A pretty good article here speculating on the location and other practical details of a lunar outpost.
The lunar south pole still looks good:
The allure of Shackleton Crater is that it is relatively hospitable and practical. Explorers perched on its rim would experience a night of only 2 Earth days and 4 hours. The crater’s proximity to the moon’s day-night boundary – called the terminator – also makes it an ideal place to test technologies and find out what works and what doesn’t in both environments.And here is a suggestion for another problem:
Sounds simple. But one of the main problems for humans is dealing with radiation for anyone needing to stay there for any length of time.But habitats aren’t the only pieces of hardware that must be warmed. Robotic rovers and their batteries also need to survive. “We have a hard time keeping … trucks working in Siberia,” Dr. Ramachandran says. “We have no experience working at minus 150 degrees.”
The solution could be a “wadi” – a patch of lunar surface somewhat larger than a rover and covered with what is in effect a reflective tent. During the day, lenses would heat these strategically spaced wadis. As night nears, hardware would extend a reflective cover over the area – like tin foil over a turkey, shiny side down.
I don't know if this is being considered at all, but my idea is that building a covered framework over which a little bulldozer can gradually pile up a deep mound of dirt for cosmic ray protection might work. (The covering material itself could be airtight, or the whole interior could be sprayed with a sealant.) I would assume that the lower gravity means the framework can be considerably lighter than what you would need on earth.
This seems a lot simpler to me than the idea of baking lunar bricks in situ. You could be lucky and build such a shelter over a pre-existing little crater. Or maybe you just work on a low rise dome type structure. Maybe geodesic domes would work well?
I would be curious to know if this has been considered. Just send the cheque in the mail, NASA.
Steve - don't think it would work.
ReplyDeleteWe already know that sending humans to Mars, for example - and it is on the drawing board - is essentially a death mission. The affects on the body, combined with the radiation problem, mean that anyone volunteering to go out there for a long period is agreeing to give their much shortened life for the cause.
So far, there are no solutions to enable humans to live or travel in uninhabitable places in the universe. It will, I think, remain a fantasy.
But Caz, as Arthur C Clarke used to argue, the next stage of lunar development is likely to be the similar to the use of Antarctica: it's not foreseeable with current rocket technology that anyone is going to start living there permanently, but small expeditions which stay over for 6 to 12 months at a time at a permanent base may be able to do some good astronomy or other science. The problem is limiting radiation exposure for that length of time, and a deep enough layer of dirt is almost certainly the simplest way of doing it.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I am very cynical of the utility of sending astronauts to Mars. It would be nice to know if life evolved there too, but frankly if it's proved that it did, it's hardly to be a gigantic surprise.
ReplyDeleteI don't really believe the agenda is about identification of life evolving there Steve, although it would be a nice sidebar. The whole ordeal would be far more experimental. Testing the limits of the human body, for one. A guinea pig exercise.
ReplyDeleteMars would be the choice solely because it's close enough to feasibly get there. Other than that, we already know a great deal about the place without sending any people up. Almost superfluous to take the trip.
So, utility, not much, except for pushing the envelope of human endurance.