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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 E
by 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 agoSince 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 agoThe 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