🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <19070@mindlink.bc.ca> Bruce_Dunn@mindlink.bc.ca (Bruce Dunn) writes:
>... have the molten aluminum stored in a spherical steel
>tank pressurized by injecting liquid nitrogen into the tank (which because of
>the heat will immediately vaporize).  Is nitrogen available from the moon?

There's no significant amount of nitrogen on the Moon unless there are
frozen polar volatiles.  You can recover a very little bit from the
regolith, if you're willing to process a lot of regolith.

A note of caution:  you're assuming that nitrogen is an inert gas.  This
isn't necessarily true when hot metals are involved.  I'm not sure about
aluminum, but I know titanium will burn fiercely in nitrogen (in fact,
the ash from titanium burning in air is about 80% titanium nitride).
Without an ignition source, the combination might be stable enough.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry