We already have the technology for building an "Earth-like environment" inside a dome or cave on the Moon. But Luna's gravity isn't strong enough to keep a layer of breathable air on the surface. But if I can't celebrate my century (in 1947) in Luna City or an orbital habitat, I'll just have to settle for a suitably weird venue in New York City.
I don't think the article really distinguished between "terraforming" and "colonizing" -- which matters, because as you say, Luna is too small to hold an atmosphere.
Luna lacks the mass to hold an atmosphere for *geological* time periods.
It has more than enough mass to hold one for "historical" periods (centuries to millennia).
Generating such an atmosphere and getting it to a density that will last for the longer periods will be a significant challenge. Among other things, we'd have to import truly enormous amounts of hydrogen and nitrogen.
And it'd be better if we put a lot of neon/argon/krypton (but not xenon!) in to increase the density of the atmosphere. Preference order is the reverse of the order I listed.
No idea where we could get enough of any of those. And it's *possible that there are other dense gases that are sufficiently inert biologically and don't photo-dissociate easily.
Still need a lot of nitrogen for various organisms. And, of course, all that hydrogen for water. Carbon is good too.
*Maintaining* such an atmosphere should be less onerous. But it would require maintenance, even if it'd stay breathable for a few thousand years without it.
I recall proposals that enclosed the moon or Mars with a layer of plastic (more likely several with a fair bit of seperation) to slow losses and raise atmospheric pressure without needing as deep an atmosphere.
That would be even hairier to engineer, but people might try.
Of course, at the rate we are going it's more likely that we will learn terraforming by terraforming *earth* to keep it habitable. :-(
The problem with Lunar terraforming is that it would make the local orbital space around Earth a no-go zone. That atmosphere would leak off, and (briefly on historical time scale) go into orbit around the Earth. It wouldn't be breathable by any means, but it would increase the drag on any satellites or vehicles in Earth-local space.. deorbiting satellites and vastly increasing the amount of fuel rockets would need to achieve escape velocity, if not making it totally impossible.
Terraforming the Moon that way would an absolutely terrible idea, not to mention being a vast investment of resources for a return that could achieved much easier by building domes. I mean, the one thing the Moon has in abundance is craters, which could easily serve as the start of a dome. Plus there's lava tubes, which could also be used. (solar storm shelters for example)
Back when I was still active in PorSFiS (rhymes with horsepiss :-) some of the members were involved with a project that was trying to build a lunar base in a lava tube in southern Oregon.
You know, the basic "see what kind of problems there will be and work out solutions for when folks try the real thing on Luna.
I think I heard about that. IIRC one of the major problems they had was water ingress, which would not be a problem on the moon, obviously, but kind of messed up the results.
I think NASA did a follow up study in Hawaii later, which IIRC is still ongoing.
Well, the first thing the Europeans did after they reached North America (after stealing the native peoples' food caches), was to duplicate the farms and villages that they had known at home.
And someone has come up with a theory about how easy it might be to terraform Venus. "We rot in the molds of Venus, We retch at her tainted breath; Foul are her flooded jungles, Crawling with unclean death." - "We burn on the soil of Venus, We choke on her acid breath; Harsh is her broken surface, Strewn with volcanic death."
Orbital habitats by 2047 are very likely... Bezos is talking about putting up a privately owned and run space station, part of the revenue stream for which will be tourists. Assuming he sticks to his schedule and floats that by 2030, that gives a minimum of ten years for other organisations/individuals to also put their's into orbit, and competition to drive the prices down to something approaching affordable.
Shatner was 90, obese and had OCP ... and survived a 3.8g list off for 141 seconds. The boost to orbit is longer but it pulls less gees, typically under 3.5g IIRC for ~6 minutes I think.
What's OCP? I have congestive heart failure, stage two kidney disease, and I've had a hemorrhagic stroke. I'm 73 and obese, but males are more susceptible to serious heart conditions than women are. (Men have heart attacks; women get heart failure.)
