Date: January 23, 2011
Title: Moon Colonies
Podcaster: Maurizio Morabito
Organization: Omnologos Ltd. – http://omnologos.wordpress.com/
http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/
Description: The why, where and when of Lunar colonies.
Bio: Maurizio is an experienced electronics and computing technologist and scientist, and published journalist and technical and scientific author in English and Italian with a variety of interests, including the study of international relations, economic and social development factors, the energy sector and space technologies. Maurizio has recently been accepted as Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, the world’s longest established organization devoted solely to supporting and promoting the exploration of space and astronautics.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Omnologos Ltd, on its quest to find sponsors for a major scientific experiment on the International Space Station. And it is dedicated to Lorenzo: may you take me to the Moon, one day!
Transcript:
Hi this is Maurizio Morabito from Omnologos omnologos.wordpress.com.
Today, we are going to talk about the many reasons for going back to the Moon, scientific, political, economical, social. A short discussion of human physiology, building materials and transportation issues will lead to the proposal of an underground polar location as settlement site, either within giant lava tubes or huge artificial caves. We will end with a little despair, a guess about the return date to the Moon. And a little optimism.
-Introduction
Why go to the Moon? Why send humans? Using what technologies? Where will the settlements be? And when will all the above happen? How about starting from the opposite point of view: why does Humankind’s combined practical experience of extra-vehicular activity on the lunar surface total no more than 7dd? And what is the chance that manned lunar missions will simply be indefinitely postponed? There are obvious obstacles to repeat the Apollo achievement. After all, spaceflight has always served a political mixture of civilian and military purposes. When the Apollo lost its political rationale, it was cancelled, and at this point in time, there is no “lunar constituency”. The Moon is usually associated to words such as “hostile”, “harsh”, “extreme” and “dead”, making it appear as if it were “very difficult to set up a base there”. Some even quote “Been there, done that”.
The task of organising a lunar settlement may appear very difficult. In any case, it is much simpler than the enterprise undertaken at the time when, without much of an orbital capability, President Kennedy promised to send a man to the Moon, land him there and get him back safe within the decade.
-Why
One could argue that if the reasons were that clear, somebody would have done it already. But there is one feature that sets the Moon apart from the rest of the Universe: the “Far Side”, shielded by hundreds of kilometres of rock from terrestrial electromagnetic noise and thus combining radio silence and access to atmosphere-free skies in the absence of a magnetic field. It is one of the best places to investigate the vast areas of the EM spectrum invisible to terrestrial astronomy. One example is the as-yet-unexplored very low frequency bands, or even neutrino astronomy, especially with energies between 1GeV and 10TeV. The lunar surface can also host giant interferometers without the drawbacks of formation-flying controls in hard-to-reach orbiting observatories.
A settlement on the Moon would provide the opportunity to understand more about the Moon itself. The Moon is the reference for planetary science, for example to estimate the age of the surface of an asteroid or satellite. With a few acres explored in detail, we miss information both about the Moon’s peculiarities (for example what is the bright soil at the feature called “Reiner Gamma”?) and also about the overall conditions on the Moon (what was the composition of the Lunar volcanic gases if not water?). Such studies can help understand our planet too.
The mainstream Lunar Origin theory is the impact between a proto-Earth and a Mars-sized body, and it has been built upon the Apollo data, and explains some characteristics of the terrestrial mantle. And the crater frequency curve on the Moon can clarify if Earth undergoes recurring asteroidal/cometary “bombardments” and when next ones should be expected for. Lunar soil or regolith contains solar activity records spanning at least a billion years. The soil of permanently shadowed craters may even contain our best chance to read first-hand the history of the Galaxy. It also takes much less energy to go from the Moon to any place in the Solar System than from Earth, including, paradoxically, from the Moon to Low-Earth Orbit. The Moon is truly a natural interplanetary spaceport for the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System, considering also that launch opportunities from Earth occur often, weeks compared to years to reach the nearest Near-Earth-Objects. And that the regolith can easily sustain the commercial mining of oxygen for space transportation systems.
Why humans? The history of lunar exploration is already full of examples of the advantages brought by humans to fieldwork. The astronauts of Apollo 16 quickly adapted their tasks after not finding any of the expected volcanic rocks. And what about the unexpected KREEP rocks (enigmatic collections of Rare-Earths)? What about Apollo 17’s “orange soil” (hardly a feature of any orbital mapping). Robots, of the kind feasible in the foreseeable future, will only examine and report according to their limited set of instructions. And humans are still too hard to substitute for a complex repair of instruments: Moon-based astronauts would be well placed to reach the new generation of telescopes built for one of the Sun-Earth Lagrange points. Scientists and service personnel will likely inhabit the lunar settlement in monthly or quarterly shifts. Given the fascination astronautics has with the public, there will also surely be lunar movies and documentaries, and tourism linked to new kinds of sports, lunar sports, including self-propelled flying, and impossible acrobatic shows. And what about memorabilia such as moon dust, moon rocks, and the film forgotten by the Apollo 16 crew?
-Where?
A lunar settlement will be viable only by development of so-called In-Situ Resource Utilisation: in other words, transport the machines, not the goods. The main points concern human health: a maximum 20% of a person’s time should be spent outside the protection of a minimum 4 meters of regolith. The internal atmosphere of the settlement must also be as dust-free as possible. In this respect, a particularly interesting idea is of underground polar structures: they are shielded from impacts and radiation, and allow careful avoidance of cross-contamination with the surface; they also experience smaller temperature variations, have access to water and orbital access every 2 hours. Such a structure is repeatable for human outposts and colonies anywhere in the Solar System. Lunar underground structures could be housed in “lava tubes”, some hundreds of meters long and with 10 meters or more of roofing material. Alternatively, there have been already investigations on excavations by melting the rocks, or detonating bombs. I call this the P.O.L.E. concept (Peak Of Light Eternal, and poetic licence taken). With plenty of space available, P.O.L.E. inhabitants would live in large Earth-like caves enjoying the advantages of living on the Moon without being continuously reminded of the lunar “desolation”. And the Earth, the lunar surface, the far side would be at short distance.
-When
History teaches that there is going to be a very long wait before returning to the Moon. Published space-related timescales have been anyway wrong for decades, and US Presidential staff changing every 4 or 8 years does not help continuity of purpose. There is also no sign of long-term exploration planning. In this scenario, the most likely date for a symbolic return is 2069, as a politically advantageous tribute to Apollo 11. But there is a political aspect. Were the next moonwalker not be an American, were a Chinese crew be welcoming in 2032 the first American on the Moon in 50 years, serious questions would be asked about the “End of the Empire”.
After the despair, let’s conclude on a note of optimism. With robots able to do and humans able to explore, it is now important to prioritise lunar action over plans and study. So let’s just do it! As in the words of British author Bridget O’Donnell: “She didn’t know it couldn’t be done, so she went ahead and did it”. Thank you for listening.
If you want to know more about a lunar mystery, check out the November 23rd, 2010 podcast about the “Moving Moon Dust”.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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