Skylight for a moon colony.

[skeptical]

A tunnel down into the moon, 88 metres deep, has been photographed.
First Moon "Skylight" Found -- Could House Lunar Base?

What a wonderful opportunity for the first moon colony! Dig a couple of tunnels sideways from the bottom of this hole, if they do not already exist, seal it off, and add air. Radiation proof and micro-meteorite proof. Home away from home!

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

I'll say the same thing as I did in the space hotel thread.


Another silly way for silly rich people to spend their hard-stolen money. A moon colony, really. *Shakes head* I'd never be caught dead in a place like that; it would have absolutely no atmosphere.

 

[Sparrow]

And this "Moon Colony" would be there to do what?

Would this mind-numbingly expensive project have any real world value?





Guess what, we just broke the 12 Trillion mark!..

http://zfacts.com/p/461.html

... that's right gang, America has 12 Trillion in National Debt. And what's the first thing that comes to mind, gosh damn it let's start a colony on the Moon!

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

And this "Moon Colony" would be there to do what?

Would this mind-numbingly expensive project have any real world value?





Guess what, we just broke the 12 Trillion mark!..

U.S. National Debt: 11.4 Trillion & Clicking

... that's right gang, America has 12 Trillion in National Debt. And what's the first thing that comes to mind, gosh damn it let's start a colony on the Moon!

My thoughts exactly, Sparrow. I support Obama but the way some of those government agencies spend money is beyond ludicrously ridiculous. Money that could have gone towards health care or education or to support the country's work force....did it go to any of that? No....it's going to a useless moon colony.

 

[The Judge]

Well, I can think of some people I'd like to send there...

 

[skeptical]

Respectfully, I would have to say that the previous comments are utterly premature.

First : the skylight is an opportunity for a moon colony. No-one has yet proposed such a thing.
Second : Any such development would be long term. It will take something like 3 decades minimum, if not more.
Third : Even though the cost of a moon colony would be mega-billions, it is absolutely a pittance compared to what the USA is spending on overseas military adventures, and on bailing out corrupt and failed corporations.
Fourth : What is its value? It is a stepping stone on the way to humankind's greatest adventure - the move off planet Earth. Stephen Hawking stated that such a development is the only way to ensure the survival of the human species long term. I would add, that when we move to other worlds, we will take our ecosystem with us (trees, bacteria, plants, animals), and this will ensure the long term survival of Earth life as a whole.

I wish that a moon colony already existed, and had reached a point where it was self sufficient. There are numerous disasters that can strike Planet Earth, and many are human generated. We need insurance.

If we think long term (tens of thousands of years) we can see the future of our species as out in the Milky Way galaxy. This, if and when it happens, is only the start.

 

[Nik]

Well, I doubt we'll get there, but our grand-children may.

Uh, IMHO, current rocketry is still akin to those ancient reed-rafts that shed as they went...

Per comments in parallel thread on what NASA should do next ( IMHO, resign themselves to basic research and museum curating ;-) the next decade may see a sea-change.

By 2020, we'll know if this generation of controlled fusion designs will work: ITER, Polywell, whatever. Need nuclear power to go interplanetary efficiently, and launching fission-cores is barred by treaties. Fusion should be okay.

Again, by 2020, we should know if Skylon's Sabre engine is practicable. Runway to orbit to runway, easy-peasy. Assemble ships in orbit, per ISS' Canadarm grabbing Japanese supply module...

D'uh, there's still a role for mostly-expendable heavy-lift launchers, but anything smaller is a sounding-rocket or pure vanity...

 

[skeptical]

Nik

Your time scale beautifully fits the bill for a moon colony. We aint gonna live on the moon for some decades. However, given 3 or more decades, we should have much better Earth to orbit shuttles, and we should be able to design and build craft that travel in space, but never land in a gravity well.

The idea of old fashioned chemical rockets for trips from Earth orbit to the moon or to Mars is just ridiculous. The best option with today's technology is ion drive engines. The best arrangement would be a shuttle craft for Earth to orbit and back, and a rendezvous with a craft designed for deep space travel. It will, in turn, rendezvous with a craft designed specifically for lunar surface to lunar orbit and back.

Sadly, it will take some decades before this happens. As Nik said, it may benefit our Great Grandchildren.

