Slashdot Mirror
Moon Mining Gets a Closer Look
happylucky writes "There are many obstacles to creating a space colony on the moon, primarily food, water, and oxygen. Since it is so expensive to bring supplies from the earth, some scientists have suggested that we mine the moon. In an article in the Toronto Star, Dale Boucher suggests the best way to do this would be to develop a mining colony. To that end, the Sudbury-based Northern Center for Advanced Technology has linked Canada's mining industry with some of the top minds on space.Mining the moon was considered earlier this month at the Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium which attracted some 100 delegates, including experts from the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and the European Space Agency. There are other hurdles of course that need to be figured out. The moon's gravity is one sixth that on Earth. New research, however, may lead to a solution to this problem as well. It may be possible to develop a sticky compound that can be adjusted by UV light to help adhere boots and objects to the floor."
Something tells me it's a dumbass idea to start digging up other planets just yet. If we start mining the moon we may screw it up in some way we have no way of predicting or start a B-movie style plot involving aliens off.
Why don't people understand that you don't fuck with stuff you don't understand? We need to find a way to export stuff from Earth to the Moon cheaply, not how we can mine it and drop huge ass rocks on Earth from it.
I like muppets.
And your descendents will destroy other celestial bodies that are out there as well. If we humans destroy this planet, it's what we deserve.
Or perhaps those who have demonstrated actual effort in preservation should be allowed to go while those who didn't care get left behind.
It's a girl!
The "dark side of the Moon" isn't dark all the time. It's just we can never see it. Think about it: half the Moon is always in light, and the other half, in shade, yeah? And we can only ever see one side of the Moon, yeah? And we have these periods where there's only part of the Moon visible, yeah? So we can conclude that when the Moon is in the sky but not totally visible, that's because the Sun is shining on the other side, which is the side we never see. Ergo, the Moon does have a day-night cycle; it lasts 28 (Earth) days.