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I think colonizing the Moon is a good idea must mostly just the south pole to start with. On most of the Moon you have 2 weeks of frigid darkness you where you

I think colonizing the Moon is a good idea must mostly just the south pole to start with. On most of the Moon you have 2 weeks of frigid darkness you where you're living off batteries followed by 2 weeks of intense sunlight. At the peak of eternal light at the south pole you can just slowly turn your solar array 360 degrees over the course of a month and have (nearly) continuous power. There's a big difference between having to have 12 hours of battery power, as on Mars, and 336 hours on the Moon.

tantalor 7y ago
> slowly turn your solar array Sure that's nice but the angle of sunlight is very low so you are limited in that respect, e.g,. available surface area.
- mark-r 7y ago
  There's no atmospheric absorption though, so that would compensate a bit. Building very tall structures would be easy in the low gravity, and you wouldn't need to worry about earthquakes or storms.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    I'd often though that a rail or even cable should be strung to the top of Mt Everest, you'd make a fortune off of it shuttling tourists up and down all day.
    - mark-r 7y ago
      That would be quite the engineering feat - Everest is not exactly construction friendly. Pikes Peak used to have a train going to the top, but they closed it a couple of years ago. https://www.cograilway.com/rates-times.asp https://www.cograilway.com/rates-times.asp
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Do it via a tunnel, like the Eiger Jungfrau line. That way you won't have weather problems.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  Then do not turn the array and do not put it at the pole. Build a ring of static solar collectors at some respectable km distance out, such that some will always be in sunlight, and transmit the power back. It brings up the engineering challenges of high-voltage power transmission in low gravity, zero atmosphere, and various forms of radiation (e.g. how far apart one could place pylons); but I suspect that these are more likely solvable than some of the things that futurist ideas bring up. (As yet uninvented, or not manufactured in large quantities, materials with really high tensile strengths, for example.) And it avoids the problems (construction and maintenance) of continously moving large numbers of solar panels around in a vacuum. It even introduces redundancy. Moreover we definitely already know how to cope with an electrical power grid where only some of the generators are currently supplying power. (-:

tantalor 7y ago

> slowly turn your solar array Sure that's nice but the angle of sunlight is very low so you are limited in that respect, e.g,. available surface area.

mark-r 7y ago
There's no atmospheric absorption though, so that would compensate a bit. Building very tall structures would be easy in the low gravity, and you wouldn't need to worry about earthquakes or storms.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  I'd often though that a rail or even cable should be strung to the top of Mt Everest, you'd make a fortune off of it shuttling tourists up and down all day.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    That would be quite the engineering feat - Everest is not exactly construction friendly. Pikes Peak used to have a train going to the top, but they closed it a couple of years ago. https://www.cograilway.com/rates-times.asp https://www.cograilway.com/rates-times.asp
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Do it via a tunnel, like the Eiger Jungfrau line. That way you won't have weather problems.
JdeBP 7y ago
Then do not turn the array and do not put it at the pole. Build a ring of static solar collectors at some respectable km distance out, such that some will always be in sunlight, and transmit the power back. It brings up the engineering challenges of high-voltage power transmission in low gravity, zero atmosphere, and various forms of radiation (e.g. how far apart one could place pylons); but I suspect that these are more likely solvable than some of the things that futurist ideas bring up. (As yet uninvented, or not manufactured in large quantities, materials with really high tensile strengths, for example.) And it avoids the problems (construction and maintenance) of continously moving large numbers of solar panels around in a vacuum. It even introduces redundancy. Moreover we definitely already know how to cope with an electrical power grid where only some of the generators are currently supplying power. (-: