Posted on 04/02/2017 11:03:41 AM PDT by JimSEA
Lunar colonization isn’t mere science fiction anymore. Billionaires plan to send tourists on once-in-a-lifetime trips, and politicians say that they hope to colonize the Moon in the next few decades. There may even be ways for human colonists to harvest water from ice that may be permanently shadowed in certain caves.
But where could a human colony actually live? The Moon has no atmosphere or magnetic field to shield it from solar radiation and micrometeorites that constantly rain onto its surface. That’s no environment for our squishy, earthling bodies.
Scientists studying the Moon’s surface may have found the answer: shelter humans in lunar lava tubes. The Moon is covered in huge swaths of ancient basaltic lava flows. Earth’s volcanoes can also erupt similar flows, with basalt sometimes running as molten rivers. In these rivers, the outside cools faster than the inside, creating a hard shell. The remaining lava pours out, leaving a hollow space behind.
Do similar lava tubes exist on the Moon?
In a presentation on Wednesday at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, Junichi Haruyama, a senior researcher at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), discussed one such lava tube that he suspects may be snaking underneath the Moon’s surface.
(Excerpt) Read more at eos.org ...
“Safe” - now that’s funny right there.
Gingrich was the last politician to suggest a base on the moon, for which he was mocked by the progressive liberals who want us back in the stone age before we ruin the earth.
I think they might soon realize that all the directional drilling we’ve been doing for the past decade plus detonation could create a tube that leads to an airtight matrix of rooms that would be sealed off from the surface. No worries about radiation, very little worry about air, solar energy doesn’t have to penetrate the atmosphere so energy is plentiful.
Don’t do it! They’re giant wormholes!!!
I’ve read some of these lunar lava tubes could be kilometers across because of the moon’s weaker gravity, large enough to house cities.
To the moon, libs!
“Lunar Lava Tubes” sounds
like the name Of a porn star.
tell the California mexicans quetzlycoatl the flying serpent god wants them to meet the virgin of guadeloupe there in a lava tube. Blessings to follow. Then just move on to something else
Sure, until the waste dump explodes and blasts the moon out of orbit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999
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