How To Avoid a Scramble For the Moon and Its Resources 365
MarkWhittington writes "With the Chang'e 3 and its rover Jade Rabbit safely ensconced on the lunar surface, the question arises: is it time to start dividing up the moon and its resources? It may well be an issue by the middle of the current century. With China expressing interest in exploiting lunar resources and a number of private companies, such Moon Express, working for the same goal, a mechanism for who gets what is something that needs looking into. Moon Daily quotes a Russian official as suggesting that it can all be done in a civilized manner, through international agreements. On the other hand, law professor and purveyor of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds suggests that China might spark a moon race by having a private company claim at least parts of the moon. 'International cooperation will certainly rule supreme while there are no economic interests, while it is not clear where commercial profits lie. Scientists can't help communicating with each other and sharing ideas.'"
Enforcement (Score:2, Insightful)
Property rights might come into play some day, when the moon is crowded or scarce materials are identified in limited places, but until then, good luck writing things down on paper on Earth and expecting anybody to care about that. Property on The Moon will belong to whoever gets there and defends their claim.
If any Earth Nation expects to shoot down transit flights to or from the moon to enforce their paper claim, the ramifications will be far more severe than if they simply did nothing. Perhaps the poli
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Yeah, it's not like a government can forcibly seize assets and keep you from launching to begin with.
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Yeah, it's not like a government can forcibly seize assets and keep you from launching to begin with.
Who's going to invade China to seize their launch assets? Make no mistake, all this kerfuffle really is about China having a million people working on their space program and investing in human presence on The Moon and Mars whilst the other nations continue to shut down their productive capacity.
Space X is wonderful, but they'll always find a home somewhere on Earth for launches, even if their current host
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Presumably, a company would launch from a friendly host-nation.
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However, if they choose to use tarriffs and protectionism to enforce their claims then the ramifications will be even more serious than that.
Take the Manifest Destiny approach (Score:3)
He who gets there, and stays there, first with the most wins the rights.
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I think you mean whoever gets there and brutally murders anyone who was there before them wins the rights.
Yeah, that sounds more like manifest destiny.
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You mean the native moon-dwellers?
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Loonies [wikipedia.org].
(Sorry, Canada.)
Is it really an issue (Score:3)
Other than being a place to wave your flag, and maybe--and I mean maybe--a handy place to build a telescope and a base for scientific research, is it really economically viable to haul back minerals and other materials by the ton?
Re:Is it really an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
the only place we can get it is natural gas wells (it is extremely scarce, but sometimes found in very small quantities in wells), it happens to be relatively abundant on the moon.
The race for the moon is really a race for clean nuclear energy, which is quite a prize.
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You're not really pushing a rational business case here. You would typically find a use for the uber expensive material before you spend a lot of money going after said expensive material.
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Re:Is it really an issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe someday we'll need to build absolutely massive space structures and it will make sense to mine the moon for raw materials to save on launch costs (especially if you're using nuclear rockets that would be politically impossible on Earth), but humanity is nowhere near undertaking this kind of project, and I fully expect it to be a pipe dream for my entire lifetime.
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I feel like we (us humans) are playing this D&D game. We get to a level, we need to spend some time acquiring EXP and stuff before we can level up. Your comment makes me think we just found a dungeon run that would really require a larger cooperative party to beat it and get the prize (H3). Once we get that prize our energy production goes up, civilization continues and we level up.
Now the scary part is that (1) we're not doing so well at cooperative game playing (2) the bosses are starting to get ha
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To sum up: If the moon has hit points, we can kill it and take its stuff!
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You're begging the question. All those materials you mine in space would be used for what? Building mining equipment in space?
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Re:Is it really an issue (Score:5, Funny)
Why are there humans on earth to be kept alive?
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Why are there humans in space to be kept alive?
"To boldly go where no man has gone before", of course. :)
Re:Is it really an issue (Score:5, Informative)
Propel vehicles from Earth orbit or from an Earth-Moon Lagrangian point to remote locations in the solar system for the purpose of sustaining the life functions of astronauts while they travel. Humans are in space because there's cool stuff there.
