
A newly discovered moon tunnel - hilendugo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/10/21/a-newly-discovered-moon-tunnel-could-be-the-perfect-place-for-a-colony-scientists-say/
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yosyp
For a more technical description, the paper is here:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074998/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074998/full).

"Detection of intact lava tubes at Marius Hills on the Moon by SELENE (Kaguya)
Lunar Radar Sounder"

 _Intact lunar lava tubes offer a pristine environment to conduct scientific
examination of the Moon 's composition and potentially serve as secure
shelters for humans and instruments. We investigated the SELENE Lunar Radar
Sounder (LRS) data at locations close to the Marius Hills Hole (MHH), a
skylight potentially leading to an intact lava tube, and found a distinctive
echo pattern exhibiting a precipitous decrease in echo power, subsequently
followed by a large second echo peak that may be evidence for the existence of
a lava tube. The search area was further expanded to 13.00–15.005°N,
301.85–304.01°E around the MHH and similar LRS echo patterns were observed at
several locations. Most of the locations are in regions of underground mass
deficit suggested by GRAIL gravity data analysis. Some of the observed echo
patterns are along rille A, where the MHH was discovered, or on the southwest
underground extension of the rille._

~~~
samstave
If the moon had ancient volcanic activity and thus, why is it, after
observable impact from various bodies - shown in the craters all over the
surface, and the sumizing of the fact that water was deposited to earth from
extra-orbital impacts... does the moon have zero water or atmosphere?

Where did water originate?

(I didn't know how to format that question any better, so please forgive the
fumbly format)

~~~
spdustin
The moon's core isn't made of the swirling molten iron dynamo like Earth's is.
No swirling molten iron, no magnetic field. No magnetic field, nothing
deflects the solar wind that then, literally, blows away any fledgling
atmosphere.

It's believed that Mars' atmosphere was considerably more dense than it is
today, but along the way, its core cooled, and it lost its protective magnetic
shield, allowing the solar wind to strip away much of its atmosphere.

~~~
kirillkh
Then we have no hope of ever engineering Mars to have enough air for us to
breath?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
A Martian atmosphere (not sure about a lunar atmosphere) would be lost on a
timescale of tens of millions of years. That's very quick in cosmological
timescales, but slow enough that any human effort to create or replenish it
could be very successful.

~~~
waegawegawe
That said, the earth's atmosphere has a mass of about five billion billion
tons. For reference, as a species, we produce about ten billion tons of
concrete each year. This is just to give a sense to the scale of effort
involved in replacing a planetary atmosphere.

~~~
larkeith
Depending on the volume of surface ice (especially at the poles), might it be
possible to produce atmosphere on a massive scale via orbital lenses or
mirrors? With recent advances in solar sail technology, I can't imagine the
implementation would be too far removed from current capabilities.

~~~
waegawegawe
Think about how large of a lens you're talking about. Even if it were one
hundred meters across and was able to collect 100% of the sun's energy passing
through it, the amount of energy produced would be utterly insignificant
compared to the problem we're discussing. And how would you get a one hundred
meter lens to mars orbit? Even after that, you have to consider that we want
an oxygen atmosphere, not one made of water vapors.

I don't know what you mean by "too far removed from current capabilities", but
I doubt we'll even start working on the problem for two or three centuries.

No, it seems more likely to me that we'd use our growing knowledge of genetics
and psychology to hack out the part of ourselves that needs to be outside, and
opt for a purely enclosed existence on Mars.

~~~
kobeya
That's about ~250x the JWST. Given that we're talking about a society that has
developed far enough to be sending people to Mars and terraforming the
landscape, I don't think that 8 doublings would be an unreasonable multiplier
of current capability. Still a flagship, many-decade mission though.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The James Webb mirror is a rigid, astonishingly precise focusing element. A
solar energy mirror could instead be merely approximately parabolic, made of a
foil instead of cryogenic, made of metalized kapton instead of gold-plated
beryllium, would forego focusing elements, and so on.

However, the thought of a telescope-quality mirror 250x the size of the JWST
is pretty amazing :)

------
computator
Pictures of lunar cave entrances:

[https://phys.org/news/2015-08-technology-illuminate-
mystery-...](https://phys.org/news/2015-08-technology-illuminate-mystery-moon-
caves.html)

Three photos are from the Marius Hills location the article mentioned, though
I'm not sure if it's the precise tunnel they investigated.

------
interfixus
> _It might even contain ice or water_

As a boy in the early seventies, reading _Tintin: Destination Moon_ , I was
always put off by the episode with the underground cave full of slippery ice.
That was clearly an outdated view of lunar conditions, which somewhat dented
my suspense of disbelief.

Maybe I needn't have worried.

~~~
jlebrech
the rocket looked silly too, but it turns out that's how we'll do it.

elon musk may we bald with a goatee too by then.

~~~
alex_duf
Would he be Elon Dupont or Elon Dupond?

~~~
jlebrech
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Calculus)

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moomin
Sounds like we need to send a probe or ten to the Moon. Who knows what’s down
there? (Although the answer is going to be “some rocks” as far as most non-
astronomers are concerned.)

~~~
rbanffy
Probably ice. Ice that falls into the entrance and then sublimates has a good
chance of moving to perpetual darkness regions and to stay there. Factor a
couple billion years and you probably will have a decent amount.

Now imagine there is some simple biology happening from the time the Moon had
some atmosphere, in caves sealed billions of years ago.

~~~
clort
somebody already did image that..

