4 ms·

If someone can mine the entire moon away I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be

tw04 3y ago
"If someone can cut down the entire Amazon Rainforest, I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement." Whether you're trolling or not, what a horrible take unless you're hoping the human race just wipes itself out. With our current rate of technological progress, someone having the ability to mine the moon to nothing is at most 500 years away, maybe sooner if they find something under the surface that makes it financially attractive.
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  If there's iron there, then there's the potential for Low-background Steel ...
  - firtoz 3y ago
    Well, until we drop some nukes on there.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    There's an unshielded nuclear reactor hanging in the sky just like bricks don't. I'm not a nuclear physicist so I may be orders of magnitude off, but my gut feeling is that being constantly bombarded with the solar wind might be putting into a very slightly radioactive equilibrium? (I'm thinking more along the lines of the story of the radioactive boy scout, not Trinitite, and I don't know how radioactive "normal" steel is compared to "low-background").
- dotnet00 3y ago
  A species that has the technical capability to mine and transport away ~10^23 kg of mass, is a species that has the capability to replace that mass.
  - firtoz 3y ago
    What if they invested too much into greed and not nearly enough into self preservation?
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Removing significant percentages of the Moon's mass is a whole different ballgame from climate change on Earth, where even now people will debate if it'sreally anthropogenic. There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. As such, I don't think the typical ideas of people ignoring the problem in favor of keeping the money flowing apply, as those are all cases where the harm is some unclear time in the future involving the suffering of people who are not the decision makers.
      - tw04 3y ago
        >There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. There is immediate noticeable harm to oil spills, and yet you still have people arguing that we should run pipelines next to rivers because it's easier and cheaper. I think you grossly overestimate some folks ability to have a rational discussion when they've got a financial incentive not to.
        dotnet00 3y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by immediate noticeable harm. Running pipelines next to rivers has the potential to cause an oil spill, so the harm is not immediate. There's still room for people to convince themselves that they'll make the pipeline safe and reliable. But the mass of the Moon is so high, that mining and shipping off significant portions of it has to be very deliberate and there's no question of 'potential' in causing a shift in the Earth's orbit. For context, at the rate at which we mine metals on Earth, it'd take tens to hundreds of millions of years to mine even 0.1% of the Moon, and that's without considering that all that mass would have to be transported elsewhere for it to be a problem (and since other destinations, mostly by definition, have their own easier to access resources, that seems unnecessary). Mining all that material on human timescales would be a very deliberate operation dwarfing all human mining from the start of civilization.
suprjami 3y ago
If someone can cut down an entire forest then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be. If someone can melt an entire ice shelf then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be. If someone can frack an entire country then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be.
dirkc 3y ago
This makes me wonder, would "mine the entire moon away" require new physics or simply require a monumental effort?

tw04 3y ago

"If someone can cut down the entire Amazon Rainforest, I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement." Whether you're trolling or not, what a horrible take unless you're hoping the human race just wipes itself out. With our current rate of technological progress, someone having the ability to mine the moon to nothing is at most 500 years away, maybe sooner if they find something under the surface that makes it financially attractive.

jasonjayr 3y ago
If there's iron there, then there's the potential for Low-background Steel ...
- firtoz 3y ago
  Well, until we drop some nukes on there.
- ben_w 3y ago
  There's an unshielded nuclear reactor hanging in the sky just like bricks don't. I'm not a nuclear physicist so I may be orders of magnitude off, but my gut feeling is that being constantly bombarded with the solar wind might be putting into a very slightly radioactive equilibrium? (I'm thinking more along the lines of the story of the radioactive boy scout, not Trinitite, and I don't know how radioactive "normal" steel is compared to "low-background").
dotnet00 3y ago
A species that has the technical capability to mine and transport away ~10^23 kg of mass, is a species that has the capability to replace that mass.
- firtoz 3y ago
  What if they invested too much into greed and not nearly enough into self preservation?
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Removing significant percentages of the Moon's mass is a whole different ballgame from climate change on Earth, where even now people will debate if it'sreally anthropogenic. There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. As such, I don't think the typical ideas of people ignoring the problem in favor of keeping the money flowing apply, as those are all cases where the harm is some unclear time in the future involving the suffering of people who are not the decision makers.
    - tw04 3y ago
      >There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. There is immediate noticeable harm to oil spills, and yet you still have people arguing that we should run pipelines next to rivers because it's easier and cheaper. I think you grossly overestimate some folks ability to have a rational discussion when they've got a financial incentive not to.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by immediate noticeable harm. Running pipelines next to rivers has the potential to cause an oil spill, so the harm is not immediate. There's still room for people to convince themselves that they'll make the pipeline safe and reliable. But the mass of the Moon is so high, that mining and shipping off significant portions of it has to be very deliberate and there's no question of 'potential' in causing a shift in the Earth's orbit. For context, at the rate at which we mine metals on Earth, it'd take tens to hundreds of millions of years to mine even 0.1% of the Moon, and that's without considering that all that mass would have to be transported elsewhere for it to be a problem (and since other destinations, mostly by definition, have their own easier to access resources, that seems unnecessary). Mining all that material on human timescales would be a very deliberate operation dwarfing all human mining from the start of civilization.

suprjami 3y ago

If someone can cut down an entire forest then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be. If someone can melt an entire ice shelf then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be. If someone can frack an entire country then I say let them. What a fantastical technical achievement that would be.

dirkc 3y ago

This makes me wonder, would "mine the entire moon away" require new physics or simply require a monumental effort?