[Issue #2]
>/ - That prior to landing a probe on the moon NASA expected there would
>/   be 70ft of fine dust on the surface.

>From Merritt's FAQ:
>
>}  - Lunar dust--only 1 to 3 inches, not 54 feet.
>
>The calculation you refer to is given by Henry Morris on pp.
>151-153 of _Scientific Creationism_. It is based on a grossly erroneous
>figure of 14 million tons of meteoritic dust per year, quoted by Petterson
>in 1960. Morris misinterpreted Petterson's article. Petterson published a
>figure of 15 (not 14) million tons per year as an _upper limit_. In
>other words, Petterson said that the value is _not more than_ 15 million
>tons per year. He was not able to measure an actual value. Morris
>erroneously chose to interpret it to mean it was _equal_ to 14
>million tons per year. Accurate values were measured in the late
>1960's. The actual value is much lower than 15 million tons per year.
>Dalrymple gives the value of 22,000 tons per year, nearly 700 times
>smaller than your figure. That changes your 54 foot figure into about
>2 cm, which is quite consistent with the amount of surface soil the
>astronauts found on the Moon (it was considerably more than 1-2 mm).
>
>My copy of "Everyman's Astronomy" indicates that the earth collects
>about 9000 kg per day from meteors of visual magnitude 5.0 or brighter.
>Assuming a typical rock density of 3 g/cc, this corresponds to an
>accumulation rate of one inch per 10 billion years.  Unfortunately no
>data is presented for fainter meteors.  I wouldn't be surprised to find
>that the actual rate is one or two orders of magnitude higher, but "1
>inch in 8000 years" is off by six orders of magnitude.
>
>A dust accumulation rate of "one inch per 8000 years" should should
>create a spectacular year round meteor shower, and cause severe pitting
>of the space shuttle windshields in just a single orbit.  My quick estimates
>give values far higher than have been actually observed.
>
For what it's worth, my own research (never to be published, but there is
literature on levitating dust on the moon) indicates that the ionizing
radiation hitting the moon creates a plasma which is swept by the terminator
into the solar wind.  In other words, the moon suffers continuous loss
of dust mass.
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