Obstructive Congestive Pulmo-cardio disease.. basically, his arteries were clogged up in both his heart and lungs.
Microgravity is supposed to be actually good for some heart problems... but the hemorrhagic stroke might be a problem though, given that zero g causes blood pressure to rise in the upper body.
Still, Bill proved that space flight isn't as rough on the body as it used to be. Give it a decades worth of intense development and it'll be even easier.
Oh - I hadn't heard of that. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with my lungs, just my coronary arteries and carotid arteries.
Bill is filled to the eyebrows with showmanship. The flight was probably something he really wanted to do anyway, and he milked it for all the PR value he could squeeze out of it. And then there was that little speech about seeing the Earth from Out There... I wanted to email him the lyrics to "Cool Green Hills Of Earth" - "let me rest my eyes on fleecy skies..."
Wasn't the trip to the New World about a year or so? Granted there was food and breathable air already in place, but there's a precedent for long resupply routes. (And communication is much faster.)
If we have to live in Martian lava tubes and avoid the sun / on the Moon with 2 week nights won't that involve a heavy case of Seasonal Affecive Disorder? Not sure if I've seen that discussed as a hazard of space travel...
I wonder if a dome could be made with moon materials. Could one make concrete or glass on the Moon? (And would they be able to cure properly in frigid space?)
And the idea of the Moon as a 'city planet's covered in overlapping 'scales' [domes] is intriguing.
Agreed. I'm in favor of stairstepping habitats: orbital, L5, lunar, Martian, etc.
>> Wasn't the trip to the New World about a year or so? Granted there was food and breathable air already in place, but there's a precedent for long resupply routes. (And communication is much faster.) <<
Running out of food/water on long voyages was a serious issue.
>> If we have to live in Martian lava tubes and avoid the sun / on the Moon with 2 week nights won't that involve a heavy case of Seasonal Affecive Disorder? Not sure if I've seen that discussed as a hazard of space travel... <<
Yes, it's a problem. Solutions include virtual windows made of viewscreens showing nature, full-spectrum daylight bulbs (good ones, the last batch we bought was awful but I've seen good ones before), and greenhouses full of live plants.
>> I wonder if a dome could be made with moon materials. Could one make concrete or glass on the Moon? (And would they be able to cure properly in frigid space?) <<
Likely much of the habitat can be built with local materials, but it may take some finagling to get a process that works well. Ideally, I recommend automated construction to get it started before adding people.
1) Cast concrete bricks or blocks inside a pressurized dome, then after they cure, move them outside and assemble. This is easier but the buildings are less secure.
2) Erect a pressurized bubble, and cast a solid dome inside it. Afterwards, just take down the bubble. This is trickier to do but yields a sturdier structure and you don't have to move it.
In both cases, the water can be recovered. You can't afford to waste that.
You can also make 'concrete' out of regolith by solar sintering. Basically, very big parabolic mirror focusing the sun enough that it melts the regolith, and you 3D print your dome. Plus side, it requires no additional materials, and isn't porus like concrete so you don't need to seal the inside with plastic to keep the air in.
I think they also did some tests and vitrified regolith is stronger, which considering moon-quakes are a thing, might be a good idea.
Regarding moonquakes, though, you'd need a building material with some flex. Also, you need a lot of redundancy in a system with a hostile atmosphere right outside -- it has to contain damage well.
It flexes, and unlike concrete made the more traditional way, doesn't crumble. (lunar regolith concrete is actually pretty poor stuff, and would need a lot of rebar.)
That's one case where Mars has the advantage. Martian soil comes with a unhealthy dose of hydrogen peroxide.. add a catalyst and it turns into water and oxygen. The water then causes the soil to become concrete basically. Lousy for gardening, great for building.
Oh yeah. The trip to the new world was only a few months. Not anywhere close to a year. But the early trips tended to be spaced a fair bit apart because of a combo of weather and politics.
