This is a tightened version of the talk I gave for Chai and Why, a series of popular science talks organized by Arnab Bhattacharya, a scientist and a science communicator based out of India. Check out the past 10 years of Chai and Why videos on their channel.

Brief: It’s been 50 years since humans landed on the Moon, so why haven’t we established a human settlement there already? The answer lies in water. Chandrayaan 1 made headlines by discovering water on the Moon. But do we have the technology to extract it? Is there enough water to power human settlements? Chandrayaan 2 and NASA are finding out! Every so often there is a discovery of water on some part of the moon, what’s the deal with that? Let’s discuss the technological roadblocks that keep us from living on the Moon and beyond!

Timestamps:

• 02:11 – Talk intro

• 08:19 – Locations of past Moon landing missions

• 11:07 – What’s so special about the polar regions on the Moon?

• 15:28 – All about that water on the Moon

• 26:13 – How much water is there on the Moon exactly?

• 28:37 – Challenges in tapping the Moon water

• 38:11 – Q&A

Learn more about the Moon on my curated Moon page.