jeno passes along this excerpt from New Scientist:
"A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards. ... The hole measures 65 meters across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 meters. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 meters across."
I'm not saying I'm old enough to remember, but wasn't there a Mole Men of the Moon enemy our slightly gay, tight wearing, dual-life-leading, Krytonian Ersatz Messiah had to fight?
that would be Selenites. Named after the ancient greek goddess of the moon, Selene. This name has been used for the inhabitants of the moon for more than a century.
Seriously though - I wonder what would be the best kind of sensors/instrumentation to map underground caves and tunnels on the Moon from orbit? Isn't there supposed to be something called "cavern sensing radar" or "ground penetrating radar" that can do this stuff? If so, then how come it hasn't been done yet? Surely we're not just going to rely on finding these choice living locations by just luckily spotting some hole in the ground?
If Man is going to return to the Moon and make a permanent base there, then it might as well be done in a cave, which is much more naturally sheltered from harmful cosmic rays and meteors, as compared to living in some inflatable habitat on the surface. Heck, that's why our cavemen ancestors liked caves to begin with - because they were uniquely sheltering environments. Shouldn't there be some kind of effort to map out the lunar underground to reveal where the best locations might be? As they say in real estate - it's location, location, location!
This will not be as easy as it might seem - SHARAD uses 15-25 MHz radar, or wavelengths from 1-3 meters. A 10 meter diameter tunnel (a fairly large lava tube) would only be a few wavelengths across, and thus would be hard to see.
Apollo 17 orbited a 60 meter wavelength radar system [harvard.edu], but I don't think that this had either the surface coverage or the resolution to realistically see lava tubes.
With this finding, I expect some nation will find the money to orbit a suitable radar around the moon to hunt for more tubes.
Seriously though - I wonder what would be the best kind of sensors/instrumentation to map underground caves and tunnels on the Moon from orbit? Isn't there supposed to be something called "cavern sensing radar" or "ground penetrating radar" that can do this stuff?
Such radar typically used on Earth tends to be in contact with the ground. So you'd need to land a vehicle. Also IIRC it is difficult to get a stable Lunar orbit, due to both the Earth being nearby and the Moon not being of uniform density.
Even if there is no lunar underground cave system, we could always dig one if the need arises. Moon mining could be done subsurface, to save the unmanned underground vehicle / remote controlled robots from temperature fluctuations and space radiation exposure. People and plants and animals are unlikely to ever live on the moon, other than as a work outpost, because there is not enough gravity for healthy functioning for highly extended periods such as over a few decades. Unless you construct a space station
Given the moon's lesser gravity, you should be able to jump right over the lava. That's right folks, this going to be one great big real-life Mario Brothers game!
In "Explorers on the Moon" he mentions ice (recently discovered) and caves. Now if we build that atomic rocket (NERVA or Orion), we could send a V2 like rocket on the moon with 8 people aboard, a dog, a tank (more impressive to selenites than a buggy) and let them stay for some weeks at first.
Sorry I can't find a better link, but you don't really need a lava tube for settlement [inhabitat.com], it just makes it cheaper and easier. You're still going to need an inflatable habitat or similar (honestly, what else makes sense?) to sit in the tube.
Sorry I can't find a better link, but you don't really need a lava tube for settlement, it just makes it cheaper and easier. You're still going to need an inflatable habitat
The obvious problem with an inflatable habitat is that anything the size of dust is going to make at least one hole in it. Patching is likely to take up quite a bit of someone's time.
or similar (honestly, what else makes sense?) to sit in the tube.
Install two bulkheads some distance apart and pressurize the space in between to 75 kPa.
"Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes' ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations"...and provide nourishment for the settlers by way of lashings and lashings of blue string soup.
These are almost certainly "sinkholes" into lava tubes, where lava runs out the center of a partially frozen lava flow. (Apollo 15 showed pretty clearly that at least the Hadley Rill was a collapsed lava tube.) There are lava tubes you can visit on the big island of Hawaii [bigisland.org].
The interesting thing to me about this is that the interior of these tubes, being far from the Sun and in a vacuum, might easily contain an appreciable amount of water ice, for the same reason that the lunar poles might, but with a much more convenient distribution across the Moon's surface.
Besides, wouldn't it be cool to explore these 3 billion year old caves?
...if the moon-quake/gravitational earth pull/meteors broke a hole in the tube, couldn't the same thing happen over the heads of the moon cave-men?
