10 ms·
In 2022 a Moonrush will begin in earnest
- pineaux 5y agohttps://archive.is/a9ct6 https://archive.is/a9ct6
- trembonator 5y agoNo one has figured out safeguards against solar radiation. NASA does not permit any astronauts to live on the International Space Station for more than a year and the ISS is shielded by Earth’s Van Allen Belts which our moon does not have. Whoever lives on the moon will be exposed to elevated levels of radiation and develop irreversible cancer or radiation poisoning as a result until the fundamental problem is solved.
- credit_guy 5y agoLunar lava tubes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube#Sites_for_human_habitats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube#Sites_for_huma...
- LarryMade2 5y agoI envision that and them some sort of inflatable shell insterted into it to make a quick habitat... maybe some sort of hardener is activated upon inflation or filled in between outer layers... Yeah, lunar real estate will be one of the first things - Location. Location. Location.
- woodruffw 5y agoTo be specific: the exposure during a day of lunar living would be equivalent to ~2.6 days on the ISS, or ~200 days on Earth's surface[1]. And that's the normal dose, before we even begin to worry about solar events. [1]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1334 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1334
- mlyle 5y ago> To be specific: the exposure during a day of lunar living would be equivalent to ~2.6 days on the ISS, or ~200 days on Earth's surface If we do nothing to shield occupants.
- woodruffw 5y agoYep, shielding will be critical. The paper linked above has this interesting note: > Settlements on the Moon will provide additional shielding because they will be buried beneath layers of lunar regolith. While this would decrease the dose rate from charged particles, the absolute contribution from neutrons is expected to increase for shielding constructed from in situ resources, as borne out by measurements with the Apollo 17 Lunar Neutron Probe Experiment. These showed that the flux of thermal and epithermal neutrons increases significantly up to a depth of approximately 150 g/cm2 (31). So plans to shield lunar occupants using the moon's own materials will need to compensate for the ionizing radiation that those materials are already emitting, separately from cosmic/solar radiation.
- mlyle 5y ago> So plans to shield lunar occupants using the moon's own materials will need to compensate for the ionizing radiation that those materials are already emitting, separately from cosmic/solar radiation. It's not really that they're emitting them "separately" -- they're radioactive (with mostly short half lives) largely because of solar bombardment. Thin shielding can paradoxically make things worse by converting high energy protons into more, lower energy neutrons. If your shielding is thick, the inner layers will rapidly become less radioactive (the important half lives are less than 30 days). The outer layers will keep getting hit by solar protons and creating more unstable elements. Another major concern in the long term: radon gas. One had better have an inner hull and never rely upon sintered regolith to hold atmosphere.
- rasz 5y ago>~200 days on Earth's surface Where? there is a big difference between Miami, Colorado, Guarapari, and finally Ramsar
- ceejayoz 5y agoThat’s why you build in a lava tube, a permanently shadowed crater (bonus: ice!), or cover the base in regolith.
- dnautics 5y ago3d printed buildings. I'm not even kidding. I've been soft-offered a job to write software for this that might get deployed to space. I am seriously thinking about taking the job and using it to get into the astronaut program. It would be pretty badass to be the first person to build a permanent structure off the planet
- blhack 5y agoDO IT! That sounds so cool!
- quickthrower2 5y agoAlso is it possible to maintain muscle mass in space for over a year? What happens when you lose the bone density. Or could this been circumvented with a couple of hours of squats every day and other exercises using bands as resistance
- garmaine 5y agoSpin the spacecraft. Done.
- sbierwagen 5y agoIt is unknown if it will be that easy. For obvious reasons, there have been no long-term studies in partial gravity. If 0.05g stops bone loss, great. If a full 1.0g and nothing less is required, then that's going to be a really onerous design constraint.
- shagie 5y agoIf a full 1.0g is required, that also makes it a much more difficult challenge on the moon. Spinning a module of a space station in zero g is one thing... trying to get a portion of a moon lab at 0.16g to 1.0g is a different challenge.
- shkkmo 5y agoThe advantage I see on the moon is that you have local mass to use. Yoy can build a large, banked circular track underground ground and then add cars as you expand.
- sbierwagen 5y agoUh, if human habitation on the Moon requires living inside a centrifuge, then there won't be a human colony.
- 5y ago
- trailingComma 5y agoThe ISS doesn't have a moon to bury itself inside. You only have to go 2.5 meters down to provide the same level of protection as being on the surface of the earth.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoSounds good… do we still get to have skylights? edit: I’m genuinely curious if it’s possible to allow sunlight while blocking harmful radiation, our atmosphere does it, can a thick window do the job?
- trailingComma 5y agoSimulated skylights are probably possible, but you may have to go a bit deeper to create the space for an effective simulation.
- chii 5y agoMirrors, or even artificial sky lights are a thing.
- nicoburns 5y agoIf you want to live above ground and have other niceties then there's a great planet that's really close to the moon.
- fragmede 5y agoYes, but if all humans are on that one, then if there's a catastrophic problem there: Houston, we have a problem.
