Adin's Process and the Adin Beam

(see: Interspex, by Clark Nida)

Water is scarce on the Moon. It may not be present naturally in sufficient quantities to support a significant population. The story assumes this is the case—and makes provision for getting it there.

How? By harvesting the solar wind.

Now hang on a minute! The solar wind is incredibly tenous: around three or four protons per cubic centimetre of space in the neighbourhood of Earth.

But these protons are moving fast and in one second a 400-800 km column of them flies through that cubic centimetre.

Water (H₂O) is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is as abundant in Moon rock as it is in the earth's crust, i.e. very. So all that's needed is energy, lots of it, to break down "sial" and "sima", the oxides of silicon, aluminium and magnesium which make up moon rock. Plus hydrogen.

Now what does ionised hydrogen consist of? Protons. And the solar wind, if harvested over a wide enough area, gives us protons: very, very energetic protons.

Interspex introduces these terms to the world:

An Adin Beam is a beam of protons focussed from the solar wind by means of a Fresnel lens of concentric superconducting rings placed at the L4 and L5 libration points of the Earth-Moon system. These focus the beam onto a series of orbiting collimators as they come past. The collimator, or Adin satellite, directs it to a precise surface target.

Adin’s Process is the chemical process of making water on the Moon by directing an Adin Beam onto the surface to react with moon rock.

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