If you ask me why humans need vehicles or why there's cool stuff in space, I'm going to really wish I could reach through my monitor and severely beat you about the face and neck.
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Humans are in space because there's cool stuff there.
What are the humans going to do with the "cool stuff" that requires their physical presence? What value does the "cool stuff" have to those who would fund such a mission?
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Propel vehicles from where to where for what purpose? Why are there humans in space to be kept alive?
Good question. Besides the desire to explore, the most obvious choice would be because there is near limitless energy, or certainly more than we can collect, coming from the sun. With enough energy, we can grow, manufacture, and recycle as much as we need to. Moving that energy down to Earth starts to become unwieldly fairly quickly and it becomes better to just stay up there and use it there.
The moon should be controlled by the UN, perhaps.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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The moon should be easier. They wouldn't have to worry about getting tickets for double parking. No cops. Drunk driving? No problemo?
Re:The moon should be controlled by the UN, perhap (Score:5, Funny)
Good idea. Why not the Moon after the UN did such a great job divvying up Palestine and managing any subsequent conflicts over the land/resources there.
OK, so the UN made one big mistake (fuelled by Great Britain's incompetence) in their history, but the organisation as a whole works pretty well. Just wish they could take over regulation of the Internet! They might get the moon bit sorted out first though.
Moot point (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's apparently a white flag. Does that mean that the nation that put it there is surrendering?
Re:Moot point (Score:4, Funny)
What's there left to discuss? If you want who is moon's owner, just check whose flag is planted on it.
Correct: the flag is pretty obvious. [cloudfront.net]
How is this a big deal? (Score:2)
There's already a framework for establishing claims and exercising rights on those claims, and for resolving disputes over those claims.
Enforcement will always be the problem - since currently, and in the future, there's really no way to enforce the rules eleventy million miles away, it's going to come down to either put up or shut up, as it should.
He who gets there fustest with the mostest (Score:4, Insightful)
Some badguy once said that the way to win a battle was "He who gets there fustest with the mostest". That typically works pretty well for most human endeavors. We should want a scramble to get to the moon. Human innovation, powered by greed, has typically been the best catalyst for moving forward. I fail to see why this would be any different.
The UN would undoubtedly screw it up, as would any other controlling agency. So for the time being, leave it uncontrolled. It causes no harm and may do good.
lets work on getting folks THERE first (Score:2)
a rough idea would be
1 land a Bot Crew to setup Moon Base Alpha (something big enough for say 24 folks)
2 when the bots have everything tested start sending people
3 the first group then builds MB Beta (big enough for 120 people)
4 after everything is tested and stable we start sending Managers
5 MB Gamma gets built
6 Congress critters get sent up (enough people should be there to "count")
Worry about which nation on Dah MudBall gets which moon rocks after we can have a conference ON THE MOON
Re:lets work on getting folks THERE first (Score:4, Funny)
Nice plan, but I'd add two final steps:
7. After the Congress critters are sent up there, we send lawyers and other politicians.
8. Recall any science folks sent there to set up the place and let them run the whole setup into the ground in an isolated fashion.
Optional step 9: Broadcast the whole thing as a great new reality show: Politicians and Lawyers On The Moon!
Re:lets work on getting folks THERE first (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is this. Since there's little-to-no air for spacecraft to put against as we leave the atmosphere, the only way we can accelerate (or resists accelerating back towards the earth), as we reach the upper atmosphere is to eject mass out the back of the spacecraft at high speed. Due to Newton's third law, pushing mass out the back of a spacecraft creates a reactive force propelling the spacecraft forward. You can't have an electric spacecraft like you can an electric car because there's no road for the spacecraft to push against. For every gram of cargo you want to put into space, you have to have enough fuel to propel that mass into space, also, remembering that the fuel itself has mass, which itself must be propelled a certain distance until it is expelled.
Re:RE (Score:4, Informative)
To reach orbit you need to be able to generate enough force to lift your craft above the bulk of the atmosphere and put on enough speed to obtain orbital velocity.
