# Finding lunar caves
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 25, 2006, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850 "2006-03-25T13:15:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@First\_Amongst\_Daves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/First_Amongst_Daves)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/1 "2006-03-25T13:15:03Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/2 "2006-03-25T13:20:55Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/3 "2006-03-25T13:28:34Z")
Scientists are already [searching for such lava tubes](http://www.oregonl5.org/lbrt/l5lbrt01.html):
> [@](#):
>
> Lunar lava tubes have long been recognized as desirable locations for the placement of manned lunar bases. Advantages include: (1) little construction is needed; (2) building materials need not be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well; (3) natural environmental control; (4) protection from cosmic rays, meteorites, micrometeorites, and impact crater ejecta [1].
>
> …
>
> The Clementine spacecraft, which mapped the entire surface of the Moon to an unprecedented level of detail in 1994, gives us a view of these smaller lava tubes. Over 1.9 million images in the visible, near infrared, and mid-infrared portions of the spectrum were captured.
>
> Our task is to find and catalog the small lava tubes in the Clementine dataset. Of particular interest are small sinuous rilles that contain interruptions, which represent uncollapsed portions of a tube that has partially collapsed. Once cataloged, the candidate base locations can be examined more closely for suitability. Considerations would be proximity to resources, sites of scientific interest, or favorable locations for siting of a railgun satellite launcher.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/4 "2006-03-25T13:50:04Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@First\_Amongst\_Daves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/First_Amongst_Daves)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/5 "2006-03-25T14:08:23Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#):
>
> Scientists are already [searching for such lava tubes](http://www.oregonl5.org/lbrt/l5lbrt01.html):
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?
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### Author:  [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/6 "2006-03-25T18:08:18Z")
With the exception of small moonquakes, the Moon is [geologically inactive](http://nineplanets.org/luna.html), so no worries about running afoul of a lava flow.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2006, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/7 "2006-03-27T14:35:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Shallow moonquakes on the other hand were doozies. Between 1972 and 1977, the Apollo seismic network saw twenty-eight of them; a few “registered up to 5.5 on the Richter scale,” says Neal. A magnitude 5 quake on Earth is energetic enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster.
[http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15mar\_moonquakes.htm](http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15mar_moonquakes.htm)
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2006, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/8 "2006-03-27T14:53:14Z")
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.
🙂
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### Author:  [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2006, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/9 "2006-03-27T18:09:24Z")
> [@Squink](#):
>
> [http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15mar\_moonquakes.htm](http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15mar_moonquakes.htm)
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.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/10 "2006-03-27T18:26:39Z")
> [@sunfish](#):
>
> 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.
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### Author:  [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/11 "2006-03-27T23:37:42Z")
> [@Squink](#):
>
> 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](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php) - 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.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2006, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/12 "2006-03-28T03:22:20Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 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.
Nothing to shrug off, maybe, but it might be a good argument to sit down on the job. 😉
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-lunar-caves/349850/13 "2006-03-30T17:22:54Z")
And play an imaginary game of chess, perchance?