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The moon has water ice in dark craters, as well as minable ore that contain aluminum, iron, silicon and oxygen. You will "just" need to use heavy mining and sme

The moon has water ice in dark craters, as well as minable ore that contain aluminum, iron, silicon and oxygen. You will "just" need to use heavy mining and smelting gear to extract it. Solar power and batteries should work assuming you're willing to build your base among the "peaks of [near] eternal light" which get sunshine nearly ninety percent of the time.

btkramer9 7y ago
This is mostly true on Mars too except perhaps the eternal light part
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Mars has a lot more benefit here, in that it has a normal-length day. Much better to reliably have sunlight for roughly half of every day than to rely on a few polar areas that are in sunlight most of the time. The equator of the Moon is more suitable for other reasons, so what are you going to do, put the solar panels at the poles and run long power lines down to the equatorial regions where the power is used? Nah. Mars is better for solar power because you won't need nearly as much battery capacity, as you get light on a ~24 hour cycle same as Earth. The Moon with its slow rotation is much more challenging.
  - Someone 7y ago
    On the minus side, Mars gets less than half the amount of sunlight per square meter.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      That's true, but I think the fact that you get light reliably every day is still a big point in its favor. It's probably a lot less mass total to send up twice the solar panels and 18 hours' worth of batteries vs half the solar panels but 16 days' worth of batteries. Solar panels are pretty light; batteries are not.
  - NortySpock 7y ago
    Plus Mars has an atmosphere (95% CO2, 3% Nitrogen, 2% Argon, 1% other at 1% of Earth atmospheric presure IIRC), which the Moon utterly lacks. Compress that into a tank and you can chemically (or biologically) convert that into an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere to breathe.
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
What needs to be "heavy" gear on the moon? I feel that our current understanding of operations in that environment mostly doesn't apply. Take smelting for example: during lunar day you can bundle several parabolic mirrors and smelt whatever you want. Just have to care about catching it, otherwise it evaporates away. ISTR https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=optical+mining https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=optical+mining is a common concept now.

btkramer9 7y ago

This is mostly true on Mars too except perhaps the eternal light part

CydeWeys 7y ago
Mars has a lot more benefit here, in that it has a normal-length day. Much better to reliably have sunlight for roughly half of every day than to rely on a few polar areas that are in sunlight most of the time. The equator of the Moon is more suitable for other reasons, so what are you going to do, put the solar panels at the poles and run long power lines down to the equatorial regions where the power is used? Nah. Mars is better for solar power because you won't need nearly as much battery capacity, as you get light on a ~24 hour cycle same as Earth. The Moon with its slow rotation is much more challenging.
- Someone 7y ago
  On the minus side, Mars gets less than half the amount of sunlight per square meter.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    That's true, but I think the fact that you get light reliably every day is still a big point in its favor. It's probably a lot less mass total to send up twice the solar panels and 18 hours' worth of batteries vs half the solar panels but 16 days' worth of batteries. Solar panels are pretty light; batteries are not.
- NortySpock 7y ago
  Plus Mars has an atmosphere (95% CO2, 3% Nitrogen, 2% Argon, 1% other at 1% of Earth atmospheric presure IIRC), which the Moon utterly lacks. Compress that into a tank and you can chemically (or biologically) convert that into an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere to breathe.

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

What needs to be "heavy" gear on the moon? I feel that our current understanding of operations in that environment mostly doesn't apply. Take smelting for example: during lunar day you can bundle several parabolic mirrors and smelt whatever you want. Just have to care about catching it, otherwise it evaporates away. ISTR https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=optical+mining https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=optical+mining is a common concept now.