Once you are there drag will be minimal, and even small propulsive forces will add up over time to get you escape velocity. Gravitational forces will not stop you from doing this as long as you overcome whatever the atmospheric friction is (if gravity is very strong, you just take longer to put on the speed to escape from orbit.)
The basic principle of ejecting matter with more energy is sound, but the devices we have which can do this tend to be heavy with low thrust, so using an ion drive to escape the atmosphere and hit orbital velocity is beyond our capabilities at the moment.
This is really more a matter of producing a lot of energy quickly (and not melting whatever we are using to push mass out at a high rate with high energy.)
I do expect that we will get better at this over time, chemical energy is just very easy in comparison.
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4.5 Rot and decay quickly sets it. Critical systems begin to fail and resources dwindle as engineers and scientists responsible for upkeep and maintenance are overwhelmed with red-tape and paperwork, and eventually outnumbered by a vast legion of administrative staff who inexplicably are given decision making responsibility in MB Beta.
The last computer log transmission from MB Beta recorded that the colonists died enmasse shortly after senior
How to avoid a scramble? (Score:5, Insightful)
First place the moon far away.
Next introduce a large gravity well around earth. Then make sure there is a vacuum on the moon and the only source of power is the sun.
That will avoid a scramble for a long time.
I got dibs on the dark side... (Score:2)
...that's where all the good stuff is.
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I think Pink Floyd beat you to it long ago....
"I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon." [snippet of lyrics]
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I hear there are cookies [cafepress.com] and bacon [thinkgeek.com] there. Or was that a different Dark Side?
So you're telling me... (Score:2)
Sorry, don't by the 50 years (Score:4, Informative)
Adrian's Rule of Successful Aquisition (Score:2)
Never give away part of something you might want all of later.
Boots on the ground (Score:2)
The international "can't get there" crowd, U.S. included, can only whine and posture in the U.N. as the Chinese strip mine [goo.gl] whatever valuable resources they find there.
AVOID?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the HELL would you want to AVOID a scramble for Lunar resources? This is something to actively encourage, to get some permanent human settlements off this rock.
Every man/country for themselves, and may the best and fastest effort win.
Necron69
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Why the HELL would you want to AVOID a scramble for Lunar resources? This is something to actively encourage, to get some permanent human settlements off this rock.
Wow. How sad. I had to scroll a very long time to reach this point.
Capitalism has a whole bunch of drawbacks, but one of the things it does well is provide incentive to develop things. And we need to develop space, and there's a lot of good reasons why our moon is a good candidate for the first large-scale establishment(s).
Unless we're expecting to find alien artifacts (or Atlantean! oooOooOo!) in the moon dust, why do we care who starts strip-mining the moon first? If we're going to do anything about it, w
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:4, Funny)
Won't someone think of the native people?
Mooninites are people too! They're from the moon.
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody [wikipedia.org] already did.
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mooninites are dicks and their enormous bullets are easy to dodge so I think we're cool.
but srsly fucking lunar conservationism? wtf? what's next, a petition to preserve venus as it is? let's just stay out of europa and do wtf we want with the rest, mkay?
and I propose the following rule to it: whoever manages to get to the resources can use them as they see fit. I find it unlikely that they'll erase it out of existence any time soon.
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:4, Funny)
I think future history books would benefit from a Great Lunar War.
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It's not like the Moon has native wildlife that we might disrupt. It's an airless lifeless rock right now. Why would we want to bother trying to preserve it in that state?
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:4, Funny)
It's not like the Moon has native wildlife that we might disrupt. It's an airless lifeless rock right now. Why would we want to bother trying to preserve it in that state?
Um, because humans have a tendency to royally fuck up every environmental factor we can get our grubby little meathooks on, and the Moon plays a vital role in the tidal flow of our oceans?
If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
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If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
I haven't seen a failure of perspective (or even expending a minute effort to think) of this magnitude in quite some time. You're a fucking retard.
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and when technology supports shipping quintillions of tons, we'll worry about that.
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:5, Insightful)
If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
Mass of moon: 7 x 10^22 kg
World annual steel production: 1 x 10^12 kg
World annual concrete production: 2 x 10^13 kg
Not an imminent problem to solve!
