Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Why the heck would you want to dive down a gravity well in the first place?

Tom is wrong
gbaikie — (archived)

"The measured abundance of the lunar atmosphere is about 200,000 molecules per cubic centimeter at night. This is about 100 trillion (14 orders of magnitude) times less than in Earth's atmosphere. For most gases, the abundance is lower in the day than at night. Because of this very low abundance, the Moon's atmosphere is easily susceptible to contamination by human activities. The total mass of the Moon's atmosphere is estimated to be just 10,000 kilograms, which is comparable to the amount of gas released (primarily as rocket exhaust) by each Apollo landing. "
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo15/A15_Experiments_CCG.html

As it says in above post: "The best vacuums available on Earth are less than 10 -8 Pa, less than 10e-13 atmospheres!"
The moon is definitely a Ultra-High Vacuum.
Some might think that with a lot of commerical flights to the Moon that this vacuum would be seriously degraded. But don't think this would neccessarily be true, especially if LH&LOX is used for rocket fuel.
One reason I say this is because the Moon is constantly receiving and outgasing large quantities of gases. I don't have number, I don't think it less than say amount gases 100 rockets landing and leaving the moon would make [though of course it would measurably increase Moon's atmophere].

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