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Going to need roads for that. Might as well construct rails. A circum-lunar railway! Probably want to build that at 80 degrees latitude or more, the trade off b
by greenbit 4y ago
Going to need roads for that. Might as well construct rails. A circum-lunar railway! Probably want to build that at 80 degrees latitude or more, the trade off being solar angle vs material costs.
- atoav 4y agoGod, frickin lunar railways. Truly the future of everything.
- euroderf 4y agoAnd they don't have to be big. More on the scale of those little trains at fairgrounds.
- ben_w 4y agoIf you build rails, you'll get a free good-enough conductor for getting power from the other side, even before you think about putting anything onto those rails.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoThat's not a new idea, it's in a book already: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848027-new-moon https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848027-new-moon
- labster 4y agoHow would a lunar railway handle thermal expansion? We’re back to the same problem that the nighttime lunar surface is mighty cold, and I’d expect big gaps to form
- burnished 4y agoI have no idea how plausibly, but the book 2312 has a city on one of the hot inner planets that gets squeezed along a rail using thermal expansion. Even if that doesnt work, it seems like the sort of thing you could engineer around, just a more extreme version of the engineering we already do to handle thermal expansion.