that passed out in the Spring.  “Today was not only a vote to support our allies when they need it the most, but also a vote to protect America’s national security. China, Russia and Iran are anti-American regimes that have no intent of stopping their aggressions with our allies. They also pose a strong and dangerous threat to Americans here at home,” Joyce said. “This package provides the critical funding necessary for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan to defend their freedom. Something every American should stand for.” For what it’s worth, Gaetz voted against all three of those packages.  The post Gaetz Ethics Inquiry Takes Dubious Turn appeared first on The American Conservative.

The 1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson has some interesting ties to Sharon Stone, Spike Jonze, and Communism.

When he was campaigning for office four years ago, President Joe Biden promised to be "a bridge" to the next generation of leaders. That bridge will be four years shorter than Biden may have planned. Biden, the oldest president in American history at age 81, announced Sunday that he will not seek reelection this year. The announcement ends weeks of speculation about the future of Biden's campaign—and it could kick off a mad scramble to replace Biden on the top of...