Assuming that the Moon has large cave systems like we do here on Earth, it seems to me that finding said caves and pumping them full of air might be a way of humans habitating the Moon.
Is it possible to detect caves on the Moon from the Earth?
Assuming that the Moon has large cave systems like we do here on Earth, it seems to me that finding said caves and pumping them full of air might be a way of humans habitating the Moon.
Is it possible to detect caves on the Moon from the Earth?
Most caves on Earth are created by flowing water, so Lunar caves would be pretty scarce.
But there are caves caused by volcanic action, so look for extinct volcanos.
Scientists are already searching for such lava tubes:
I’m not sure that they qualify as caves, but I have been in a few of them ‘holes’ caused by sesimic activity, basically deep cracks, well only on earth however.
Thanks for that. I thought I had an original brain wave when I was suffering from insomnia late last night, but in the cold hard light of day I figure I was overly influenced by Heinlein as a kid.
Which begs another question - is the moon now volcanically inactive? Wouldn’t living in an old lava tube be perilous in the event the lava came back? Surely it like the Earth has a molten core… or doesn’t it?
With the exception of small moonquakes, the Moon is geologically inactive, so no worries about running afoul of a lava flow.
I seem to remember a plan for lunar bases that involved artificially excavating caves… basically drilling, planting an explosive charge at the bottom of the drilled hole and setting it off.
According to your link, there were 28 moonquakes detected over a five-year span. That is vastly different from the hundreds of earthquakes that occur every day on this planet, even if the shaking of the moonquakes lasts several minutes longer than earthquakes do.
The bottom line is that the Moon is tectonically quiescent, and there is virtually zero probability that a volcanic eruption of any kind will ever disturb a moonbase situated in an old lava tube.
Sure, there’s virtually no chance of volcanic activity, but a 5.5 quake with vacuum just outside the tunnel walls is nothing to shrug off.
A 5.5 quake isn’t the smallest quake in the world, true, but in terms of considering hazards, it’s not the biggest problem to worry about. Again, your link mentions a total of 28 moonquakes measured over 5 years, and of these, “a few registered up to 5.5 on the Richter scale.” Contrast that to earthquake activity reported by the USGS over the last seven days (as of March 27) - 18 quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher - and the USGS posts a disclaimer that there might have been still more. Most of those were shallow quakes, too. Compared to the Earth, the Moon is indeed pretty close to being a dead world.
Besides, we have the engineering know-how to build earthquake-resistant buildings already. It need not be difficult to adapt that knowledge for building a moonbase, so I don’t see this as the big problem the folks in your link make it out to be.
It might be helpful to have a little non-science context for this announcement. The recent proposed funding changes within NASA’s budget focus, in significant part, on getting people back to the Moon (an effort that is coming at the expense of a lot of other worthy science, I might add). Every scientist who depends on federal grants to get their reseach done knows the importance of sexing up their work, to make it seem especially critical to a given funding program when the competition for funds is fierce. That’s pretty much what these folks are doing here. I’m not slagging them, btw - just saying that that’s how it is.
Nothing to shrug off, maybe, but it might be a good argument to sit down on the job.
And play an imaginary game of chess, perchance?