You really didn't want to be on the Atlantic in the stormier months, and until the colonies were producing surplus food, you couldn't do a lot of restocking of *food* to enable you to wait long periods before heading back to Europe.
The political part was raising funds for the next trip.
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acelightning73 - (no subject)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 03:29 am (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 03:36 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 06:02 am (UTC)It has more than enough mass to hold one for "historical" periods (centuries to millennia).
Generating such an atmosphere and getting it to a density that will last for the longer periods will be a significant challenge. Among other things, we'd have to import truly enormous amounts of hydrogen and nitrogen.
And it'd be better if we put a lot of neon/argon/krypton (but not xenon!) in to increase the density of the atmosphere. Preference order is the reverse of the order I listed.
No idea where we could get enough of any of those. And it's *possible that there are other dense gases that are sufficiently inert biologically and don't photo-dissociate easily.
Still need a lot of nitrogen for various organisms. And, of course, all that hydrogen for water. Carbon is good too.
*Maintaining* such an atmosphere should be less onerous. But it would require maintenance, even if it'd stay breathable for a few thousand years without it.
I recall proposals that enclosed the moon or Mars with a layer of plastic (more likely several with a fair bit of seperation) to slow losses and raise atmospheric pressure without needing as deep an atmosphere.
That would be even hairier to engineer, but people might try.
Of course, at the rate we are going it's more likely that we will learn terraforming by terraforming *earth* to keep it habitable. :-(
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 06:23 am (UTC)The problem with Lunar terraforming is that it would make the local orbital space around Earth a no-go zone. That atmosphere would leak off, and (briefly on historical time scale) go into orbit around the Earth. It wouldn't be breathable by any means, but it would increase the drag on any satellites or vehicles in Earth-local space.. deorbiting satellites and vastly increasing the amount of fuel rockets would need to achieve escape velocity, if not making it totally impossible.
Terraforming the Moon that way would an absolutely terrible idea, not to mention being a vast investment of resources for a return that could achieved much easier by building domes. I mean, the one thing the Moon has in abundance is craters, which could easily serve as the start of a dome. Plus there's lava tubes, which could also be used. (solar storm shelters for example)
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 06:41 am (UTC)You know, the basic "see what kind of problems there will be and work out solutions for when folks try the real thing on Luna.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:54 am (UTC)I think I heard about that. IIRC one of the major problems they had was water ingress, which would not be a problem on the moon, obviously, but kind of messed up the results.
I think NASA did a follow up study in Hawaii later, which IIRC is still ongoing.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:23 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 09:48 am (UTC)And someone has come up with a theory about how easy it might be to terraform Venus. "We rot in the molds of Venus, We retch at her tainted breath; Foul are her flooded jungles, Crawling with unclean death." - "We burn on the soil of Venus, We choke on her acid breath; Harsh is her broken surface, Strewn with volcanic death."
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 06:36 am (UTC)Orbital habitats by 2047 are very likely... Bezos is talking about putting up a privately owned and run space station, part of the revenue stream for which will be tourists. Assuming he sticks to his schedule and floats that by 2030, that gives a minimum of ten years for other organisations/individuals to also put their's into orbit, and competition to drive the prices down to something approaching affordable.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 09:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 09:55 am (UTC)Shatner was 90, obese and had OCP ... and survived a 3.8g list off for 141 seconds. The boost to orbit is longer but it pulls less gees, typically under 3.5g IIRC for ~6 minutes I think.
I'd say your chances are pretty good actually.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 09:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 10:07 am (UTC)Obstructive Congestive Pulmo-cardio disease.. basically, his arteries were clogged up in both his heart and lungs.
Microgravity is supposed to be actually good for some heart problems... but the hemorrhagic stroke might be a problem though, given that zero g causes blood pressure to rise in the upper body.