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Not an imminent problem to solve!
Thought that but wasn't sure, so figured it was worth asking.
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If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
Any more than the current effect of the moon moving away from the earth?
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It's not like the Moon has native wildlife that we might disrupt. It's an airless lifeless rock right now. Why would we want to bother trying to preserve it in that state?
Airless lifeless rocks have feeling too, you know. You insensitive clod!
FTFY
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:4, Informative)
What are the resources there?
1. Silicon
2. Oxygen
3. Aluminum
4. Iron
5. Magnesium
6. Water ice (in craters near the poles)
7. Helium 3
8. Titanium
9. Lots of trace minerals
10. Solar energy
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:5, Informative)
What are the resources there?
1. Silicon
2nd most abundant element in Earth's crust
2. Oxygen
Most abundant element in Earth's crust
3. Aluminum
3rd most abundant element in Earth's crust
4. Iron
4th most abundant element in Earth's crust
5. Magnesium
In the top 10 of the most abundant elements in Earth's crust.
6. Water ice (in craters near the poles)
Oceans
7. Helium 3
10s of ppb only, and just on the surface (solar wind doesn't really penetrate).
Also, it's useless as an energy source compared to everything else:
If we are at a technological level capable of building a fusion plant for He3,
we can build one for hydrogen for much less. And thus, again, Oceans.
8. Titanium
In the top 10 of the most abundant elements in Earth's crust.
9. Lots of trace minerals
In traces very similar to those on Earth, given the common history.
10. Solar energy
Deserts.
So unless the idea is to produce stuff that goes further out and not back to Earth,
mining the Moon is just an insanely difficult way to get resources we have plenty
of down here.
Admittedly, building an actual production economy for space exploration would be
a great idea, and I'm all for it. Waiting for humanity to get the technical capability (to say
nothing of the will) to do so might still take a while though. We're far from being there.
Re:nothing of any us to us on moon (Score:5, Insightful)
So unless the idea is to produce stuff that goes further out and not back to Earth,
mining the Moon is just an insanely difficult way to get resources we have plenty
of down here.
Duh. The whole point of mining on the moon is that it is IN SPACE. It is at the bottom of a shallow gravity well, with no atmosphere, so a simple mass driver [wikipedia.org] (way more efficient that chemical rockets) can be used to launch materials into orbit. Other than maybe the Helium-3, no one is going to bring these materials back to earth.
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Thank you. People love to point out that the US hasn't been to the moon in 40 years, like it's some huge failure. But there's no reason to go to the moon. There's nothing there.
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no chance of just leaving it alone? arrogance abounds as abuse victims abuse everything
I'll leave it alone if you leave it alone.
But I'll prepare to pillage the lunar resources, just in case you make a move.
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Way to be a wet blanket... I'm in full support of protecting the environment but people really take the mindset to the most idiotic extremes. There's nothing to spoil up there, except maybe the view.
Personally, I'd love to look up at the moon and be able to see signs of human activity. It would be tangible evidence that humans are finally moving towards the stars. Although, considering that in orbit you can't see signs of human activity, I'm pretty sure the moon would look no different either.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're so jaded you just come off as ignorant. Bridges standing, roads open, clean water, electricity: those are all *major* problems that China and India actively struggle with. We don't.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bridges standing, roads open, clean water, electricity: those are all *major* problems that China and India actively struggle with. We don't.
Except for the bridges that have collapsed and the ones that are in critical need of maintenance; roads barely worth the name; constant water boil advisories across various parts of the country and - I take it you've never lived in the Northeast if you think we don't still laughably struggle with electricity.
Keep waving that flag though and ignoring our ailing infrastructure. We'll be number one in the race to the bottom at least, I guess.
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We don't.
Yet.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not ignorant. I'm just paying attention. It's like the character Hari Seldon's observations in Asimov's Foundation series. You start noticing problems with the little things -- a burned out light here or there; a pothole that never gets repaired; road signs that get knocked down and are not replaced; etc, etc. Individually, they don't amount to much, but they are indicative of poor planning, bad management, and indifference.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
The folks killed by the I-35W bridge collapse [wikipedia.org] beg to differ.
