Word: lunar
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...terrestrial life is, paradoxically, precisely what makes the moon so potentially valuable. The absence of atmosphere, which exposes any life on the moon to deadly radiation and the inhospitable vacuum of space, also makes the moon an ideal base for observatories and some industries. Meteors which have battered the lunar surface for eons have probably also endowed the moon with immense mineral wealth. Although lunar days and nights are each two weeks long and accompanied by deadly extremes of temperature (ranging from 240 degrees Fahrenheit above zero to 250 below), both the unshielded rays of the sun and the numbing...
Chemical analysis of the samples may also help determine whether lunar material was ever hot enough to have melted, or whether it has been relatively cool almost from the first. Moon specimens strikingly lacking in volatile elements such as potassium and arsenic could indicate that these substances had been expelled by high temperatures?and would support the theory of a volcanic moon. Those who believe that meteors gave the moon its cratered surface might still argue, however, that the volcanism had occurred only in areas struck?and heated?by huge meteors. Studies of the crystal size and average density...
...exciting quest. Biochemists will be examining the specimens for evidence of amino acids and protein molecules?the building blocks of life. Paleontologists will seek fossil remnants of organisms. At NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., still other investigators will try to coax life itself from the lunar rocks, using nutrients in the hope of resuming a life process that might have been interrupted millions of years...
Should there be a major discovery?perhaps even during the preliminary screening of material at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory?NASA is certain to lose no time in announcing the news...
...early visits to the moon will be largely taken up with exploration and scientific studies of the lunar substance and structure. But man will not long be able to resist making practical use of his closest celestial neighbor. As soon as they are able, for example, astronomers will be competing to book passage to the moon. There, freed at last from the obscuring mantle of terrestrial atmosphere, they will immediately get a clearer, more revealing and more leisurely look at the universe around them...