 

[Ursa major]

I knew Saddam was hiding that supergun somewhere....


That's a very interesting discovery. (Thanks for posting it, skeptical.) As is that statement that they think that there may have been volcanic activity on the Moon as recently as 2.5 million years ago; I hadn't heard about that until now.

 

[dustinzgirl]

The moon is rich in titanium and magnesium and iron and aluminum and possibly other deep minerals we don't know about since we haven't drilled there yet. Hell, there could always be oil on the moon too.

There is real value on the moon.

Not to mention that it can be used for storing hazardous wastes instead of the earth since the moon has no indigenous life forms. Also, hazardous manufacturing could be done on the moon and thus contain accidents from the rest of the population. There's a good article called the Management of Hazardous Materials for Manufacturing that you can probably google that explains many of the hazards to manufacturing workers that can happen during manufacturing and often do happen.

Another benefit of a lunar colony is preparing our race for venturing to outer space and setting up other colonies, for example on some of Jupiter's moons, some of which have moving water under deep ice and an atmosphere and thus may have indigenous life forms.

And another thing, you know, there are lots of things that have no real world value. I think we should just get rid of all the arts and music programs too. I mean, really they have no real value and those arts and music grants are eating up money that can go to pay the ridiculous national debt.

 

[skeptical]

DG

I agree that there is real value on the moon. But dumping Earthly hazardous waste is not it. The cost per kilogram rules that out entirely.

I read a very disquieting article a while back, about the risks of the Large Hadron Collider now getting ready to fire. Most of you guys will know of the people who tried to stop it in court, because they feared it would create a mini-black hole or strangelet that would swallow the Earth. The scientists involved calculated a risk one 1 in 2 million.

However, the article I read pointed out that the people calculating the risk were totally biased towards the LHC and would have used the most LHC friendly assumptions in their calculations. The author suggested that they were the wrong people to do a risk assessment, and that an independent assessment would probably have come up with a risk of perhaps 1 in 10,000 or less. If he is correct, this is an utterly unacceptable risk. Gaining a little knowledge 100 years earlier than we might otherwise have done, versus the risk of totally destroying the Earth, all of humanity and all of Earth life???

However, the moon would be the ideal place for the LHC. It could not be built for another 100 years, since the moon would have to have reasonably sophisticated manufacturing. But think of the advantages! No need for tunnels. Vacuum already there to be used. Minimal gravity, reducing the need for heavy structural elements. All the space you need without bumping into humanity. And if the worst happened, we would have a black hole orbiting Earth. That's all!

 

[dustinzgirl]

Well with increased traffic the cost would go down, plus the companies manufacturing waste would have to foot the cost.

But yes, there are other ideas that could help preserve this environment.

 

[Drachir]

Hell, there could always be oil on the moon too.

Not oil DG - oil requires an accumulation of organic matter as as far as I know there has never been life on the moon. Other than US astronauts, of course.

 

[dustinzgirl]

Not oil DG - oil requires an accumulation of organic matter as as far as I know there has never been life on the moon. Other than US astronauts, of course.

As far as we know.....but we'll never find out.....if we don't explore.

Also, one of my favorite lunar theories is about the moon breaking off from the earth in its earliest formation days, which may mean that other minerals or chemicals or whatever you want to call it that we don't know about are on the moon.

Oil may also be made by hydrocarbon at massively high compression and heat, which may exist at the core of the moon as well as other places out there. Non-biological oil is found at some of the deepest points of the ocean vent thingies.

So its possible.

 

[Vladd67]

And if the worst happened, we would have a black hole orbiting Earth. That's all!

That's all? I don't think a black hole orbiting the earth would be much different from a small black hole on earth.

 

[Urien]

You're all missing the truth.

The tunnel is the first burrowing of intelligent super-gigantic interstellar termites. They're down there I tell you. And they're watching us, and breeding, and breeding. Soon a cloud will form around the moon, a cloud moving towards us. Then the winged horrors will descend and unless we know the telephone number of an intergalactic exterminater it's going to be a pulpy time on Old Earth.

 

[chrispenycate]

That's all? I don't think a black hole orbiting the earth would be much different from a small black hole on earth.

Very different. If it is out of Earth's atmosphere, it can't start eating extra matter, and putting on weight. Since the overall mass wouldn't change, it wouldn't even modify the tides.

