71–80 of 189 posts
The more we learn, the more hospitable the universe turns out to be.
The universe is still a harsh, bleak, unforgiving, inhospitable, irradiated wasteland of empty nothingness. Humans need very specific temperatures, air pressures, atmospheric compositions to survive. Humans need food that also needs those things to survive. We can alter extra terrestrial objects to suit our needs, but that costs us energy, materials, and money/time. Right now, we are far too busy chasing fads and trinkets, and bashing in the skulls of our own fellows to be able to manage this.
So “infinity pools” up there would be in a completely different league?
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prison mining colony. but seriously, it could be used as a manufacturing and industrial hub for deep space operations like asteroid mining. think about it like this. if we can manufacture things on the moon we can launch things for almost nothing into both earth orbit and the outer solar system due to how the orbital mechanics work. this means we can build a million probes and send them all over the solar system, man…
Turtles all the way down. “Why do we need a space station?” “As practice for getting to the Moon!” “What can we do on the Moon?” “Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!” “Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?” “So we can make components for the Mars colonies!” “Why do we need a Mars colony?” …
It's only a matter of time now before we get the first craft brewery and tap room on the Moon.
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Turtles all the way down. “Why do we need a space station?” “As practice for getting to the Moon!” “What can we do on the Moon?” “Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!” “Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?” “So we can make components for the Mars colonies!” “Why do we need a Mars colony?” …
Why do we need to do anything ? We are the grey goo of the universe. Expansion is our thing.
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prison mining colony. but seriously, it could be used as a manufacturing and industrial hub for deep space operations like asteroid mining. think about it like this. if we can manufacture things on the moon we can launch things for almost nothing into both earth orbit and the outer solar system due to how the orbital mechanics work. this means we can build a million probes and send them all over the solar system, man…
Turtles all the way down. “Why do we need a space station?” “As practice for getting to the Moon!” “What can we do on the Moon?” “Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!” “Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?” “So we can make components for the Mars colonies!” “Why do we need a Mars colony?” …
if you combine AI with robotics and space exploration, there is not much point to doing all this manually.
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The moon is about 1/4th the size of the Earth, or about as wide as the United States. The moon also significantly impacts our tides here on Earth. Now, the optimist in me would say there's no way little old humanity could manage to find a way to screw that up. The pessimist in me notes that in roughly a hundred years we've managed to push our planet to the brink of ecological disaster, so to answer your question: yes…
Ah well then pardon my snark - of course we humans are very determined when it comes to exploiting our environment but a crude look at the figures might set your mind at rest: Moon's mass - about 0.7x10^23 kgs Global annual iron ore output - about 2.5x10^12 kgs (per [1]) One over the other - 2.8x10^10 years So on the order of a billion years to remove one percent of it. And that's assuming we develop the same kind of…
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It will become so ugly once exploitation starts. You know the pristine look of a field with new snow? To compare with once there are footsteps and tire tracks everywhere? The moon's beautiful undisturbed dust will become an ugly mess and look like garbage.
It's not like pristine snow at all, but like dusty asphalt(it really does have such color) constantly churned by meteoric impacts. It's possible however, that we avoid using such a hostile environment to a bare minimum and stay and mine underground instead. I can see Mars landscape as beautiful and worth preserving, but drawing the line there.
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Reminder that the moon does not have a "dark side". This is a misnomer. The back of the moon gets the same amount of sunlight as the front. Unless you mean the side which is not presently illuminated. Water could freeze there but it would boil off again when the sun lights it up again. However there are craters at the poles that never experience sunlight, and water does accumulate in them. You don't need any atmosphe…
> Reminder that the moon does not have a "dark side". This is a misnomer. It isn't. The side of the moon that cannot be seen from Earth is called the dark side of the moon. It's called that for the same reason that the Dark Ages are called dark: because we can't see them. It is true that the dark side of the moon gets just as much sunlight as the light side does.