51–60 of 164 posts
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Water possibly could be of great value in the future? Moon has plenty of drinking water. Maybe gold, not sure if there’s gold on the Moon?
Ah yes, the entirely viable project of moving water from a bone dry vacuum rock to a planet 2/3 covered by water. I'm not sure it would be viable to return gold from the moon even if the moon was made of solid gold.
To me it seems that the greatest obstacle to space colonization would be maintenance and production of materials and technology needed to sustain and expand the colony. Seems like the last step for truly becoming self sustaining. You'd need extremely small scale factories that can build everything needed for a modern civilization. I wonder what that would take. What the smallest amount of shipments and time would be.…
If I recall correctly the number quoted from E. Musk on an early Mars colonization presentation was 2 cargo ships per full colonist ship. But that's only for being water/air/food/energy self-sustained. The assumption is that large shipments of high-tech products will continue for a while. Maybe something like solar panels/basic air turbines can be produced on the spot provided with either the raw material or mining equipment. The same probably goes at least for simple electronics( like e.g. various sensors for monitoring the colony), lots of appliances can be made in a crude way( think stoves, furnaces, maybe fridges?).
To me it seems that the greatest obstacle to space colonization would be maintenance and production of materials and technology needed to sustain and expand the colony. Seems like the last step for truly becoming self sustaining. You'd need extremely small scale factories that can build everything needed for a modern civilization. I wonder what that would take. What the smallest amount of shipments and time would be.…
But why should you have a 100% complete industry, a colony can trade with Earth like countries trade with each other, a colony could trade some rare resources and buy high tech stuff. The main obstacle a colony will have is the initial buildings/bunker with all the life support and safety tech, plus extra redundancy and a backup plan if something bad happens there or on Earth . If the colony would manage to generate…
In that frame, a colony that can't survive (or has a reduced chance of survival) is of lower utility than one that can be effectively independent.
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The temperature might be an issue. The moon surface 106°C during the day, -183°C during the night. Also, the sun is brighter in space than an Earth under the atmosphere. The long days and nights lasting 12 Earth days each might also be problematic.
Still, it would have been interesting to see what happens to the seed on the surface of the moon. Maybe a cactus used to desert sun could adapt to the harsh conditions on the moon.
Depressurisation is somewhat survivable: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927953-500-vacuum-o... but dehydration starts to happen. Vaccum is a very effective dessicant.
It is incredibly disappointing to me that the USA didn't do this decades ago. The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50 years. I understand that perhaps we did not want to continue to fund NASA at such a high rate, but NASA budgets still could have focused on this. Space is the next frontier of humanity's existence. A moon base is a logical, achievable next step in man's space explorati…
The USA military got what it needed under the cover of a civilian space race.
The US didn't chill after that. It put even more money into rockets but those were funded through the military for ICBMs.
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is this kind of simulated gravity sufficient for the convection processes described?
I think Einstein might have something to say about that one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
EDIT I mean - we’re talking about convection right? Which I understand to involve circulation of air currents ... does your link have anything on this topic? I guess with a large enough centrifuge there might be no difference but it was unclear whether what was being referred to was large habitable centrifuges or the type more commonly found in labs ...
and thought.... what a won-der-ful world :D
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> You'd need extremely small scale factories that can build everything needed for a modern civilization. It's not as much as you'd think, specially if you can survive on the first couple of decades with regular shipments from earth, mostly for very advanced materials and electronics. A lot of manufacturing capacity in our society is redundant and focused on non-essential items. In addition, some manufacturing process…
I think you underestimate how complicated even simple machines are. Making lubricated ball bearings for example requires high quality steel, precision manufacturing and chemistry that is not trivial if you don't have access to oil.
all i read was: And it's worth reiterating that there are already nearly 100 bags of human waste on the Moon left behind by the Apollo astronauts and thought.... what a won-der-ful world :D