Still, Bill proved that space flight isn't as rough on the body as it used to be. Give it a decades worth of intense development and it'll be even easier.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 12:10 pm (UTC)Bill is filled to the eyebrows with showmanship. The flight was probably something he really wanted to do anyway, and he milked it for all the PR value he could squeeze out of it. And then there was that little speech about seeing the Earth from Out There... I wanted to email him the lyrics to "Cool Green Hills Of Earth" - "let me rest my eyes on fleecy skies..."
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 03:50 am (UTC)Wasn't the trip to the New World about a year or so? Granted there was food and breathable air already in place, but there's a precedent for long resupply routes. (And communication is much faster.)
If we have to live in Martian lava tubes and avoid the sun / on the Moon with 2 week nights won't that involve a heavy case of Seasonal Affecive Disorder? Not sure if I've seen that discussed as a hazard of space travel...
I wonder if a dome could be made with moon materials. Could one make concrete or glass on the Moon? (And would they be able to cure properly in frigid space?)
And the idea of the Moon as a 'city planet's covered in overlapping 'scales' [domes] is intriguing.
Thoughts
Date: 2021-10-28 04:13 am (UTC)Agreed. I'm in favor of stairstepping habitats: orbital, L5, lunar, Martian, etc.
>> Wasn't the trip to the New World about a year or so? Granted there was food and breathable air already in place, but there's a precedent for long resupply routes. (And communication is much faster.) <<
Running out of food/water on long voyages was a serious issue.
>> If we have to live in Martian lava tubes and avoid the sun / on the Moon with 2 week nights won't that involve a heavy case of Seasonal Affecive Disorder? Not sure if I've seen that discussed as a hazard of space travel... <<
Yes, it's a problem. Solutions include virtual windows made of viewscreens showing nature, full-spectrum daylight bulbs (good ones, the last batch we bought was awful but I've seen good ones before), and greenhouses full of live plants.
>> I wonder if a dome could be made with moon materials. Could one make concrete or glass on the Moon? (And would they be able to cure properly in frigid space?) <<
Likely much of the habitat can be built with local materials, but it may take some finagling to get a process that works well. Ideally, I recommend automated construction to get it started before adding people.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 05:47 am (UTC)Making concrete *definitely* involves huge amounts of water. and most of it would be lost to space. Not good.
Well ...
Date: 2021-10-28 05:55 am (UTC)1) Cast concrete bricks or blocks inside a pressurized dome, then after they cure, move them outside and assemble. This is easier but the buildings are less secure.
2) Erect a pressurized bubble, and cast a solid dome inside it. Afterwards, just take down the bubble. This is trickier to do but yields a sturdier structure and you don't have to move it.
In both cases, the water can be recovered. You can't afford to waste that.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2021-10-28 06:32 am (UTC)You can also make 'concrete' out of regolith by solar sintering. Basically, very big parabolic mirror focusing the sun enough that it melts the regolith, and you 3D print your dome. Plus side, it requires no additional materials, and isn't porus like concrete so you don't need to seal the inside with plastic to keep the air in.
I think they also did some tests and vitrified regolith is stronger, which considering moon-quakes are a thing, might be a good idea.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:25 am (UTC)Regarding moonquakes, though, you'd need a building material with some flex. Also, you need a lot of redundancy in a system with a hostile atmosphere right outside -- it has to contain damage well.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:51 am (UTC)It flexes, and unlike concrete made the more traditional way, doesn't crumble. (lunar regolith concrete is actually pretty poor stuff, and would need a lot of rebar.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 06:27 am (UTC)That's one case where Mars has the advantage. Martian soil comes with a unhealthy dose of hydrogen peroxide.. add a catalyst and it turns into water and oxygen. The water then causes the soil to become concrete basically. Lousy for gardening, great for building.
Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:24 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-10-28 07:49 am (UTC)Well... there's a trade opportunity then!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-28 06:13 am (UTC)You really didn't want to be on the Atlantic in the stormier months, and until the colonies were producing surplus food, you couldn't do a lot of restocking of *food* to enable you to wait long periods before heading back to Europe.
The political part was raising funds for the next trip.