    
    
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lotus_Caves

~~~
rbanffy
I wasn't thinking about complex lifeforms, as there isn't enough energy in
those dark caves to power anything complicated, but some rock-eaters could
have thrived there.

It's remarkable the Moon has so many interesting stories waiting to be
uncovered.

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kseverest
I wonder how stable such tubes would be? No water erosion, no earthquakes,
even though they must have formed at a time that was more geologically active.
They could be on the edge of collapse if say, a large vehicle drove in them.
Am I wrong?

Just a first thought. Other than that, they could probably serve as a goal for
human spaceflight, an intermediate step between walking on the moon and
colonizing mars.

~~~
galaxyLogic
> no earthquakes No but how about moon-quakes? Ok, not geologically active you
> say. But moon's been bombarded by asteroids it's surface is full of craters.
> Creating a crater wouldn't that be an equivalent of a moon-quake?

~~~
nkoren
This is the correct answer. These lava tubes are, at their youngest, a couple
billion years old. Since then, the moon has been thwacked very hard and -- on
those timescales -- often. If the tubes haven't collapsed yet, then there's a
high likelihood that they're exceptionally stable.

~~~
DougWebb
That could be survivor bias. Maybe there used to be a lot more of them.

~~~
larkeith
Does that count as natural selection?

~~~
pstuart
I don't think lava tubes breed.

~~~
hyperbovine
Survival of the fittest, then.

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saagarjha
> And many scientists have long dreamed of building bases inside natural moon
> caves, where lunar explorers might sleep safely in inflatable homes,
> protected from the storms above.

What "storms" are the authors talking about here?

~~~
FreeFull
Maybe solar storms? The Sun sends out quite a lot of radiation from time to
time. Earth is protected by its magnetic field and atmosphere, the Moon and
Mars not so much.

~~~
yeukhon
Am I incorrect without an active lava core, the magnetic field is basically
non-existient? Then Moon tunnel is probably not good enough for humans to
remain healthy.

~~~
wongarsu
Rock is pretty good at shielding from electromagnetic radiation. It obviously
depends on how deep you are, but any shielding beats no shielding.

~~~
newsbinator
Also water serves as very good shielding. Anybody living in caves in the moon
would naturally need an ample water supply (a "closet" full of water
containers), which could double as an emergency radiation shelter.

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sideshowb
"Let's dig a tunnel to the centre of the moon!" "You can't dig a tunnel to the
centre of the moon, Blode!" "Yes I can! It will be a special tunnel, and it
will go to the centre of the moon!"

Anyone else remember that?

~~~
cyberferret
I don't recall that quip, but I _do_ recall an episode of "Space 1999" decades
ago titled "The Catacombs of the Moon" where they discover a vast underground
cave system, (which turns out to be the hibernation place for a civilisation
of aliens, IIRC)... The episode always had me intrigued as to whether the moon
_actually_ could have a large cave system that could be hermetically sealed
and inhabited by humans to save on shipping tons of building materials out
there.

~~~
kobeya
Yes, and it's one of the oldest and seriously touted plans for lunar
settlement. Apollo 15 landed next to and studied a collapsed lava tube, so we
even have ground truth here.

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kharms
When such discoveries are made who "owns" that real estate?

~~~
dangpzanco
"Who Owns the Moon? | Space Law & Outer Space Treaties" \-
[https://www.space.com/33440-space-
law.html](https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html)

~~~
BurningFrog
We'll see how much those words on papers mean when real value is to be had up
there.

~~~
jawbone3
About the same as human rights in similar cicumstances I would imagine

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jlebrech
now if only someone had boring technology and rocket technology to go with it.

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aluhut
Hope they don't find a labyrinth in there.

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NietTim
The page doesn't scroll for me?

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gamebak
Why do you always post from a source which requires you to pay upfront to read
the article?

~~~
valuearb
Clear your cookies.

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Density
TLDR:

Space nerds theorized moon caves since the 80s. Moon caves created by young
moon lava flows billions of years ago found in early 2000s. Japanese space
agency finished mapping a tunnel last week and found it's 50km long and 500m
wide with a flat bottom perfect for building space buildings in.

This is news that's breaking to a revitalized moon rocket industry with all
agencies and players building their own big moon rocket. New Glenn for blue
origins, bfr for spacex, sls for NASA, ACES for ULA (boeing aerospace +
lockmart ) Chinese have also expressed interest in a moon base.

~~~
danielbln
So, uh, who owns the moon, and that tunnel in particular? Is it first come
first serve?

~~~
pavement
Whoever gets there first, and can realistically form a threat credible enough
to defend it.

You’ll probably need the backing of a nuclear power, although off-world
representation of earthly countries might not turn out to be particularly
credible threats (enough to intimidate new emerging space-based powers), or
remain truly politically cohesive with their root terrestrial counterparts,
depending...

~~~
jdiaz5513
Or maybe the people who get there can just agree to cooperate instead and
share the land, unlike how we do things down here.

One can dream.

~~~
azernik
This is actually the way the Outer Space Treaty is written - a state party to
it retains jurisdiction over any object it launches, but is required to keep
it open to "representatives" of other state parties.

For a more complete look at the legal issues involved,
see[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3286/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3286/1)

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jwnoord
Speaking of "moon tunnels" why not send TBMs up thete and mine
whateveratetials are in the crust while building fused wall smooth habitats
and transportation and hydroponic garming areas, etc. Id build it at the poles
so that sumligjt is fairly readily available all "lunar day" otherwise you
need some nuclear power up there or solar power station at the poles beaming
mw power.

