Humans haven’t set foot on the Moon since Apollo 17 brought Eugene Cernan to the surface on 12 December 1972. Now it’s time to return. Reaching the Moon again is practical. It is an essential first step to exploration of the distant Universe. And it is inevitable. Only from the lunar surface can we mount the ultimate search for our origins. We’ll achieve this by constructing novel telescopes of unprecedented scope in dark lunar craters and on the far side of the Moon.
[...] The Moon will initially be a playground for the super-rich. Their appetite for new forms of tourism seems insatiable. However, access is certain to change over time once low-cost space transport systems are developed. We would establish giant lunar parks for leisure and relaxation. Low-cost housing would be designed to host the necessary support personnel. Mass tourism will have its day. Commercial backing will certainly fund these activities.
[...] Giant telescopes can be constructed in dark lunar craters near the lunar poles, where the Sun never rises. There’s no atmosphere to limit our view. Stars don’t twinkle, they shine as brilliant points of light. Such clarity is crucial if we are to search for distant planetary systems. There are sites with unlimited solar power on the tall crater rims to power our instruments. Here the Sun never sets. Yet there is extreme cold in the deep crater basins that remain in permanent shadow.
[...] The discovery potential is vast, from the radio to the infrared and optical domains, and even beyond. As yet, little attention has been given to the unique advantages of a lunar platform for studying the Universe. A standalone giant telescope project is inconceivable for budgetary reasons. Instead, to cover the cost, lunar telescopes should be a key component of future lunar settlements. Piggybacking on lunar infrastructure meant for industry and tourism opens up new options for science. Telescopes built alongside other megaprojects will be a minor overhead, all in all.
[...] In order to achieve this vision, it must be integral to lunar projects from the earliest stages of planning. There is an irrefutable case to be made for science-driven projects integrated into commercial activities. The scale for all these ventures is decades or more, but the time to embrace the intent is now.
What can we achieve with such megatelescopes? We will find out if there are remote planets conducive to life. We will look back to our origins. We will see the primeval dawn of the stars. We will seek out the first monster black holes in the Universe.
We hope to answer humanity’s most fundamental questions: where did we come from? Are we alone? There is a compelling scientific case to be made now for a new era of unparalleled exploration to visualise the edge of the Universe from the surface of the Moon.
An interesting commentary, most of which had to be edited out for brevity, so I encourage you to click through and read it. [hubie]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 24 2022, @04:19AM
I bet Disney will be the first one to establish a park on the moon [youtu.be].
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday October 24 2022, @07:09AM (8 children)
When man landed on the moon he discovered something that has caused problems for the handful of those who have actually stood on the moon. Dust. A dust so fine and yet so abrasive it caused damage to their space suits, managed to find its way into every crease of their suit, every corner of the moon lander and even back into the vehicle bringing them home. It is statically charged and is clearly visible to anyone standing on the moon at sunrise and sunset.
The dust was certainly disturbed in part by the moon walkers themselves but, even without their help, it covers the whole surface of the moon (as far as we can tell) and also moves around. Constructing a telescope on the moon will disturb significant quantities of the dust. It will, over time, find its way to the lenses of any optical instruments that are positioned there. Removing it by some kind of wiping mechanism has been shown to actually degrade the surface from which it is being wiped. Whether the dust will be enough to degrade the use of optical telescopes over time, or what that period of time might actually be, is I believe still unknown.
I don't foresee any insurmountable problems but that still doesn't make the endeavour something trivial. Of course, it should not have the same effect on radio or infra-red telescopes, but anything with moving parts will have to consider the implications of the presence of the dust.
As for
(Score: 3, Funny) by janrinok on Monday October 24 2022, @07:12AM (1 child)
As for.... theme parks on the moon and space tourism we are a long, long way from that becoming a practical proposition!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday October 24 2022, @04:40PM
I'm not so sure - If Starship is able to deliver on the 100-1000x reduction in launch costs it could take a HUGE step towards making it a reality in the near term. Not for you and I right away, but certainly billionairs and even wealthy millionaires. At the eventual target of $10/kg to orbit it's getting cost competitive with a cheap intercontinental flight - something any middle-class person can afford if they want to. While trips to the moon will initially cost 5-10x that due to the multipleadditional launches needed for in-orbit refueling.
And really we just need a modest industrial foothold on the moon to completely change the equations:
Step 1: Establish refineries on the moon. The regolith is over 40% oxygen by mass, and almost 20% iron + aluminum (the ratios change with elevation), and Sadoway has already developed the initial models of a simple electrolytic "magma refinery" for NASA to extract the oxygen it's bound to, producing steel and/or aluminum as byproduct.
That provides you with oxygen for refueling on the Moon rather than in Earth orbit - and oxygen is ~80% of Starship's propellant mass. Which makes trips between LEO and the Moon's surface radically cheaper.
