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Self-Sufficient Lunar Habitat Designed
An anonymous reader writes "Cosmos Magazine reports on a design for a lunar habitat that is 90 to 95 percent self-sufficient. The proposed habitat uses a closed-loop life support system that recycles and regenerates air, water, and food, reducing the need for costly supply trips. The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources. About 11 astronauts could live and work in the habitat for 2 to 3 years. The project would also help the environment on Earth with recycling and other sustainable practices." The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon.
...I'll, for one, welcome our new moon-based overlords
!sig
The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources.
Yes, and by "useful resources", they mean moon-elves.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Lower gravity => less stress on heart + other parts that tend to sag.
This news won't result in a resurgence of Pauly Shore movies.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
There will be plenty of cranky weirdos willing to volunteer. Just don't tell them that the latency of their Internet connections will be god-awful.
Why would a person want to live on the moon?
You have never lived in New Jersey have you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
After a while, all of the geeks will live on the moon, and they'll take their servers with them. Then, you will be the one with the huge latency!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Why is it that we had our first flight in 1903, 36 years later we exploded our first atomic bomb, 25 yeras after that we had a man in space, and only 8 years after that we had human beings on the moon. In the last 38 years what have we done? Why couldn't we put a man on the moon 9 months from now if we needed to? 30 YEARS to get this base going? If we started developing technology at the rate we were 100 years ago, we should have home based cold fusion reactors in 30 years! We should have near light-speed travel in 30 years! We should have mastered matter/energy conversion in 30 years!!!
screw this job, i'm going back to school for physics....oh, wait.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Well, how else are the whalers going to get there?!?
I don't think anyone's suggesting that the moon is the first step. I would expect that the 20-30 years of funding and research would absolutely include proving the concept on Earth first. Still, the moon becomes a logical stepping stone to interplanetary colonization and terraforming.
To sum:
1) Small closed habitat on earth
2) Test habitat on Moon
3) ???
4) Profit!
Where ??? becomes:
a) Colonize Mars
b) Open Lunar Real Estate Office
c) Mine for He3
d) Perform industrial espionage of the Google lunar offices
... that we're getting close to publicly releasing a coffee machine that you pee into and it brews fresh coffee from it!? You might say we have that already, but if my boss ever finds out about it I am so fired.Does that mean that my email box is now going to be flooded with ways to get to the moon?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
They don't need food, and they hardly breathe.
These stories are free but worth money.
Soylent Brown.
http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/
To be fair, the Biosphere probably would have been a lot more successful if Bud and Doyle hadn't thrown that huge party and totally knocked the ecosystem out of whack. Even then, though, they managed to do a pretty good job of cleaning it up, and everything turned out happily ever after, although the deal with the exploding coconuts did cause a bit of a scare.
"The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon."
That's perfect timing. That's exactly when fusion reactors should be available to power the thing.
Hardly the only reason. Reason #1 for me it that I can say that I live on the freakin moon!
And we thought sex at 1 mile was good. Imagine that on the moon. Oh right... Slashdot. Sorry.
Some days I just get bored and Troll post all the memes I can think of...
I thank you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it