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Protect them from what? We have enormous telescopes in space already. The moon is safer than where Hubble and JWST are now.

dwaltrip 3y ago
Wouldn’t the moon’s gravity pull in more material, putting a telescope at higher risk?
- DrBazza 3y ago
  Correct. A large hill/small mountain's worth of debris hits the Earth every year. That includes micrometeorites that without an atmosphere, would pepper the Earth's surface. It's also the reason why any Moon base would be buried under layers of regolith to protect it. Glass domes on the moon are sci-fi fantasy.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Since the moon is tidally locked, the side facing Earth and its far more massive gravity well would experience vastly less debris. It'd be a boring place to build your glass domed moon base, but I don't think it would be completely infeasible. Especially if it was built in a depression in the landscape, the approach angles would be greatly limited.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    The ISS gets hit with micrometeorites pretty regularly, without any regolith to protect it. Micrometeorites make correspondingly micro holes, which in said glass dome are patchable. A 2mm hole in a Soyuz docked to the station was fixed with a bit of Kapton tape and some epoxy, and was detected by a very small pressure drop in the crew spaces. Larger rocks are more of a problem, but quite rare. Your dome is much more likely to get smashed by someone mixing up the pedals in a rover. https://www.livescience.com/how-many-moon-meteorites https://www.livescience.com/how-many-moon-meteorites > "if you pick a square kilometer patch of ground, it will be hit by one of those pingpong-sized meteoroids once every thousand years or so" We've landed in visibly quite smooth areas; for example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/48299974871 https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/48299974871
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  That's not really how gravity works. Gravity is time-symmetric, so it doesn't have the kind of “sucking” behaviour that vacuum cleaners or river valleys on Earth have.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    So....the telescopes aren't at higher risk?
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Depends where you put it. You have to consider the trajectories of the material that could pose a threat. Rule of thumb: if the orbital configuration hasn't changed for a few thousand years, look at the craters.
  - dwaltrip 3y ago
    Gravity doesn’t suck, but it does exert a force. It’s called a gravity well for a reason :) Hence my question.

dwaltrip 3y ago

Wouldn’t the moon’s gravity pull in more material, putting a telescope at higher risk?

DrBazza 3y ago
Correct. A large hill/small mountain's worth of debris hits the Earth every year. That includes micrometeorites that without an atmosphere, would pepper the Earth's surface. It's also the reason why any Moon base would be buried under layers of regolith to protect it. Glass domes on the moon are sci-fi fantasy.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Since the moon is tidally locked, the side facing Earth and its far more massive gravity well would experience vastly less debris. It'd be a boring place to build your glass domed moon base, but I don't think it would be completely infeasible. Especially if it was built in a depression in the landscape, the approach angles would be greatly limited.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  The ISS gets hit with micrometeorites pretty regularly, without any regolith to protect it. Micrometeorites make correspondingly micro holes, which in said glass dome are patchable. A 2mm hole in a Soyuz docked to the station was fixed with a bit of Kapton tape and some epoxy, and was detected by a very small pressure drop in the crew spaces. Larger rocks are more of a problem, but quite rare. Your dome is much more likely to get smashed by someone mixing up the pedals in a rover. https://www.livescience.com/how-many-moon-meteorites https://www.livescience.com/how-many-moon-meteorites > "if you pick a square kilometer patch of ground, it will be hit by one of those pingpong-sized meteoroids once every thousand years or so" We've landed in visibly quite smooth areas; for example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/48299974871 https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/48299974871
wizzwizz4 3y ago
That's not really how gravity works. Gravity is time-symmetric, so it doesn't have the kind of “sucking” behaviour that vacuum cleaners or river valleys on Earth have.
- psychlops 3y ago
  So....the telescopes aren't at higher risk?
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Depends where you put it. You have to consider the trajectories of the material that could pose a threat. Rule of thumb: if the orbital configuration hasn't changed for a few thousand years, look at the craters.
- dwaltrip 3y ago
  Gravity doesn’t suck, but it does exert a force. It’s called a gravity well for a reason :) Hence my question.