Comment Re:Not enough (Score 1) 251
The water found in these missions is not *necessarily* in small quantities. The research shows that it is present at the near surface, but no one has any clue as to the depth to which it extends. The assumption is being made that the water accumulated there from comet deposition, but there are other mechanisms for water delivery to the surface. A paper posted to the pre-prints server recently shows that there is evidence for water vapor in the interior of the moon that is slowing leaking out along with other volatiles. As the gases reach the upper layers of the regolith, the water freezes out and gets stuck there. Over the course of a few billion years, even a small gas leakage rate could produce large slabs of ice below the surface, exactly the kind of thing that these results confirm. Anyway, it's an interesting idea...
Here is the paper:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0909.3832