Possibly, but it would be simple enough to reinforce the ceiling like they do in tunneling projects. There probably would also be a dome or structure over the top in case even that failed and sprung a leak.
Sure but the same could happen to your home. Events of that type are pretty rare and hell, if something can smash through solid rock it'll probably smash through the ceiling of your surface moonbase too.
Not really, our atmosphere prevents any smallish rocks from hitting us (and a lot of them do hit the atmosphere just watch a meteor shower). The moon has no such convenience as seen by looking at its continuous craters.
This lava flow comes from the late heavy bombardment [wikipedia.org] and so the lava tube is well over 3 billion years old. Yes, the roof might fall in, but (given that there is no erosion, and no ground water dissolving the rocks) if it hasn't collapsed in 3+ billion years, the odds are in your favor.
Now, that doesn't mean that these tubes are necessarily stable, and you would certainly want to be cautious on the first visit, and provide a roof to protect against cave-ins caused by human activity, but many of the lava tubes on Earth are quite stable, and similar tubes on the Moon would be great places to set up shop.
It's been postulated a long time - 150 years or more. Apollo showed very clearly that the Mare are big basalt lava flows, and there are various other rilles and other lava related features.
The Moon has highlands and Mares [moondaily.com]. The highlands are old (saturated by craters at all scales) and mostly made of a type of granite, while the Mare are relatively younger (not saturated by craters at the km scale) and made of basalt lava. This basalt lava is mostly thought to have come from the late heavy bombardment [wikipedia.org] - a period of massive collisions on the Moon about 3.9 billion years ago which is now hypothesized to be from a disruption of the asteroid belt from the orbital migration of the outer planets [nature.com].
Beware (Score:2, Funny)
Beware of the Cave Dwellers! (Score:5, Funny)
3.5 billion years into existence and we've finally hit the first plot point.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Thong... the fish is ready.
Superman Serial (Score:2)
I'm not saying I'm old enough to remember, but wasn't there a Mole Men of the Moon enemy our slightly gay, tight wearing, dual-life-leading, Krytonian Ersatz Messiah had to fight?
(Batman rules!)
Slight correction (Score:2)
Named after the ancient greek goddess of the moon, Selene.
This name has been used for the inhabitants of the moon for more than a century.
Just thought I'd let you know.
Mapping Lunar Caves (Score:4, Interesting)
If Man is going to return to the Moon and make a permanent base there, then it might as well be done in a cave, which is much more naturally sheltered from harmful cosmic rays and meteors, as compared to living in some inflatable habitat on the surface. Heck, that's why our cavemen ancestors liked caves to begin with - because they were uniquely sheltering environments. Shouldn't there be some kind of effort to map out the lunar underground to reveal where the best locations might be? As they say in real estate - it's location, location, location!
Parent
Re:Mapping Lunar Caves (Score:4, Informative)
Very low frequency radar could do this, such as the SHARAD [nasa.gov] radar used to map the subsurface water ice on Mars [geology.com].
This will not be as easy as it might seem - SHARAD uses 15-25 MHz radar, or wavelengths from 1-3 meters. A 10 meter diameter tunnel (a fairly large lava tube) would only be a few wavelengths across, and thus would be hard to see.
Apollo 17 orbited a 60 meter wavelength radar system [harvard.edu], but I don't think that this had either the surface coverage or the resolution to realistically see lava tubes.
With this finding, I expect some nation will find the money to orbit a suitable radar around the moon to hunt for more tubes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Such radar typically used on Earth tends to be in contact with the ground. So you'd need to land a vehicle. Also IIRC it is difficult to get a stable Lunar orbit, due to both the Earth being nearby and the Moon not being of uniform density.
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Before you get exited about gaping moon holes... (Score:5, Funny)
Liquid Hot MAG-MA! (Score:2, Funny)
"It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 meters across."
This is really cool, but the main problem with living in lava tubes is...
LAVA.
Re:Liquid Hot MAG-MA! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Just to get it out of the way ... (Score:3, Funny)
That hole is probably where it fires its main weapon from.
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You could be right....I have a plan though....
We just need to aim some of those super sensitive long range microphones at the cave.......
The second we hear any mention of "Clearing bay 327" or "opening a magnetic shield" we run....
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Obviously... (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm on ur moon, controlin ur destiny
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Don't be silly, he won't be built for another couple of thousand years. We still have to turn the planet radioactive first.
In other news: (Score:2, Funny)
A similar hole was discovered on Uranus...
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Heechee? (Score:2, Funny)
I call dibs on the prayer fans. 10% of sales and discoveries from prayer fans goes to me, the rest you keep.
