How to make oxygen on the moon

[eppur_se_muova]

2. A shame science journos seem terrified of including details of things like chemistry and math ...

... because they know much of the American (and British??) public is hopelessly ignorant on those topics. MAYBE if they tried spreading some of that knowledge through their articles, the problem could be alleviated a bit ! Whatever happened to the noble calling of EXPLAINING the news to your readers ? Where is the editor calling to "put some flesh on those scrawny bones !"?

Here, they describe the process as a "carbothermal process" -- any chemist or metallurgist can guess what that implies, but most others can't -- and assure us "the carbon can be recycled", with no remote suggestion of how (will that require a wholly different technology?). Unless they're protecting a patentable process (and, to make allowances, they very well might be, which they could mention in the article), they should expound on these in more detail, limited attention spans (theirs or ours) be damned.