- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.world
Scientists have for the first time discovered a cave on the Moon.
At least 100m deep, it could be an ideal place for humans to build a permanent base, they say.
It is just one in probably hundreds of caves hidden in an “underground, undiscovered world”, according to the researchers.
Countries are racing to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but they will need to protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space weather.
Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the newly-discovered cave looked like a good place for a base, and suggested humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.
Because it’s costly to bring materials and to set up mining operations, a lot of tools will be made of readily available moon rock. So, maybe we’ll have a moon stone age, too.
More, shelter.
There’s no atmosphere to attenuate hard radiation, so rock overhead is the next best thing.
There’s no gravity to contain an atmosphere, and domes are expensive and time consuming to build. Meanwhile the crews are exposed to radiation.
There’s nothing but regolith on the surface of the moon-- finely powdered rock of unknown (and likely poor) assay for vital ores and minerals useful to bootstrap a colony.
A cave provides shelter, more assay-ably dense ore resources, potentially water in the form of subsurface ice, and potentially a vitrable (melted, glassified rock) cavity to contain a viable, pressurized atmosphere on the quick.
A cave on the moon is a find. Given the potential for neocolonialism in the next decade or three, it’s a boon for whatever program discovers one.
edit: typos
We already have neocolonialism on earth.
I don’t see how the economics of space mining is supposed to work out. We have tons of ore on earth, in existing mines, just sitting there, because it’s more expensive to expand the mine/process less pure ores than the result is worth. It’s not like there’s asteroids of pure platinum floating around.
Lemma: Earth lodes are assumed to be limited supply.
Find a Smaug-scale lode of d-block transition metal like gold or palladium on the Moon or a near-Earth asteroid. Crash the market. Buy other metals at fire sale prices.
Also, own the silicon semiconductor market.
Profit.
We did neocolonialism. It was profitable. Nobody forgot that.
Do we have any reason to believe there’s giant blocks of pure, rare metals on the moon or asteroids? At least on earth we (well mostly China) gets them by processing more common metals and extracting the tiny portion of REs.
*are doing, is profitable
There’s no brown people on the moon you can give a dictator weapons to in exchange for keeping the people selling their labor and resources for peanuts.