And before you object that anecdotes are not data, the ASCE thinks that America is barely passing [infrastruc...rtcard.org] overall.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. We're so backwards we can't even land the most complex lander ever devised on Mars. Or put satellites in orbit and Jupiter and Saturn.
And keep a manned spacecraft up and running for years. Or pay for the Hubble (several times).
Awful. Awful. Awful.
Yeah China - they manage to take mostly Russian technology and do something that both the US and the USSR did 40 years ago.
The Chinese are to be congratulated - no matter where the tech came from, it's a significant accomplishment. And FSM knows we need some competition here (it's the American way, right?). But quit the angst.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except that that will shouldn't necessarily be focused on the Moon. Mars, Venus, and the outer planets all have a lot more to investigate about them. We put enormous multi-focusing telescopes in space to look at planets beyond our own system. It's not unreasonable to say the U.S. has ambitions with regard to space that outpace other nations.
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Hyperbole much? "Never" is an extremely long time.
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"Star Wars" worked?
Under the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, its name was changed to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and its emphasis was shifted from national missile defense to theater missile defense; and its scope from global to more regional coverage. It was never truly developed or deployed, though certain aspects of SDI research and technologies paved the way for some anti-ballistic missile systems of today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative [wikipedia.org]
If you consider rescoping the project and completely ditching the satellites to still 'work', yeah, I guess.
Heh--I do really like that the satellite component had the acronym ERIS, though.
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, we have two active rovers on Mars - one that has been roving around for 10 years. In addition, two of the orbiters we sent there are still operational, with another en route. The ESA has had an orbiter for 10 years. Even India has an orbiter en route to Mars. Do you really think we don't have the capability to land a rover on the moon?
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More to the point, we have rovers on mars that draw penises. We own that place. The moon is so 50 years ago. Next stop Uranus.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Funny)
No, we NEED to go back. We can't let China - a communist nation that hates freedom - beat us at this. In fact, we need to one up them and send a manned mission to Mars. To do that, we should pour tons of money into NASA and various scientific organizations. That'll show those dirty, rotten commies.
(Waits for the "blindly patriotic" crowd to start chanting for more money to NASA and science.)
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NASA is still going strong. We just sold one of the A's.
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While China and India are sending spacecraft there, our government can't even build a working website
"Truthiness" much? Do you have any idea how fucking many perfectly functional web sites the US Government has? Starting with NASA's? Ever register a copyright? copyright.gov. Want to see how many people live in your town? Census.gov. And guess what? Even the Obamacare site is working now.
How the hell did that completely inaccurate comment get modded up? Twice! I'm glad they were overruled by smarter moderato
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I am thoroughly convinced that this statement is about to be proven wrong... to borrow a phrase from a particular US President, while speaking about almost identical subject matter, "by the end of the decade". I do not mean the US reference to make make any implications as to which nation(s) might accomplish the task, however.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
No one can get to the Moon and no one has the resources to do so. Realistically this is something we'll have to figure out in a hundred years, not every time someone lands a rover on the moon.
We went from the Wright brothers flight to landing a couple dudes on the Moon in less than 60 years. Because we had a reason.
Never underestimate the drive and ability of human beings with a purpose.
If you don't give me 1M dollars I will blow up DC (Score:3)
also The moon unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.
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"Oh, shit, the Chinese just launched a rocket at Justin Bieber's mansion!"
"What's the origin?"
"The Moon."
"Oh, ok. I'm going fishing this weekend, so I have to run. Let's just deal with this Monday."
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At the Pentagon, in 30 years: "Oh, shit, the Chinese just launched a rocket at Justin Bieber's mansion!"
Optimist!
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Work out how much delta-v it takes to get a missile from the Moon's surface to somewhere, anywhere on Earth then compare that with the effort needed to fire a cruise missile from somewhere on the Earth to its target on Earth and then get back to me. After that we can discuss the pricetag and annual operating costs.
Lasers over a distance of 400,000km followed by 50km of atmospheric defocussing, right...
