> we arrive at the interesting number of 8500 GW or 8.5 TW. This power must be sustained by a distributed radiofrequency system, or by an alternative acceleration mechanism. A power source at the level of 10 TW would thus appear to be required. For comparison, the total energy consumption for the entire Earth in 2019 corresponded to a source of ∼18–20 TW.
Could this be made out of a large number of starships that land on the moon and have a magnet payload? Would require something on the order of 1000 starships 50 meters tall but only about 100 starships 100 meters tall. Perhaps an existing starship with a payload that extends a magnet another 50 meters higher after landing. Has Musk already thought about this? Correction - would require about 500 starships 100 meters tall. ChatGpt 4o mini is even worse than me at this line of sight math! Taller towers could be built to extend upwards out of a starship payload especially if guywires are used for stability. Magnets would require shielding from the Sun and reflections from the lunar surface similar to James Webb but far less demanding to achieve a temperature suitable for superconducting magnets. Obviously solar power with batteries to enable lunar nighttime operation. How many magnets are there in the LHC? How exactly circular or not does it need to be?
Next thought is to build it in space where there can be unlimited expansion of the ring diameter. Problem would be focusing the beam by aiming many freely floating magnets. Would require some form of electronic beam aiming that can correct for motion of the magnets. My EM theory is too rusty (50 years since I got a C in the course) to figure out what angle a proton beam can be bent by one magnet at these energies and so how many magnets would be required.
First thoughts without reading the paper: there's too much noise and the moon is hollow (*), so even if you could assemble it [a particle collider] by bootstrapping with solar and thermoelectric and moon dirt and self-replicating robots, the rare earth payload cost is probably a primary cost driver barring new methods for making magnets from moon rock rare earths.
> NASA's Planetary Science Decadal Survey for 2012-2022 [12] lists a lunar geophysical network as a recommended New Frontiers mission. [...]
> NASA awarded five DALI grants in 2024, including research on ground-penetrating radar and a magnometer system for determining properties of the lunar core. [14]
Spellcheck says "magnometer" is not even a word.
But how much radiation noise is there from solar and cosmic wind on the surface of the moon - given the moon's lack of magnetosphere and partially thus also its lack of atmosphere - or shielded by how many meters of moon; underground in dormant lava tubes or vents?
> Structure of the Lunar Interior: The solid core has a radius of about 240 km and is surrounded by a much thinner liquid outer core with a thickness of about 90 km.[9] The partial melt layer sits above the liquid outer core and has a thickness of about 150 km. The mantle extends to within 45 ± 5 km of the lunar surface.
What are the costs to drill out the underground collider ring at what depth and but first to assemble the moon-drilling unit(s) from local materials just and given energy (and thus on-the-moon production systems therefore)
Presumably only the collision area needs to be underground to minimize noise. The rest of the ring can be above the surface. Building things on the moon is hard especially materials much easier to ship them from Earth using Starships or a derivative. Can start with a small ring made from a few ships and build a bigger one and finally a great circle one. Actually only need 500 or so towers 100 meters high each supporting a magnet. Starship can deliver 100 metric tons to LEO so could deliver a significant fraction of that to the lunar surface. Maybe 25 Starships performing 25 lunar missions each would be enough assuming LEO refueling and payload transfer.
Define build. We currently don't have the physical capacity to fabricate copper wire on the moon but on paper we should be more than able to with modern technology. It's worth noting though that it probably just isn't worth it to though for just this. Reason for this being 1. that the moon doesn't have copper in any substantial quantity and 2. that the moon only has trace amounts of carbon (required for organic polymer based insulators) and/or nitrogen (required for most if not all inorganic polymer based insulators). Now you don't need a polymer based insulator but more niche/specialty insulators are going to generally be harder to work with and they come with their own various downsides (limited flexibility, brittle, mildly hazardous to humans).
With that in mind you could suppose we do the manufacturing on the moon or in orbit and ship the material up the well (assuming this is before asteroid mining takes off) but the density of wiring isn't really all that different from the base materials so it'd still be the same mass you'd have to bring up the well. And wire coils & packs quite well in a cylinder so volume is probably not going to be the constraining factor for launching it into orbit. So at that point you might as well just manufacture on earth and cut to size in orbit/on the moon.
