RSC Blog

I’ve had a very productive morning. I worked out that, under reasonable conditions, an entire Association Football-approved pitch worth of lunar soil would need to be processed every 16 hours to provide enough water for one person to live relatively comfortably. Water-wise, that is.

The media has happily announced the scientific community’s plans to colonise the Moon, with the recent discovery of significant quantities of water hidden away in Moondust (or whatever it’s called).

A refuelling station, or a full-blown colony for lunar settlers, seems almost within grasp… sort of.

Mark Henderson wrote a great piece in today’s Times titled “Water, water everywhere, but the Moon is still drier than a desert.” I read this as I was putting the finishing touches to my incredibly nerdy spreadsheet, and it verified my own calculations that colonising the Moon is still further away than we’d all hope.

Given that water is contained only within the top few millimetres of soil on the Moon’s surface (source: The Times), that there is a litre or so of water in each metre cubed of soil (source: Science) and that the average colonist would need roughly 4 litres per day to survive in relative comfort (source: a Battlestar Galactica discussion forum), I came up with the following rather arresting stats:

• For each “colonist”, a football pitch’s worth of soil would need to be processed every 16 hours
• This is 12 metric tons of soil
• For a year this is 6510 metric tons, or 545 football pitches
• After this time, at maximum walking speed on the Moon and assuming you worked outwards from your initial location, it would take you 13.4 minutes to walk the two-thirds of a mile to the edge so you could brush your teeth that morning
• It would take 10 million years for that person to use all the water on the Moon
• By this time he would be very lonely and probably not smell very fresh

This is all based on many variables pulled from all over the net, and some I’ve just made up – for example it’s based on 75% extraction efficiency. Who knows if that’s entirely over- or under-estimating what would be realistic?

It also completely ignores other uses for that water, as suggested by the media, such as being electrolysed for use as rocket fuel.

The spreadsheet is on Google Docs so anyone can have a go. Please feel free to fiddle about, and let me know if any of it’s completely wrong or you have better ideas. Any better estimations of the variables would be welcome, but one thing’s for sure: we aren’t going to have self-sustaining colonies up there any time soon.

link to the Google Docs Spreadsheet

50 years ago Alfred Hitchcock shot a film that would go down in history: Psycho. Starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, one scene in particular has become universally recognisable.

As Marion (Leigh) showers, a shadowy figure is seen through the shower curtain. The curtain is thrown back by the faceless figure, knife poised to strike, and Marion lets rip that famous bloodcurdling scream, as her attacker repeatedly stabs her to the backdrop of the now infamous orchestral stings.

It’s been recreated and parodied many times, but for some reason no-one has focused on the most important issue: such an indulgent shower is wasting a lot of water and setting a bad example.

Research we conducted previously with Ipsos MORI said that Britons (especially women) were among the most negligent showerers in Europe, with our French, German and Spanish neighbours being far more concerned about the amount of water wasted and composition of various soaps and gels we wash down the plughole.

So to draw attention to the plight, and attempt to remedy it, we’re looking for someone to fill the shoes… err… the role of Janet Leigh, and take part in a tasteful remake of the scene, to be titled Shower Murder.

The film will be a sixty-second video showing how one can shower effectively in one minute without wasting water. If you feel you’re the one for the role, send an email with a passport photo to elliotts at rsc dot org.