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The Race to Develop the Moon

newyorker.com

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Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#61

Post by Balero »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #49
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair the author was the one who mentioned it first. I tend to agree with the GP here. The lack diversity cred of a bunch of dudes 60yr ago is not really worth mentioning. It has no bearing on the content of the article and only serves as a distraction from the main subject. Considering who the author[0] is I don't think this was an attempt to "point out the accomplishments of the white race" or something like t…

I was also agreeing with the GP. The author of the article is the one exhibiting white supremacist behavior by mentioning it in the article when it's unnecessary.

I read it as exactly the opposite. A critique of how these people were chosen, all required to be this static template.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#63

Post by StevePerkins »

TuringNYC wrote: post #18
Bizarro wrote: post #3

All the moonwalkers were men, all were American, all but one were Boy Scouts, and almost all listened to country-and-Western music on their way to the moon These writers just can't help themselves. It's part of their hive-mind checklist.

This is a New Yorker article, so it has a literary bent in terms of details and descriptions typical of long-form publication. That is what New Yorker subscribers want. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism For straight-to-the-science, Wikipedia or other publications are better. There is a publication for most major preferences. I used to love the detail of The New Yorker when i was single and had l…

I don't believe parent comment is saying that the description is too literary, or not scientific enough.

I think he's saying that the article takes unnecessary pains to signal, "These people weren't 'on our side' culturally". Unsophisticated, un-woke, "problematic", etc. Parent is correct that his has become a checklist trope over the past few years.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#64

Post by Consultant32452 »

Balero wrote: post #61
Consultant32452 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also agreeing with the GP. The author of the article is the one exhibiting white supremacist behavior by mentioning it in the article when it's unnecessary.

I read it as exactly the opposite. A critique of how these people were chosen, all required to be this static template.

Lacing white supremacy with sentiments of guilt or condemnation doesn't make it any less an example of white supremacy. Perhaps the least interesting thing about the people who went to the moon is the color of their skin. Only racists care what color their skin was. Old school white supremacists say it's great that they were white, new school white supremacists are upset that the whites did so well (are/were supreme). Both are racist, and we'd be better off moving past them.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#66

Post by mercutio2 »

hinkley wrote: post #58

Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book is Red Moon, and it's set maybe a decade or two after moon colonization has happened. It's not his best work (it's worth reading but I'm not sure if it's worth owning) but he is known for this genre of fiction and it has some pretty interesting observations in it.

Good book. Surprisingly little moon stuff, mostly about China’s unique governing system interacting with China’s residency laws.

I’m curious how much research he did on China’s internal politics; hard for me to know how much was based in reality.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#67

Post by hinkley »

mercutio2 wrote: post #66
hinkley wrote: post #58

Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book is Red Moon, and it's set maybe a decade or two after moon colonization has happened. It's not his best work (it's worth reading but I'm not sure if it's worth owning) but he is known for this genre of fiction and it has some pretty interesting observations in it.

Good book. Surprisingly little moon stuff, mostly about China’s unique governing system interacting with China’s residency laws. I’m curious how much research he did on China’s internal politics; hard for me to know how much was based in reality.

I’ve wondered the same. He certainly talks as if he did a lot of studying. I wonder if he used a consultant.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#68

Post by eesmith »

lorenzhs wrote: post #54
Symmetry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For half the month the lunar surface is basically paradise for solar electricity with 1.3 kw/m2 of sunlight 24 hours a day instead of just the 1.0 kw/m2 on Earth's surface for half the day. But the other half of the month is complete darkness except star and Earth light. Unless you're at one of the poles and rig a solar panel to rotate horizontally. This is good for industrial processes you can start and stop over th…

That's not how the moon works. There's no "dark side", only a "far side" that always faces away from the earth. It's just that a moon day lasts ~28.5 earth days.

I believe Symmetry understands that, though the phrase '24 hours a day' should be '24 hours an Earth day' to prevent possible confusion.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#69

Post by Pfhreak »

When are developing asteroids? The moon is a neat stepping stone, but the raw quantity of space stuff just sitting in asteroids is where I'm really excited to see us go. We're talking chunks of rare metals in the thousands of tons range. As well as kilometers of iron, nickel, and water for building and supplying ships in space.

Re: The Race to Develop the Moon

#70

Post by eesmith »

stcredzero wrote: post #51
rtkwe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surface of the moon itself has a tiny bit of atmosphere so I'm not sure you could do it there. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.htm...

My understanding is that the Moon's atmosphere is so tiny, it's a lab quality vacuum. I got this from reading stuff from hard SF author Ben Bova. This might be a bit outdated, however. https://books.google.com/books?id=M6Fkx1hxfw8C&pg=PA190&lpg=...

http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/DegradeLunarVacuum.html from 1990 suggests that a human presence on the Moon could make the vacuum level worse than can be achieved artificially on Earth:

> Establishment of a lunar base will degrade the lunar vacuum. The time scale for distribution of exhaust gas across the surface of the moon is much less than the excape lifetime of the gas in the lunar atmosphere, and thus exhaust gas can be approximated as uniformly spread across the surface. A 20 person exploration base will contribute an amount of waste gas on the same order of magnitude as the daytime "natural" atmosphere. A 250 person "industrial" facility would be likely to contribute considerably more due to waste gas from various production processes such as lunar oxygen production and mining of helium 3 from the lunar regolith. This could degrade the lunar ambient to levels on the order of 3 nanotorr, replacing the mostly non-reactive gasses hydrogen, helium, and neon with more reactive gasses containing carbon and oxygen. This vacuum is still good enough to perform many important vacuum processes, such as plasma-deposition of amorphous silicon for solar cells, but processes such as molecular beam epitaxy or locating a intersecting beam accelerator on the moon will require additional vacuum pumping. In any case, though, pumping to ultrahigh vacuum will be much easier on the moon than on Earth.

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