- nicoburns 5y agoNot one that’s likely to be solved by spreading to the moon. Personally I have much the same attitude about the eradication of the human race as I do about dying: it’s going to happen eventually, best to make out time here as good as possible rather than trying to extend it indefinitely at all costs. And giving up the earth seems like a huge cost to me.
- more_corn 5y agoLava tubes could help a lot.
- ghostcluster 5y agoMy great hope in these cold war-esque times of tension between China, Russia, and the US is that the field of battle becomes competition in Great Achievements for science, engineering, and space exploration. Permanent human-staffed moonbases are a good goal to strive towards.
- garmaine 5y agoDid you live during the Cold War? I struggle to understand why someone would want to live under that constant existential threat of nuclear annihilation.
- Buttons840 5y agoHe didn't say he wants it. I think he means that times of renewed rivalry and tension are coming whether we want it or not, and he hopes some good can come from it.
- mlyle 5y agoI don't think he's saying "I hope a cold war brews so we can get better space exploration!!" I think he's saying-- well, at least if geopolitical tensions get worse, maybe it will also at least improve space exploration.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rch 5y agoMy father worked on Safeguard. It's unfortunate to think that the last several decades of relative calm might have been temporary.
- throwawaygh 5y agoBoth Russia and the US still have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out much of humanity. All that changed is that we don't live under is the constant reminder of that existential threat.
- tablespoon 5y ago
- gfykvfyxgc 5y agoWhat’s the environmental cost of a space launch?
- bell-cot 5y agoThat's kinda like asking the environmental cost of driving 100 miles. Are you thinking of a big, dirty solid-fueled rocket, or an oxidizer-rich CH4/O2 rocket, or what?
- gfykvfyxgc 5y agoThinking of the number of rockets required to facilitate a “moon rush”.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 5y ago"Moon rush" is far more a media hype phrase than an actual number of rockets launched, or tons of cargo landed, or lunar census. And I'd bet that all the earth-bound activity involved in a "moon rush" - even one that actually resulted in a more-than-one-digit lunar census, long-term - would have a vastly larger environmental footprint than the rocket launches themselves.
- mh7 5y agoNet negative. Gets us on the path to more worlds.
- gfykvfyxgc 5y agoCan you explain more please? I don’t see the logic.
- erulabs 5y agoIf human beings can expand to other worlds, or live in space easily, or even just access enough resources to stabilize at 10B human beings with zero poverty - then we can turn the Earth into an Eden - so conceptually nothing could be more environmentally beneficial. At least that’s how the optimistic vision goes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- politician 5y agoFrom a military technology standpoint, throwing rocks from the moon is probably the next technological step in warfare. The way cannons ended the era of the fortress, rocks will end the nuclear status quo.
- nradov 5y agoThis is nonsense. Rocks don't throw themselves. If a moon rock smashes Washington DC then our missile submarines will still nuke Beijing or Moscow in retaliation. Nothing can end the nuclear status quo until someone builds a defensive system that can't be saturated by a massive retaliatory strike. MAD still applies.
- politician 5y agoNo, what happens is that everyone rushes to the moon to recreate MAD in terms of rocks instead of in terms of nuclear weapons. During the transition period from atomic MAD to kinetic MAD, deterrent politics will become very complicated and war planners may make miscalculations. See also: prompt global strike. First strike from kinetic bombardment can be far more devastating than first strike from ICBMs due to the surprise factor and simplicity of yield configuration. Moon-based mass drivers can be trivially protected from Earth-launched counter attacks, since the inbound trajectories can be calculated, the projectiles take days to arrive, and can be intercepted by point defense systems that have lower delta-v requirements. Basic OODA loop supremacy stuff.
- nradov 5y agoNone of that is relevant to MAD. Boomers still provide a survivable second strike deterrent. Even if an adversary can defend their lunar weapons, it won't matter because their earthly cities will be smoking craters.
- politician 5y agoI agree with your point in the near term, but beyond that I disagree with you about the effectiveness of submarines for maintaining the second strike deterrent for two reasons. First, there is some threshold amount of off-Earth allied population that will undermine and make irrelevant the SLBM deterrent. In the extreme case, consider a Martian opponent. Second, there is a gamble that a first strike against military targets won’t provoke a return strike against the civilian population. In this case, a restrained first strike that takes out key submarine docks could degrade the advantage provided by Boomers. A limited attack on that kind of infrastructure is hard to pull off, but an asteroid strike might be one of the few ways that it could be done with sufficient plausible deniability. Gravity-based kinetic weapons will force a rethinking of nuclear MAD — the history of war consistently shows that expensive hardened fixed positions are eventually made into vulnerable death traps through cheap technology.
- Shadonototra 5y ago"While countries wasted time to profit from each other, China is about to land on the moon, they are now jealous and want to plan how to try to eventually catch up, maybe if they can stop sniffing profits" There the correct title!
- ImaCake 5y ago>The coming year should see at least 18 NASA-sponsored lunar missions, some of which will deliver equipment and supplies for later use. Gateway itself is scheduled for 2024. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think we saw any moon missions from NASA in 2021? Either way, it is exciting to think human stuff is going to the moon this year in a big way.
- TheRealNGenius 5y agoLol canada with what appears to be an arm again.