[HN Gopher] Lava Tubes on the Moon Maintain Comfortable Room Tem... ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-03 23:00 UTC)