Absolute guess here but are you American by any chance? Any time I read militaristic stupidity and a belief
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All you'd need would be a well-targetted trebuchet to bombard Earth from the moon, wouldn't you? Seeing as the moon's gravity is so low.
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True statement about the high ground, but as another post mentioned, the moom is pretty far away. A laser fired at the Earth would be hard to defend against, but the power requirements would be damn high I figure (IANAS). Simply limiting to amount og power generation in one spot (or combined) could help contain that threat. I found this on a quick search
There are astronomical centers that actually make use of laser (very powerful ones) that are aimed precisely at a very specific part of the moon, and a very (really very tiny, because by the time the beam hits the moon it is several km wide)
I'm not to worried about lasers.
Now missiles could be a problem. But I see again that pesky distance thing. We'd certainly see either a launch or a obj
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I'm no scientist here, ....
Same here.
I would think that less moon mass would do one of two things:
1.) like you said, pull Luna into Earth eventually
2.) or the moon's reduced mass WEAKENS the gravitational attraction and it drifts away (what my 1st thought was)
Astrophysics is just an interest and informal hobby (I'm a 'NASA brat'), but my knowledge on the subject is strictly amateur.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can constructively comment on this and help us both out! ;-)
I was under the impression there were already treaties in
Re:Destabalized orbit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed! It turns out, if you were to make half of the moon's mass simply disappear, the moon's orbit wouldn't really change. See, the gravitational attraction between a planet and its moon is directly proportional to that moon's mass. Additionally, the momentum of the moon is proportional to that moon's mass as well. That means that when you vanish half of the moon, you halve both the force exerted on the moon by gravity but also the required force to adjust its momentum to keep it in orbit. That is, it all just works out.
More important, though, is to remember the scale we're talking about. The moon really is quite large. Even if we mined a lot of water from it (there's really not that much to mine, as far as we know), an amount equal to all the water here on Earth, we'd be changing the moon's mass by 1.9%. The impact on terrestrial tides would be virtually immeasurable. An earlier post of mine [slashdot.org] examines this in more detail. The tidal acceleration we experience because of the moon is around 1.1E-7 g, which is quite small. In fact, the tidal acceleration we experience because of the sun is about 45% of that (0.52E-7 g). A 1.9% decrease in the moon's mass (an extreme worst-case scenario) would result in the moon's tidal acceleration being reduced to 1.08E-7 g, a change of 2.09E-9 g. Since apparent gravity varies up to 0.5% across different locations on the surface of the Earth, it's safe to say that even extreme mining of the moon won't have any measurable effect on Earth.
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Good examples!
Since you went so far as to list tidal acceleration, I thought I would engage in a bit of pedantry though:
Jupiter is massive enough that the barycenter of the Sun - Jupiter system is not inside the sun. It would be more accurate to say they orbit each other (although the point they orbit it is very close to the sun.)
The real answer:
The moon is massive enough that both the earth and moon orbit a point barely within the earth. Removing half the mass would change the point they orbit, and there
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I should probably also have mentioned that it would still not have escape velocity, so it would hit a point where it comes back, resulting in a more elliptical orbit than it previously had.
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I'm no rocket scientist, but perhaps this is just what we need to fix the moon orbit expansion problem [yahoo.com].
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You're absolutely right.
You're no rocket scientist.
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Simply removing mass would not change the orbit.
What matters is the direction you blast it off (as well as how much mass, and with how much force.)
If we did somehow figure out how to exert enough force to substantially affect the orbital velocity of the moon (which is what matters) we would probably be able to balance launch points such that it would maintain the same orbit.
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Challenge accepted. I think we've abundantly proved that just because something is a suicidally stupid idea, that doesn't mean some politician won't run towards it screaming and waving his arms, telling everyone to be patriots and follow him.
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tangent-ville: I doubt it'll be governments who wind up escalating or owning the thing, but corporations. Odds are very good that someone will pull a Heinlein [wikipedia.org] and get it declared an entity separate and distinct from any single nation's control. The only trick is to get the big boys (US, China, Russia) to sign off on it, but since all three are somewhat easily controllable by corporations...