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The moon as you've never seen it before
- iwwr 16y ago"Because the moon's rotational axis is tilted by only 1.54 degrees (compared to Earth's 23.5 degrees), some areas near its poles are left in permanent shadow, while nearby regions remain sunlit for most of the year." That's interesting, I wonder if you can energetically exploit the temperature difference between such regions if they are close together.
- kingsidharth 16y agoWouldn't that be too expensive a project to go all the way to moon to exploit these points of temperature difference?
- maeon3 16y agoThe best hope humans have for space exploration is a space arms race. You want space exploration? Then go to China and get them put some weapons ready for launch on the moon. That will cause US military operations on the moon inside 2 years. And the units will hunger for services. If the US is going to go broke with constant war, we might as well explore the space battlefield while we are at it.
- eru 16y agoSo much for government space exploration. I hope that private initiatives will take over.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThe best hope humans have for space colonization is increasing the wealth of human civilization (which is already happening at an exponential rate). Over time the relative cost of manned space exploration drops, more so as technology improves. It's just a matter of time until it hits a threshold of self-sustaining criticality (we may already be past that threshold today, but it's a little too soon to tell).
- yters 16y agoI don't get why people care about space exploration. And, a space arms race is only going to see how best to create satellite weapons. There isn't much point to go out further than that, unless we want to drop the moon on someone. Much better is sea exploration: 70% of the earth and much more material for living.
- dwc 16y agoThat's a little backward. If you were going to the moon (either human or robotic) and wanted to operate there for any significant length of time then it becomes desirable to have a source of renewable power on site.
- Florin_Andrei 16y agoI'm pretty sure such regions could be just a few meters away from each other - the two sides of a hill crest. Remember, there's no atmosphere, and the day is 14 earth days.
- Avshalom 16y agoYes, but. Yes, but without an atmosphere it's pretty likely that the cold side of your thermocouple/heat engine/what have you will lose heat slower than gaining it and the whole system will stop working too quickly to be worth it.