But this two million to one risk (which I consider absurdly pessimistic, by the way, although I admit there is no way of measuring the risk when there are so many unknown factors) takes no account of the time factor. Even if it did turn out that the thing turned out pico black holes, a hundred thousand years before they start to annoy anyone is a low estimate. I've seen the power cables leading to the installations; you're not going to get more than a microgram of energy through those (yeah, I know it should be in micrograms per second, but they store it up for long periods and let it out al at once). Particles more energetic than this hit the upper atmosphere every day, and, despite losing mass to Cherenkov radiation, a fair few of them reach the Earth's surface (they've got novae and proper black holes to generate them), without triggering a positive feedback collapse of the planet.

And when they exploded the hydrogen bomb in Bikini, they thought there was a one in fifteen thousand chance of starting a chain reaction in the ocean, and turning the Earth into a very small (and extremely short lived) star, but being military they didn't need the approval of the masses to go ahead.

That would have been a considerably faster end.

 

[Sparrow]

skeptical ~Fourth : What is its value? It is a stepping stone on the way to humankind's greatest adventure - the move off planet Earth. Stephen Hawking stated that such a development is the only way to ensure the survival of the human species long term. I would add, that when we move to other worlds, we will take our ecosystem with us (trees, bacteria, plants, animals), and this will ensure the long term survival of Earth life as a whole.

Oh my goodness, where to even begin...

First, a few words on Mr.Hawking... I have had it upto my gills with that fear mongering 'The End is Nigh'(again), preachy, overrated, Christian thinker. His sloppy cosmology only sounds good if you've checked your brain at the door and you're willing to fill all his theoretical holes with shoddy notions of 'Intelligent Design'. How is it the scientific community look the other way when he writes, "Yet it appears that God chose to make it [the universe] evolve in a very regular way, according to certain laws"...

The Universe has no goal, no mind, no conscience, it does not endeavor to make the perfect omelet.

The final sentence of A Briefer History reads: "If we find the answer to that (why we exist), it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".

What!

People, just because you conjure up Stephen Hawking to make a point, it doesn't make that point any more or less viable. Stephen Hawking is a fraud.




And Mr.Skeptical, taking our plants and animals "ecosystem", as you call it, with us to another planet, would be the very essence of insanity.

 

[skeptical]

Vladd

If the moon turned into a black hole, the only difference we would notice, here on the ground, is that we could no longer see it, and there would be no moonlight. A loss, sure, but not a catastrophe. It would still raise tides, and have all its normal gravitational effects.

The moon is slowly moving away from the Earth (over many millions of years) and a moon sized black hole would do the same. The only disasters it would cause would be if an astronaut fell into the black hole.

Chris

I agree that the probability of the LHC causing a massive disaster is small. Where we might be in trouble is if something happens based on unknown science. Known science can predict certain things, but scientific research always turns up the unexpected. If the unexpected from the LHC happened to be lethal ....
The biggest comfort to me is the fact of high energy cosmic ray charged particles. However, there is no guarantee that the conditions within the LHC are exactly the same as those of cosmic ray impact, and something different might happen. If we knew what it was, there would be no risk. I am not paranoid about this - just skeptical of the odds as calculated by the very biased LHC scientists.

Sparrow
I did not say Stephen Hawking was infallible. Just used a quote from him to illustrate a point. Hawking, whatever his religious beliefs, is still a mega genius. His mathematical brain is a once per 100 years event, and he compares closest to Einstein. That does not make him infallible, but we still need to take heed when he say something.

On taking plants and animals with us out into the wider universe.
It will happen. Initially we will take genetically modified green algae to replenish oxygen atmospheres and remove CO2. We will use bacteria to destroy waste. Eventually, we will plant food bearing green plants in ground up rock mixed with bacteria treated waste to produce food and replenish atmospheres. We will introduce pollinating insects to increase yields. etc. etc.

It is inevitable that, when humanity terraforms other planets we will introduce Earth bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, plants and animals. Terraforming requires a new ecosystem to be established.

 

[dustinzgirl]

The Universe has no goal, no mind, no conscience, it does not endeavor to make the perfect omelet.

Prove it.

And where do you have your cosmology degree from? Or astronomy degree? Physics degree?