It also provides you with all the steel, aluminum, and cast stone you could want for construction purposes.
And further development should allow access to another almost 20% of titanium + magnesium + calcium. And there's the remaining 20% silicon once we're ready to build solar panels, though that might require a different refining process than the metals.
Step 2: Put those resources to work building up an industrial base. It will still take some time, but a huge amount can actually be accomplished with the sort of "primitive" technology that began the age of the steam engine 200 years ago - most of the advances since then have been in more efficient mass-production rather than being able to produce more sophisticated things. Sand-casting metal is easy, and from there power hammers, lathes, wire extruders, etc. are only a short jump away, especially when kick-started with a few precision parts and tools from Earth. Even just a single imported machinists lathe would make everything else fairly straightforward to produce locally, and a single Starship could deliver an entire modern machine shop, including 3D printers to turn that wire into a lot more than just cables and and electrical wiring (though both would be immensely useful in their own right).
Step 3: Start building residential/recreational facilities to attract those valuable millionaire tourist dollars. Possibly occurring simultaneously with 2, or even 1 - after all, if you can build a dome out of cast stone to provide radiation and micrometeorite protection, all you need is a relatively lightweight (and highly puncture resistant) "tent" that you can inflate inside it to create a spacious living area. You could make several of those for the mass budget of one space-worthy inflatable. And I suspect Relativity Space's 3D rocket printing technology will be well positioned to print smaller habitats as well - after all you're talking about containing MUCH lower pressures.
If you're near the equator you don't even need significant temperature controls - once you're under a meter of regolith the temperature remains fairly constant at a comfortable ~70F throughout the day (and year)
Step 4: Spread the joy to orbital facilities by building a lunar SpinLaunch facility. Which, if it can launch just a bit faster than the goals for the full-scale version on Earth, can launch payloads completely free of the Moon into a circular orbit around Earth for less than 1kWh/kg (plus inefficiencies) without needing any hideously inefficient rocket engines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2022, @07:24AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday October 24 2022, @08:25AM (1 child)
That is true - but it does seem to move because of differing static charges. It also floats rather than simply settling on the surface. The latest space suits have a charged layer designed to repel the dust and that might be a solution to the problem, at least partially.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 24 2022, @04:47PM
Yeah - I can't quickly find a photo, but the pre-dawn skyline on the moon is kind of terrifying from that perspective - you can see the "god rays" illuminating a fairly deep atmosphere of dust that's been freshly charged and lofted by the solar wind.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday October 24 2022, @10:12AM (1 child)
If they are electrostatic charged then you can also use that for cleaning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FUylSp01cM [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday October 24 2022, @11:12AM
Indeed, but I am not sure if that can be done to the optics of a telescope.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 24 2022, @03:50PM
I think a Telescope in orbit around the moon sounds like a more reasonable option. It's much easier to launch from the moon that it is from Earth. So, I could see a telescope designed on the moon and then launched into orbit. Then again, maybe it would be more economical to build a structure that stood up higher than most of the dust and then put the telescope on top of that. Probably not, but the extremely low gravity offers more options than a typical earth gravity might afford.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday October 24 2022, @10:37AM (1 child)
TFA has no numbers or justification of any kind, but rather a lot of pontification and nonsense.
> there is a pent-up demand for luxury tourism
Oh Really? What is the potential tourism market? How does it compare to costs?
> Here on Earth, scientists project that we will exhaust rare earth elements in less than 1,000 years.
Citation needed. What was there assumption about extraction? Consumption? How does it compare to the cost of extraction on the moon?
> We can build huge telescopes on the Moon to peer further back in time than we could ever do from Earth, or even in space.
Justification? Citation? Do they have a design (and cost!) for one of these lunar megamirrors or is this just BS?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday October 24 2022, @05:00PM
Yeah, mineral resource consumption is always approximately zero. You don't "use up" any iron in building a car, nor any lithium in building a battery. They're all still right where you put them, and are often easier to recycle than they are to mine and refine in the first place, or at least not much more difficult - provided the infrastructure exists to do so.
Petrochemicals being the obvious exception - but in that case what we're really mining isn't the elemental resources, but chemical energy stored over the course of tens of millions of years.
As for telescopes... that seems unlikely. You can build a bigger telescope in space (there's minimal structural limits), and easily shield it from the sun. Webb has demonstrated that dramatically. Though once we have industrial capacity on the moon it might be cheaper to build them there - if the pervasive dust problem can be solved.
The one compelling exception I can see is radio telescopes on the far side of the moon, where the mass of the moon would block out the immense amount of radio noise we're emitting from Earth. An Arecibo type telescope on the moon would be a thing of beauty.