[HN Gopher] Lava Tubes on the Moon Maintain Comfortable Room Tem...
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Lava Tubes on the Moon Maintain Comfortable Room Temperatures
Inside
Author : pseudolus
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-07-31 12:02 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.universetoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.universetoday.com)
| edm0nd wrote:
| TIL the moon has lava tubes whoa
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube
| adastra22 wrote:
| I mean we visited a collapsed lava tube on one of the Apollo
| missions (15 I think?).
| jrussino wrote:
| There was recently a proposal to send rovers to explore them:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Diver_(spacecraft)
|
| Check out the video on this page for a ton of details:
| https://www.kiss.caltech.edu/lectures/2018_Moon_Diver.html
|
| That particular mission concept was not funded, unfortunately,
| but I'm hopeful that we'll do something like this soon. As
| others in this thread have said, aside from just being really
| cool these lava tubes on the moon (and Mars!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_lava_tube) are an
| interesting candidate for human habitats.
| kemiller wrote:
| Wait... so does this mean the moon really IS made of Swiss
| cheese?
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| Issues:
|
| Discovery - Other than spots where part of a lava tube's roof has
| already collapsed, how quick & cheap is it to discover and map
| the lava tubes under some non-trivial part of the lunar surface?
|
| Scale - Let's say there's a lovely lava tube, X meters in
| diameter and Y meters below the surface, in a location where we'd
| like to build a moonbase. For a give size of moonbase, there will
| be fairly narrow ranges of X and Y values where the lava tube is
| actually suitable for housing the moonbase.
|
| Cut & Fill Competition - Lava tubes aren't magical. If an area on
| the moon has deep, stable "soil" (vs. near-surface bedrock)
| containing ~few larger pieces of rock, then "dig a trench,
| install tubular habitat, fill trench back in" may give a far
| lower cost and/or higher predictability than "starting looking
| for the perfect lava tube...".
|
| Stability - If you're not familiar with the things that often go
| wrong when humans start digging and building structures,
| Practical Engineering (
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMOqf8ab-42UUQIdVoKwjlQ ) is a
| pretty good intro. Note that we have a _lot_ of experience with
| and data on how to do such things on the Earth. On the moon...not
| so much. Some very painful and expensive lessons seem inevitable.
| DennisP wrote:
| > If the scientists' gravity analyses are correct, the lava
| tube near Marius Hills could easily house a large U.S. city
| such as Philadelphia
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/gigantic-lava-tube-coul...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I can't wait until we set up base, blow up a large sporting arena
| and get the moonball games televised! If everyone on earth wants
| to watch something, then it can make money. And then, finally, we
| have a financial incentive for moon infrastructure. Moon sports
| ftw!
| api wrote:
| The moon is in general a better place than Mars for a first
| attempt at a space settlement in part because there's more
| options for monetization. It might not pay for the whole thing
| but it would at least offset it a bit.
|
| There are other big reasons too, like help being only days away
| instead of months away in the event of a catastrophe.
|
| Once we figure out how to do a space settlement on the moon,
| then we could try Mars. Mars is likely a better long term home
| for humans but it's about 60X as far away in terms of travel
| time.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| If only we had some other long term home closer at hand.
| chiph wrote:
| I wanted to know how anyone could know this without having
| actually measured it. They have modeled it using known
| regolith/rock insulation values (presumably from the Apollo
| samples).
|
| > The researchers used computer modeling to analyze the thermal
| properties of the rock and lunar dust and to chart the pit's
| temperatures over a period of time.
|
| I'm not sure I'd trust a lining applied to a naturally-formed
| tube wall to retain air. But if we were to build our own tunnels
| with a lunar TBM1, where we could control what the tunnel wall is
| like, yeah, that'd be fine.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine
| nickff wrote:
| The tunnels have been structurally stable for a long time,
| sealing them seems much easier and more reliable than boring a
| new tunnel, sealing it, and hoping it remains stable.
|
| What kind of control do you think you'd have that would make
| the 'artificial' tunnel better?
| margalabargala wrote:
| They've been structurally stable under a specific, unchanging
| load for a very long time. If suddenly they are pressurized
| to 1 atm, that may very well change.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Preventing it from collapsing by increasing structural
| durability seems wise.
| nickff wrote:
| The grandparent didn't say anything about reinforcing the
| TBM-made tunnel, it just asserted that it would be
| controlled. What techniques would be used for "increasing
| structural durability" that are only applicable to TBM-made
| tunnels?
| aurizon wrote:
| I would expect a lava tube from a drained lava flow to
| vary greatly. We see many have collapsed over the ages.
| It would provide an insulated underground tube miles in
| potential extent. That said, the danger of a roof fall
| would be low in some spots and ready to fall anytime in
| others. This is still rock, about 6 tonnes earth mass per
| cubic meter (one tonne on the moon). That means a very
| strong tunnel liner is needed. It also needs to be air
| tight. Research into the use of regolith as an ingredient
| of a concrete needs to be done. One traditional concreted
| mass is baking bricks of regolith. More research into
| brick baking from various lunar materials is also needed.
| A blown up fabric habitat would work inside this sealed
| brick tunnel.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Can you do that without water? That would be the ultimate
| so the little that is available doesn't have to be used
| in construction materials
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