Now if you want to expand the definition a bit (from your basic polymer insulated copper wire to just insulated wire in general), then we could actually. We'd need to replace the wire with something actually present in sizeable quantity on the moon. The main two elements are aluminium and silicon. Aluminium is commonly used for cheaper wiring so it'd be viable for many uses. Silicon or silicon based alloys could potentially be used for specialty cases but that's all relatively exotic material work for little gain outside of semiconductor fab level work. So you'd probably want aluminium.
Making aluminium for the mined alumina is pretty basic work (we do it all the time industrially on earth) but it requires absurd amounts of energy to make any substantial amount.
As for making the insulator, you could make glass or ceramic insulation from silica but it wouldn't be flexible at all and would be brittle. This is probably a nonstarter for any high power energy transfer due to vibration or sudden shocks/jumps in the wire. You could however make mineral insulated metal sheathed cables using magnesium oxide/magnesia (makes up about 10% of the lunar surface). This would probably be the best solution. And other than the conductor (aluminium or copper), it actually isn't all that hard.
So yes it's possible but we probably wouldn't do it for even a large project unless we were actively intending on using it for mass manufacturing for other purposes and it'd require quite a bit of industrial capacity on the moon in the first place.
The moon is easier to get to with today’s technology, but this paper is talking about the 2080s or later. And the paper assumes that our spacefaring technology has significantly advanced. So either one should be equally reachable.
Doesn’t mars have significantly better local resources? What does the moon offer that mars doesn’t offer?
Yeah the moon is much closer. But the entire proposal (in the article) depends on us having much more advanced autonomous manufacturing capabilities. So if we have these advanced autonomous manufacturing capabilities, then does the travel time matter?
1. the article explains how many materials could potentially be sourced on the moon and provides potential magnet compositions to address that as well.
2. The moon weighs ~8.1 x 10^19 tons, if we use their iron based magnet design and ship everything from the earth (iron is present on the moon), it would require ~1 million tons aka 10^6 tons or approximately 0% of the weight of the moon.
3. See above.
For #2 and 3, no. Such a construction project, even using entirely materials transferred from Earth, would not meaningfully affect the relative mass of the Earth and Moon.
These things are fun to fantasize about, but realistically considering the astronomical cost it would be to ship all the necessary materials to the moon and to do the construction, it's little more than just that, fantasy. Considering there are two Boeing Starliner astronauts who may be stuck on the space station for several more months, the thoughts of building such things on the moon just isn't realistic in the foreseeable future. It's going to require exponential advances in space travel before we can even begin to seriously consider such projects.
> Considering there are two Boeing Starliner astronauts who may be stuck on the space station for several more months
This is a bad measure of our spacefaring capabilities. It’s like ruling out the Berlin airlift because Boeing’s door plugs fall out.
The paper estimates construction using a lunar TBM. The time scale it provides, around the 2070s to 2080s, is well within our projections for what could be accomplished with even Starship, a platform that should be operational by the 2030s. (At $100mm per launch, a $5bn launch budget gives you 340 tons on the surface.)
The most speculative element, as it identifies, is not transport but remote drilling and power. That said, the author appears unaware of the degree to which we’re automating (and offsiting) mining on Earth. The idea that we won’t have remote TBMs within 50 years seems, to me, low.
Why do you need a tunnel? Proton beam is happy in a vacuum and magnets can be shaded a la James Webb for superconducting temperatures. Might need to put the collision area underground to minimize solar and cosmic noise.
The moon is also naturally covered in microabrasive, statically charged dust, that will happily annihilate any piece of equipment we put there, that is more complex than a lunar rover from the early 70s, in a matter of days.
If building something so large, you would start drilling down on the shore and then sideways underneath the water as far as necessary. It would be unwise to drill using a rig on the ocean itself. Drilling on the moon is well a moon shot...
It's really hard to explain just how much more difficult that is. This would require digging extraordinarily deep. At that depth temperatures and pressures are absurd. You'd have to be able to keep whatever tunnel you dig from collapsing due to the pressure without causing saltwater incursion.
To be entirely honest I don't think we even have the technology to do this on earth. In space it's feasible but expensive and time consuming but on earth, under the ocean in particular we probably don't even have the technology yet to make that an option regardless of how absurd.
