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Caves of the Moon
jeno passes along this excerpt from New Scientist:
"A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards. ... The hole measures 65 meters across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 meters. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 meters across."
The moon is a harsh mistress...
3.5 billion years into existence and we've finally hit the first plot point.
This is R. Daneel Olivaw's hideout
Given the moon's lesser gravity, you should be able to jump right over the lava. That's right folks, this going to be one great big real-life Mario Brothers game!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The moon isn't like a truck - it's a series of tubes.
The moon is made out of Swiss cheese...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Sure but the same could happen to your home. Events of that type are pretty rare and hell, if something can smash through solid rock it'll probably smash through the ceiling of your surface moonbase too.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
These are almost certainly "sinkholes" into lava tubes, where lava runs out the center of a partially frozen lava flow. (Apollo 15 showed pretty clearly that at least the Hadley Rill was a collapsed lava tube.) There are lava tubes you can visit on the big island of Hawaii.
The interesting thing to me about this is that the interior of these tubes, being far from the Sun and in a vacuum, might easily contain an appreciable amount of water ice, for the same reason that the lunar poles might, but with a much more convenient distribution across the Moon's surface.
Besides, wouldn't it be cool to explore these 3 billion year old caves?
Sorry I can't find a better link, but you don't really need a lava tube for settlement, it just makes it cheaper and easier. You're still going to need an inflatable habitat
The obvious problem with an inflatable habitat is that anything the size of dust is going to make at least one hole in it. Patching is likely to take up quite a bit of someone's time.
or similar (honestly, what else makes sense?) to sit in the tube.
Install two bulkheads some distance apart and pressurize the space in between to 75 kPa.