Herge was right ! (Score:2)
So then, now we know (Score:4, Interesting)
The moon is made out of Swiss cheese...
Access point to the hyperlogos (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry I can't find a better link, but you don't really need a lava tube for settlement [inhabitat.com], it just makes it cheaper and easier. You're still going to need an inflatable habitat or similar (honestly, what else makes sense?) to sit in the tube.
Re:Access point to the hyperlogos (Score:5, Interesting)
The obvious problem with an inflatable habitat is that anything the size of dust is going to make at least one hole in it. Patching is likely to take up quite a bit of someone's time.
or similar (honestly, what else makes sense?) to sit in the tube.
Install two bulkheads some distance apart and pressurize the space in between to 75 kPa.
Parent
Re:Access point to the hyperlogos (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't a kid's balloon. As I recall, the skin is about six inches thick, and made of kevlar.
Parent
Nourishment (Score:2)
"Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes' ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations" ...and provide nourishment for the settlers by way of lashings and lashings of blue string soup.
Chewy... (Score:2, Funny)
... I've got a bad feeling about this.
Moon Rover? (Score:2)
This all begs the question, when are we going to send a moon rover to study it more depth?
Dahak? (Score:2)
Ice (Score:5, Informative)
These are almost certainly "sinkholes" into lava tubes, where lava runs out the center of a partially frozen lava flow. (Apollo 15 showed pretty clearly that at least the Hadley Rill was a collapsed lava tube.) There are lava tubes you can visit on the big island of Hawaii [bigisland.org].
The interesting thing to me about this is that the interior of these tubes, being far from the Sun and in a vacuum, might easily contain an appreciable amount of water ice, for the same reason that the lunar poles might, but with a much more convenient distribution across the Moon's surface.
Besides, wouldn't it be cool to explore these 3 billion year old caves?
So easy ... (Score:3, Funny)
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...if the moon-quake/gravitational earth pull/meteors broke a hole in the tube, couldn't the same thing happen over the heads of the moon cave-men?
Possibly, but it would be simple enough to reinforce the ceiling like they do in tunneling projects. There probably would also be a dome or structure over the top in case even that failed and sprung a leak.
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Obviously (Score:4, Funny)
The moon isn't like a truck - it's a series of tubes.
Parent
Re:Just one question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure but the same could happen to your home. Events of that type are pretty rare and hell, if something can smash through solid rock it'll probably smash through the ceiling of your surface moonbase too.
Parent
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Re:Just one question... (Score:4, Interesting)
This lava flow comes from the late heavy bombardment [wikipedia.org] and so the lava tube is well over 3 billion years old. Yes, the roof might fall in, but (given that there is no erosion, and no ground water dissolving the rocks) if it hasn't collapsed in 3+ billion years, the odds are in your favor.
Now, that doesn't mean that these tubes are necessarily stable, and you would certainly want to be cautious on the first visit, and provide a roof to protect against cave-ins caused by human activity, but many of the lava tubes on Earth are quite stable, and similar tubes on the Moon would be great places to set up shop.
Parent
Oh NO (Score:2)
Just when I'd finally gotten that out of my head...
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That is how we reproduce, we better be good at it.
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I would love to hear your simpler explanation. Any will do, since you have a bunch of them.
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A cave on the moon!!! That bastard probably runs around calling it a "Death Star"
Well that's one way to get a bigger budget for manned space exploration
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Who is this we?
Do you have some sort of multiple personality disorder?
I guess your collective has no sense of humor "Your sense of comedy will be assimilated, resistance is futile, clowns are irrelevant"
Hehehehe too fun :)
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Up until now, the land-area of the moon was mainly described by either being in the light side or the dark side.
Let me guess, you're not quite from the bright side of Earth, are you?
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It's been postulated a long time - 150 years or more. Apollo showed very clearly that the Mare are big basalt lava flows, and there are various other rilles and other lava related features.
Re:Lava, on The Moon, really? (Score:4, Informative)
The Moon has highlands and Mares [moondaily.com]. The highlands are old (saturated by craters at all scales) and mostly made of a type of granite, while the Mare are relatively younger (not saturated by craters at the km scale) and made of basalt lava. This basalt lava is mostly thought to have come from the late heavy bombardment [wikipedia.org] - a period of massive collisions on the Moon about 3.9 billion years ago which is now hypothesized to be from a disruption of the asteroid belt from the orbital migration of the outer planets [nature.com].
Parent