And at that point you might as well just tunnel under solid ground instead. It'd be far easier and at least potentially achievable. But that's exactly why TFA is proposing a lunar collider instead as it'd be cheaper and more feasible than one that is underground on earth.
I’m going to guess it’s still easier than building it on the Moon, where we have notably less drilling capability and the conditions are significantly harsher. Not to mention the cost of equipment transfer.
IIRC more people have spent longer on the the Moon than the bottom of places like the Marianas Trench.
Managing 0-1 atmosphere variation is very different than 1-400. The deep ocean (and deep crust you’d have to go through in spots if you want it to circle the Earth) are extremely hostile to humans.
Considering the failure of particle physics to make substantive gains, even with the massive expenditures made, I cam think of a number of far more enticing uses of the funds and lunar real estate.
The LHC cost around 4.75 bn (initial estimate) to construct. Let's be generous and add quite some buffer, to a solid 6bn.
The project has been in operation since 2010. Lets assume operational cost of 1bn a year, that brings up the total tally to 20bn. Let's add 10% just to be safe, so 22bn.
The US military expenditure is THIRTY-EIGHT-POINT-SIX (38.6) times that number. PER YEAR! Remind me again, what "substantive gains" were had, by pumping 850bn dollars into one countries military per year? Bear in mind that, despite all that, (the US essentially LOST the last larger war they were involved in)[0].
US military being a touchy subject? No problem, how about agriculture? The EU agricultural subsidies (CAP) pump over 60bn into farming each year. As for the results of all that money being spent, (weeell... )[1]
What about fossil fuels? Worldwide subsidies in these were (just shy of 130bn dollars )[2] (again, that's PER YEAR), and these things are destroying our habitat as we speak.
So please, explain to me how paying less than 25bn, over a 10 year period, to gain the ability to figure out how reality works, is a "massive expenditures", compared to other things society throws money at left right and center.
> explain to me how paying less than 25bn, over a 10 year period, to gain the ability to figure out how reality works, is a "massive expenditures"
You never quantified the LHC’s benefit. I could use your logic to justify spending billions on anything, whether confirming the existence of the Higgs or trying to find evidence of Biblical angels or whatever.
We need to do basic science even if there is no direct benefit visible at the time. There were times when electricity was just a party trick, there was no practical use for electrons or relativity for a while. It may take decades or longer to find a real world application but it’s still worth pushing science ahead. In the long run it pays off big time.
No, you cannot. To use your above example, I very much doubt that anyone has a workable plan to prove the existence of biblical angels that they could formulate in enough reason and technical detail to begin construction on a multi-billion-dollar project.
People did, and do, have such plans for figuring out the reactions of elementary particles.
There is a difference between "science" and "anything".
> Why this basic science?
Because elementary particle physics pretty much explain how the basic building blocks of the universe, and the forces governing them, work, and thus provide the most essential framework to understand the natural world next to mathematics?
I'd say that's pretty important, and if we spend less than 30bn on that over a 10 year period, I'd call that a bargain, certainly compared to all the other crap society wastes money on.
As long as we have the dough to give trillions in handouts to billionaires so they can buy more yachts, private jets and islands, I'd say we can spare tuppence for the science that furthers our species understanding of the universe.
Unclear. Current evidence is that nukes are insufficient, and given the non-trivial chance that the next U.S. administration would pull out of NATO, it’s not even obvious that the nukes would be a factor.
Someone else’s nukes being insufficient. The last few years have shown nuclear powers are inviolable, to the point of causing allies of non-nuclear powers being violated by them drawing red lines in the violator’s defence.
No. If we only had nukes, Russia would have little to fear from invading neighboring countries with conventional weapons. Have our nukes stopped them from doing so now?
The supersymmetry parameter energy regime tuning must flow. If the money’s there they’ll happily build one that orbits the Sun. A lot of the most important careers in science are dependent on keeping the game going that squarks might pop out any day now.
With that said building colliders does have scope to reveal new physics and a project like this would almost certainly have a bunch of high-value spinoff technology outcomes.
It’s plausible we’ll get a very good thing for a fairly bad reason.
I love the audacity of this proposal.