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Hotel on the Moon
pythorlh writes: "This site has plans submitted for a hotel on the moon. Interesting solution to the various engineering challenges. Also, Astronomy Picture of the Day has an artists concept." It's an insane cantilevered design that couldn't be built in full-gravity. I look forward to the day when "Low-Gravity Architectonics" is a required course for your B.Arch.
...or is the APOD really bad? I could do that in 10 minutes with pov-ray.
And imagine entering the lobby and hearing "Welcome to the Lunatic Hilton".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Not this century, it won't.
May I remind you of the state of the art in computers, electronics, aviation and space technology just one century ago?
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
What happens once they run out of the little soaps and shampoos.
Chili sauce?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
If you compare a cross-section of the proposed lunar hotel, you'll see there is nothing to boast about when you compare it to the Montréal Olympic Stadium, which is over 50 stories high, and built in one full G... (Here is another picture taken from 6 km away).
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Am I the only one that thinks the designer went to the Quake Arena School of Architectural Design?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
> couldn't be built in full-gravity
Ok i'll bite. This seems entirely wrong.
To acheive equilibrium, there must be equal torques around the pivot... now give that both sides of the pivot are subject to the same gravitational force (both sides are on the moon, not one on the moon, one on earth), there is no reason why if this is indeed sustainable at any gravitational force, that it wouldn't be at full force.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
How long will postcards need to go to the earth ?
Will there be plenty of bandwidth ?
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Didn't you see GalaxyQuest?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Seem to me that the search for lunar water would be the key to everything else. Once you have a secure (on the lunar surface - hence cheap) water source you can expand into all these other ideas. But until that is done, you are going to make slow and extremely expensive progress on everything else lunar related.
who will be the first to make the obligatory "phallic" comment?
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YES! One step closer to Sex In Outer Space!!
Mike Roberto
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It's a cute design. Maybe it'll inspire some two-bit amateur sci-fi writer somewhere. Will it ever be built on the moon? Not this century, it won't.
Yeesh.
Got Rhinos?
But, without significant infrastructure to move people between the earth and the moon, feed them, supply air and water (reclammation of metabolic water would help for instance) a hotel on the moon is simply a playful idea, regardless of the detail. Besides, I think Heinlein's ideas in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are important. Going underground makes immense sense in an environment where the "open" can kill you abruptly.
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This "design" is about as useful as a Microsoft operating system on a computer with bad ram ;) They didn't even touch on the critical issues at all, they just made a fanciful design and said, "here you are!"
;) We're talking automated mining, automated melting/refining, and automated molding. A milling machine would be useful, so they can adapt when something goes wrong by making a new part (it'd take days to get something from earth). Of course, these machines would need to be shipped up, too :) Construction equiptment would probably be best manned, as we still have a lot of trouble with computers percieving 3d spacial phenominae. Howeverm the construction of all of these devices (mostly AI research) would have immediate application here on Earth, as well, and thus, NASA (and other organizations) can help pay for their work.
Some realities:
The cost for even maintaining such a facility would be unbelievably staggering. Moving things off of earth is incredibly expensive. Moving an estimage of a few hundred tons of steel, glass, plastic, concrete, all sorts of things, is ludicrous. Then, transferring up all food, oxygen, water, new people, taking off old people, etc, the numbers just keep growing.
The reality of the situation, is that you need a self-supporting colony before you can design a "hotel".
First off, before you can do much of anything, you need a power source. On most thin or no-atmosphere planets and moons, this is best accomplished by solar power - not solar panels, by far - but by a field of (cheap) steel reflector dishes that track the sun and focus its light onto a single point. What you then have is an excelent temperature differential (between that point and the rock; on earth, power stations such as these use the air more often). Only the motors/control systems and the generator itself would need to be shipped from earth; the dishes are simple enough to make locally using temporary power (nuclear or other).
