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Discovery of 50km Cave Raises Hopes For Human Colonisation of Moon (theguardian.com)
New submitter Zorro shares a report: Scientists have fantasised for centuries about humans colonising the moon. That day may have drawn a little closer after Japan's space agency said it had discovered an enormous cave beneath the lunar surface that could be turned into an exploration base for astronauts. The discovery, by Japan's Selenological and Engineering Explorer (Selene) probe, comes as several countries vie to follow the US in sending manned missions to the moon. Using a radar sounder system that can examine underground structures, the orbiter initially found an opening 50 metres wide and 50 metres deep, prompting speculation that there could be a larger hollow. This week scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) confirmed the presence of a cave after examining the hole using radio waves. The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairytale. Jaxa believes the cave, located from a few dozen metres to 200 metres beneath an area of volcanic domes known as the Marius Hills on the moon's near side, is a lava tube created during volcanic activity about 3.5bn years ago.
If so, it probably tastes great and is all blue and shining and only exists in a limited quantity and becomes more worth than gold on Earth.
Who hopes for that? The Moon is a dead, airless, deadly hell. What precisely would humans do there? Are there any people living at the bottom of the ocean?
Why not? Why doesn't anyone hope for that?
...die together - when the whole thing collapses
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Who would have thought 50 years ago that we'd actually be exploring the moon one day?
Just like humans to go and dispossess a bunch of peaceful aliens that never even bothered us to begin with, just because we want a precious resource the lands they occupy have in abundance.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Any day now, they will find the remains of an ant-creature civilization, and the skeletal of Mr. Cavor.
Right next to the giant see-saw crystal thingy that powered the selenite civilization.
Just like humans to go and dispossess a bunch of peaceful aliens that never even bothered us to begin with, just because we want a precious resource the lands they occupy have in abundance.
Not to mention we sent a probe to Mars with a deadly "heat ray" weapon.
This can only end one way...
Have they uncovered the monolith yet?
I think we can definitely confirm that any water will be INSIDE the rocks and will require that we mechanically remove it by crushing OR it will have to be totally shaded, even from indirect light. Water would sublime into vapor if exposed to the vacuum of space with even a small amount of light from the sun.
So basically, man will have to dig up and crush fairly large quantities of the moon's crust to get to the water therein. Where this is better than having to bring along large quantities of H2O, saving space and weight for equipment and food, the question really becomes is it worth it? Until we find water ore and prove the mining methods, I'm thinking this is a great idea but I'm not going to bet my life that it's going to work.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
what are the interplanetary tax codes say.... time to grandfather in a corporation
There are just too many reasons why faking the moon landings would have been impossible. The only logical answer is that they faked faking the moon landings.
"That's no cave."--Han Solo.
Watch out for bottomless pits!
The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Pressurizing it would mean to seal all walls and to build 100m bulkheads. This is hard.
But even without that you get shielding against radiation and against micro meteoroids. Both are useful to have and hard to come by on the Moon.
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Well, the immediate plan is probably to send in some sort of rover to investigate, which should be exciting. I hope they can find a cute backronym for SPELUNK.
Someone had to do it.
You will go inside ti build a habitat and suddenly villi of exogorth droops down and tries to digest you. Unless you have a space ship that can fly faster than the neural transmission speed of an exogorth, dont even try this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They have been talking about putting a space elevator on the Moon. Maybe by 2020. I read we already have plastics strong enough to do this in the 1/8th gravity of the moon. Go Liftport!
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Self-Propelled Explorer for LUNar Kaves?
So close...
We might want to avoid sending any space marines.
The entire thing doesn't need to be habitable, the habitable structures could be built inside it to take advantage of the additional protection. Presumably it would also be best to build any structures in a location that won't be hit by the sun to avoid the expansion and contraction every time the sun appears or goes away.
I think we're in agreement though based on the comment you replied to.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
Well, we can assume that any water would not be in the form of liquid or vapor.
It could be in the form of permafrost-- ice mixed with crushed rock-- or in the form of water of hydration.
Eh, so name it SPELUNC instead and call it a day.
Someone had to do it.
Who would have thought 50 years ago that we'd actually be exploring the moon one day?
Who would have thought 100,000 years ago we'd still be looking for caves to live in.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just stay away from the Dark side of the Moon.....
I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
The bit about water/ice being potentially present in this multi-billion-year-old system of lava tubes is pure speculation on the part of "Zorro", the submitter of TFS, and/or the /. editor msmash, who posted it to the front page. No such theory is presented in the article from The Guardian (to which TFS links), by the press release from JAXA, as published on phys.org (from which The Guardian's article is most likely drawn), or in the abstract of the actual Geophysical Research Letters article (full "text" - meaning PDF, of course - paywalled courtesy of Wiley).
Which makes that part complete bullshit, added by someone who had no basis to include it as part of TFS, other than for the purpose of enhancing its clickbait potential. Or, in other words, business as usual for the new, steadily-deteriorating /.
Damn, I miss CmdrTaco ...
Check out my novel.
depends if R. Daneel Olivaw left the heating on.
Sealing it isn't all that hard.
Install primary bulkhead mounts and temporary face.
Vaporise regolith into a vapor of (mostly) glass and use that to pressurize the interior.
By default the escaping gas will condense and create a glass fill of all cracks.
Not hard, but not low energy either.
Optionally use inert gas to charge the space while aerosolizing some type of epoxy, but that will be more material intensive.
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Moon dust is so tiny and sharp that the astronauts who last visited almost died from having their suits compromised. I don't know if that's where you want to build a colony.
