Lunar rezoning
Read this article real quick.
Now, this is all well and good, pretty exciting in fact, except for two things.
Number 1, people. Are the people of Earth, specially the hippies like Wendy (and me to some extent) gonna sit by and watch as the face of the nighttime sky is rezoned into highways? Not likely. That's gonna take some serious PR, and I just don't see the people of America getting behind it. Specially if nighttime moon starts to look like nighttime Earth with all of the lights and what not.
Number 2. Lunar dust is made because of all of the space particles, even tiny ones, smashing into the face of the moon. That's not going to stop. So that huge radio dish they propose making is gonna last how long before we have to do it again? Are the resources it takes to make this glass highway going to be worth it if you have rebuild it every so often? That of course depends on how often you have to rebuild it, but with the cyclical nature of this, really the most likely thing I can see occuring is the process being used for creating building material for lunar settlements themselves. With the weakness in lunar gravity, you're probably better off using flight as the primary means of transportation between moon bases. It's probably a lot more energy efficient than building and maintaining moon glass highways for lunar buggies. Not to mention the cost of building rovers capable of shielding large amounts of people, materials and (at least initially) experiments from space debris and radiation. I mean, you already have the flight craft at that point, and you'll have to take any ground craft up with you anyway.... The guy in the article might be thinking outside the space transportation box, but it's still to Earth based I think. *shrug* Of course, I'm not a scientist that sticks soap in the microwave, but bet your ass I'm doing it with the old one when we buy a new one!
Now, this is all well and good, pretty exciting in fact, except for two things.
Number 1, people. Are the people of Earth, specially the hippies like Wendy (and me to some extent) gonna sit by and watch as the face of the nighttime sky is rezoned into highways? Not likely. That's gonna take some serious PR, and I just don't see the people of America getting behind it. Specially if nighttime moon starts to look like nighttime Earth with all of the lights and what not.
Number 2. Lunar dust is made because of all of the space particles, even tiny ones, smashing into the face of the moon. That's not going to stop. So that huge radio dish they propose making is gonna last how long before we have to do it again? Are the resources it takes to make this glass highway going to be worth it if you have rebuild it every so often? That of course depends on how often you have to rebuild it, but with the cyclical nature of this, really the most likely thing I can see occuring is the process being used for creating building material for lunar settlements themselves. With the weakness in lunar gravity, you're probably better off using flight as the primary means of transportation between moon bases. It's probably a lot more energy efficient than building and maintaining moon glass highways for lunar buggies. Not to mention the cost of building rovers capable of shielding large amounts of people, materials and (at least initially) experiments from space debris and radiation. I mean, you already have the flight craft at that point, and you'll have to take any ground craft up with you anyway.... The guy in the article might be thinking outside the space transportation box, but it's still to Earth based I think. *shrug* Of course, I'm not a scientist that sticks soap in the microwave, but bet your ass I'm doing it with the old one when we buy a new one!
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 2:21 PM
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