Temporary power would, at first, control mining and component construction. Molds would undoubtably be shipped from earth. Equiptment would need to be mostly or completely automated - keeping a huge construction team of humans alive, away from earth, is expensive
Construction itself has all sorts of hurdles. In addition to the numerous problems you'll see just from basic spacewalk-repairs, you'll also have the blanket of lunar sand to deal with, the need to construct completely air-tight structures away from earth, etc. The easiest way would be if you could mold mostly-complete structures and link them together via tunnels - but, then, you have a low cap on your room size. Even worse, on a body as low-G as the moon, you would definitely want artificial gravity, and thus need to have a base that can spin, if you plan on anyone staying there for a reasonable amount of time (and you will - maintaining a micro-society would require a lot of local personelle, from repairs, to expansions, to running equiptment, etc.)
What sort of equiptment will you need to keep running? O2 generators. Water generators. Water recyclers. Food-related equiptment - a gigantic hydroponic greenhouse, its related heating, harvesting, water-filtering, air-regulation, etc, equiptment - food processing equiptment, etc. Heating and air filtering/balance maintinence for the personelle (many elements to keep the air having the proper distribution for a long period of time). Power generation, mining, and processing equiptment. All of the interconnections (pipes, cables, etc). Communications and computer equiptment. Radio communications. All the equiptment used in daily life. Etc.
Only once you have a stable environment could it ever be economically feasable.
-= rei =-
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
the Moon's low, one-sixth-Earth gravity, and the absence of wind were an architectural boon allowing a much more slender and fragile-looking building than would have been possible on Earth
I don't know about you guys, but I'm not really attracted to slender and fragile looking buildings, especially if it's the only safe place on the whole ball of rock. Is it the architectural fashion now to create buildings that don't look safe?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
... building deparment wants for permit and inspection fees?
...the implications of meteors considering that the moon has no atmosphere?... .*shrc is
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$HOME is where the
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They came up with a design that's definitely not possible here, due to the existence of gravity, but what seems worrisome is that such a delicate-looking design better have some serious support. We are protected here on Earth from a great many things that fall out of the sky by our atmosphere, which consumes all but the most massive meteors. This design, I fear, won't stand to getting pelted by such a shower.
Am I totally off base here?
Just think about the resources required to sustain even the smallest 'luxury' hotel on earth. It would be very hard to accomplish especially since we can't even run a successful "Bio-Dome" experiment on Earth.
There are extremely few examples of self-sufficiency on this Planet. The very nature of our society is to NOT be self-sufficient.
When was the last time you grew something?
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You'd need a way to store your solar power. There is a night on the moon, and it's about 2 weeks long. Gotta store power for it, or maybe use nuclear power.
But power aside, the sheer cost of moving the crap up there is prohibitive. These are ridiculous stories. At least in the early '70s we were FLYING to the moon and we could talk about hotels with a straight face. Today it is obviously a pure fantasy and I'll be happy never to see something like this in the news again. Well, maybe not never... run a story 1 year before I can buy a freaking ticket, and not a second earlier.
Am I saying it's like a Bruce Willis' movie? No. The last I heard, Armstrong's footprints were still up there undisturbed by weather. But I am saying it's not entirely unreasonable to expect big rocks moving at fairly remarkable speeds to crash into the roof of your structure some day. I would think it would be at least as likely as a tornado in Texas.
You can live your whole life in Austin without ever seeing one. Then one day, two tornadoes meet and shake hands in the middle of town like they did in the early part of the last century.
I would think that a structure on the moon would have to meet higher standards than those one Earth...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Exactly. What happens once they run out of the little soaps and shampoos. The $40mil someone paid to get up there is going to piss them off even more for that poor service. How long will it take them to get another shipment in?
To be perfectly serious, when you go into a hotel these days, they have a sign in the bathroom asking you to conserve water. Well, guess what? They're going to need a really big supply to conserve in the first place if they want to even get started. A whole lot of people are going to have to do a whole lot of peeing after holding their bladder from the ride up from earth in order to start up that water supply and someone better have a good sewage system in place to filter that. Without water this will remain a bad 3D render.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Will their be much point of installing vibratting beds in a hotel on the moon? What are the hotels going to do for extra revenue then? Kinda a long way to run spank cable....
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The catch on why only a selected few can even enter space is due to our reliance on primitive chemical based rockets. How are people going to get into the hotel?
