Posted on 01/17/2018 7:58:00 PM PST by MtnClimber
When is a discovery not a discovery? When it’s just plain wrong.
or decades, the idea of useable caves on the Moon has been studied and discussed at various venues and science gatherings. Our fascination with the availability of underground planetary structures stems from the possible benefits such features may afford humans trying to live in an off-world, hostile environment. Humans are vulnerable on the Moon because it lacks the protective atmosphere and magnetosphere that we enjoy here on Earth. A thick layer of solid rock provides protection for people and equipment from galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events, and thus, a lunar lava tube cave becomes a very attractive place. In addition, as rock is a good thermal insulator, an underground void space most likely would be thermally stable, lacking the enormous temperature swings (more than 250° C) of the lunar surface.
In addition to providing shielding from radiation, the interiors of lunar lava caves would be very cold (probably around -100° C), possibly preserving trapped volatiles. If such water deposition occurs, it would be an extremely slow process. There is no groundwater on the Moon; water is added by impacting objects. Thus, any addition of water comes in the form of vapor, most of it lost to space and the remainder finding its way into lava tubes or permanently dark craters at the poles.
The poles are attractive destinations because of the water ice residing in the permanently dark craters close (~100-200 km) to the poles. Due to the obliquity of the spin axis of the Moon, the sun doesn’t rise and set here, but circles around just above the horizon, maintaining a near constant surface temperature of about -50° C. The interiors of polar craters act as cold traps, accumulating water ice for billions of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at airspacemag.com ...
Most Sci-fi gets it wrong. Extra-terrestrial planets and moons will not be major colonies. At best, they will provide materials for the real colonies, and that function will be 99.999% automated. We’ll hollow out moons and asteroids while we build gigantic ribbons of much more pleasant habitrails across the star system.
Coffins apartments in big cities have no windows.
They have no trees, no ground, no dirt, no grass, no rocks, only steel.
On airless surfaces like the moon, glass made there would be stronger than steel because it would have no air in it.
You’d have to be disturbed to trade living in beautiful England for the desolation of the New World...
All those craters waiting to be filled with $#!T...
People moved from rural areas to cities and now live in high-rise apartments. The only time they go outside is to go indoors somewhere else.
Would you trade the relative comfort of living in a tenement in a major city to living out in the middle of nowhere in a sod house? Many of our ancestors did.
Going to a new continent overflowing with untapped natural resources, food and free land, is quite different than landing on a barren planet where every single thing keeping you alive has to be imported from earth.
They may be interesting and exciting places to visit, but I sure wouldn’t want to be stuck in a glassed in hut waiting on the next multi-billion dollar rocket to return with a pallet of food, water, oxygen, TP, duct tape, and the latest from Netflix.
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