View Single Post
  #9  
Old October 23rd 17, 01:55 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 752
Default Discovery of 50km cave raises hopes for human colonisation of moon

"William Elliot" wrote in message
x.com...

On Fri, 20 Oct 2017, Fred J. McCall wrote:

The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be
structurally
sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that co uld be
turned into
fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya
after the moon
princess in a Japanese fairytale."

See:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...sation-of-moon

should send a rover to check it out

Rovers can't do spelunking. You'd have to send people.


Why? A rover could go in, take a look around and come back to tell us
what it saw.


And how do you navigate? Radio isn't going to work well, and while an
autonomous rover sounds like a good idea, they work best when we already
know the terrain.
In theory a lava tube should be relatively smooth on the inside except for
chunks that have fallen from the ceiling, there's no guarantee what we know
about lava tubes here on Earth cleanly translates to how they'd form on the
Moon, or how this particular one would form.

So, you really want to have someone on site. And once you do, you might as
well just use them to explore the tube.

And trust me, there's no shortage of cavers here on Earth that would be
willing to check out a lunar lava tube.

I'm probably a bit too old to go, but you know, I've got some time to spare
if NASA is willing to provide transportation.



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/