Or even how are they going to get the tools to the site to even began to construct the hotel?
Rockets are dangerous, need to be manned by highly qualified astronaunts, and extremely expensive.
I liked an older slashdot story which talked about a huge space elevator or stairway structure into space. From there, their would be less gravity and air friction, so the escape velocity would be alot less. It may even be possible (don't have a physiscs degree)to have a high speed rocket powered vehicle to meet the escape velocity requirements without special large rocket boosters like our current spaceshuttles. THe vehicle would resemble more of a concord jet then a space shuttle. We can carry large amounts of people into space from the elevator. Its the launchpad problem that we are dealing with.
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probably a stupid question, but is there anything that actually creates water?
all we seem to do on Earth is move it around...
Quoting (a little bit out of order, but it helps me make an interesting point):
Now, the low-G environment would benefit geriatrics and people with other problems as well.
These folk can't guard themselves with their arms like most folk, and many are severely osteoporotic. In short, you drop 'em, they break. Literally.
So how exactly, if they're so fragile, are we gonna send them up there? Last time I checked, getting up to orbit was highly strenous for the astronauts. We're talking big G's here.
I understand your point, and i think you're right about taking care of them in low-G ambients, but until we get smoother rides up to orbit, I think it's a moot point.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Families will have to keep an eye on the children all the time so they don't go play outside, or explain to them very carefully that, yes, live human beings *can* boil at ambient temperatures ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Cause if the lens flare on the moon is that horrible I'm staying home.
When I saw this, I thought of something my girlfriend said to me today. She's studying architecture, and I asked her on a whim if they would do any projects for buildings on the moon.
I thought that she would make fun of me, but she said that a group of students in Darmstadt, Germany (we both study in Wiesbaden) are really working on it. They're currently working on a shower which is a big metal tub, that attracts errant water drops electrostatically. (Or something like that).
Now that Denis Tito has been in space and the first signs of the commercialising of space are showing the space transportation companies would be better off if they could make the journey for their paying customers as comfortable as possible.
And I'm sure every architecht would laugh with glee at the thought of decreased gravity and the lack of weather. I can hear my girl now: "huge arches, hihih! And glass roofs! And bristly things poking out everywhere! HAHAA"
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In this Cross section I couldn't help but notice the label "flying zone". At first I assumed this is where spacecraft bringing supplies would land, but you wouldn't think they would have spacecraft land in the middle of the spire. So I wonder... maybe they have something in mind like Heinlein's flying chamber... where people strap on oversized bird wings and learn to fly like birds with the reduced G. If so, that alone would be worth the cost of the trip =P
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Now why live in Luna in the first place? Think about the possibilities for retirement homes, geriatric facilities and similar services. Also, those of us who've spent too much time tending the disabled --- meaning nonambulatory, no use of their arms and legs, need to turned in bed every 2 hours because they can't roll themselves over --- can see tremendous benefits. For one, at one-sixth G, even a bare rock floor is more comfortable than the best bed on Earth! And when you have to transfer someone in and out of a wheelchair a dozen or more times daily, get them in and out of the bathtub, etc., you have a lot of opportunities to drop someone. Not good. These folk can't guard themselcves with their arms like most folk, and many are severely osteoporotic. In short, you drop 'em, they break. Literally.
Now, the low-G environment would benefit geriatrics and people with other problems as well. Say people with long term heart problems, MS, ALS, CP, myasthenia gravis, etc. We really need to colonize the place. I'll damn sure invest in rehab facilities of that sort! And remember, you WILL be old and frail someday. Life can suck when you're 80 years old, and you're biggest fear is falling and cracking a hip!
Sure there are issues to be addressed before we can move in. Water, for one. But there may well be ice to be mined. O2 can be liberated from the rock (silicon dioxide). Power is everywhere on Luna. And being at the bottom of the much shallower Lunar gravity well makes it much easier to mount excpeditions to the asteroids, where all the lovely raw material for orbital manafacturing are waiting for us... We could do this today (or even twenty years ago), so why are we still Earthbound?
Nuff Sed,
MalTheElder
"It's raining soup, and we haven't discovered buckets yet."
--Robt. A. Heinlein