STOP!... Don't confuse me with facts....
The Lunar surface is a horrible place to set up housekeeping, no matter how you slice it or where you go. Underground is a bit more attractive, but still space is a cruel reality for the living, where there are more ways to die than you can imagine.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Those bulkheads only need to hold back 1bar, and realistically you could probably go down to 0.5 (while maintaining the same PPO2), and it'd still be fine. Your better design would probably be a series of bulkheads that progressively raise the pressure, which would also help for airlocking in and out (as going from 1bar to 1/3, as is typical in space suits, is a good way to give your astronauts the bends.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Naw, the US went there to beat the Russians. After that job was done, there wasn't really a compelling reason to go back.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Hipsters will pay top dollar for that real estate!
The highest bids of all will come from wealthy Londoners:
https://www.unbelievable-facts...
The ideal scenario would be to find a lava tube close enough to the polar crater ice deposits that you can bring in easily-accessible ice.
This space intentionally left blank
Scientific Project for Exploration of Lacuna Underneath Natural Keyholes
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
It's condensation from the exogorth's breath.
If there are large fissures, instead of merely small cracks, wouldn't that vaporized glass just escape into space with no hope of ever sealing up the fissures?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If we really need to colonize the moon, then isn't Earth pretty much fucked to the point where it's... the Moon? What's the point?
Let's,
Muck up another heavenly body. I can see it now, a Starbucks around every crater.
Caution: Contents under pressure
So it's a little bit like outback Australia then?
Water ice has been found near the poles, there's no particular reason there couldn't be more around buried deep: this is speculation but not stupid speculation.
I'm just reading this article now. I can't believe no one else has a reply about R. Daneel Olivaw. But then, Asimov is one of my two favorite authors.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Really interesting history behind him too. Taught at Boston University at the height of the cold war, consulted for rand corporation. That guy knew secrets...
if you go down in pressure, you actually need need to go up in concentration of O2.
suits may be at a lower pressure, but they are also running at 100% O2.
reason being the lower pressure makes it more difficult to breath, as you get less of an assist from the differential between lungs and ambient forcing the air into your lungs. absent the increased concentration, astronauts need to work harder to breathe. by increasing the concentration, the astronaut can still get enough O2 while also allowing his diaphragm to not work harder.
note however that it still takes adjustment, and is uncomfortable, and most astronauts are glad to return inside the ISS (for instance) which is maintained at normal pressure and with a normal concentration of 21% O2 with a Nitrogen balance.
thus, you (or rather your astronauts) are still going to rather appreciate and prefer returning to a moon base similarly maintained at normal conditions.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
doom commented:
Water ice has been found near the poles, there's no particular reason there couldn't be more around buried deep: this is speculation but not stupid speculation.
So we agree that it's speculation - and my point that the speculation is that of the author (or the editor - with /. summaries it's hard to know which) of TFS, and that it's not mentioned in The Guardian's article, the JAXA press release, or the actual Geophysical Review Letters abstract stands ...
Check out my novel.
Which I suspect is why he put that "PP" in there before O2, for Partial Pressure, which is what human breathing depends on.
I think the idea is that a 50km long tube would be the perfect ice trap. Any sublimed water that happened to go inside would eventually end up well away from any sun and heat and become ice. There wouldn't be much at any given time, but the process would have been going on for millions of years. I doubt we'll know until we actually get there and look.
on earth, but we'll have to screw it up a lot more before the moon starts looking like a good alternative.
No food, no water, no air. Hmmmm.
It would just take longer and more vaporised regolith. Some glass will adhere to the sides of the fissure, then eventually it will build up. There is, of course, a breach size that above which is impractical to seal with vapor deposition, and I would assume it to be anything over a decimeter or so.
I should also add that once a seal is achieved there should be an overpressure test of at least 5x working pressure.
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The Guardian made the ice claim. Not sure were the Guardian got it, but straight from the Guardian article - "The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairytale."
I don't see any claim about ice:
appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel
Do you need a dictionary for the meaning of the word "may"?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
OK the race is on for whichever nations can grab the best caves on the moon!
Then the cave wars begin.
> structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel
Let's seal this cave airtight and fill it with sweet breathable air. Then let's start digging out the cave walls for fuel! What could go wrong?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Vaporise regolith into a vapor of (mostly) glass and use that to pressurize the interior....Not hard, but not low energy either.
LOL... Not being low energy is what makes that idea very hard to do... on the moon no less. You'd have to mine raw materials and refine into a suitable fuel, or land a nuclear power plant on the moon.
Just need to land or build enough solar panels (well, I say "just" as though that would be easy). There's lots of energy available on the moon.
Thirty4 noted:
The Guardian made the ice claim. Not sure were the Guardian got it, but straight from the Guardian article - "The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairytale."
Thanks for clarifying that.
Check out my novel.
Many years ago, before most of you were born, I was a spelunker. We couldn't communicate underground with radios, or even listen to radios, because (I was told) radio waves don't penetrate rock very well. So how is this radar detecting a tunnel hidden under many meters (I presume) of rock? Is it because the radar is sending out that many watts of power? Or is relatively wet rock (which limestone caves are surrounded by) much more effective at blocking radio waves?
The wikipedia article on ground-penetrating radar isn't very clear on this, but seems to imply that it can penetrate depths of up ~15m of dry rock. That seems too little, if the tunnel is really ~100m wide, I would think the roof would be >> 15m thick, if it lasted billions of years without (except for this skylight) collapsing.