Astronomy / Space Nasa finds 'Large amounts' of water on Moon
- Thread starter Sir.Tj
- Start date
That is MASSIVE news - that is the future of human space exploration right there. Now hopefully governments can see beyond their Earthly issues and start pushing this along within my lifetime!!!
I don't think terraforming moon would be worthwhile. Even Mars is small sustained terraformed world, which means it isn't stable and would eventually stop being Earth-like if left on it's own. Moon is even smaller (meaning rapid loss of atmosphere), has hopelessly long day, and I doubt that "lots of water" means "we could have an ocean here!", I think it means "we would be able to take *SHOWERS* if we built a base here!".
More importantly you can make regolith concrete, grow food supplies and sustain human life. Huge huge implications.
I was referring to the alleged *large* amounts.
Comet Assisted
I was referring to the Moon in Elite IV, but you are correct, terraforming the Moon would be difficult, but who knows what options future technologies could present.
As for our present tech level, perhaps the use of "snowball" comets to regularly top up the atmosphere could be done. This is also an option for Mars too, but overall perhaps Venus might surprisingly be a better option as it already has (though toxic) an atmosphere in place, mind you something would have to be done about its rotation, more comets!
I was referring to the Moon in Elite IV, but you are correct, terraforming the Moon would be difficult, but who knows what options future technologies could present.
As for our present tech level, perhaps the use of "snowball" comets to regularly top up the atmosphere could be done. This is also an option for Mars too, but overall perhaps Venus might surprisingly be a better option as it already has (though toxic) an atmosphere in place, mind you something would have to be done about its rotation, more comets!
If it wouldn't be worthwhile, it wouldn't be worthwhile in Frontier either.
I think that Mars would be nice - it's large enough to not have to worry about sustaining it in the short term, and has about right rotation period.
Venus is hellishly hot, has a lot of unwanted stuff in the atmosphere, high atmospheric pressure and rotates once in 200something days. You would probably have to employ things like solar shade, or even physically launch stuff off-planet which is much more difficult than dropping stuff down on it.
Not necessary, if the rotation could be sorted out, perhaps with a major controlled collision with say a sizeable asteroid (or lots of smaller ones, just to be on the safe side) and H2O added to the atmosphere by way of comets, many of the toxins would be washed away into the surface rocks were it would be locked up. Much of Venus's surface is made up from vulcanism, which means much of the surface rock would be porous. Perfect for absorbing nasty toxins. This is what happened on Earth in its early history. Rotation is the key, that's why the Earth didn't end up like Venus as it had a major collision with another solar system object (so forming the Moon). Loved the idea of the solar shade DraQ, cheap and cheerful solutions are always the best!
He He, I never though I would have a conversation on planetary terraforming on a games forum! Mind you this isn't just any games forum. Great!
You'd still have to cool the planet down. Venus already had water (almost certainly), except it evaporated, contributed to runaway greenhouse effect, got broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, then hydrogen was blown away by solar wind and it's own high mean velocity due to temperature.
Correction - Venus probably did suffer some major clonk in the past. It's rotating very slowly and retrograde, which is unexpected. Earth might have suffered major collision that created the moon, but it's rotation is much more similar to what one would expect. Some models indicate that Venus might have had moon as well, then after another impact reversed and slowed it's rotation, the moon suffered from severe tidal braking and fell on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#cite_note-57
It's Frontier game forum!He He, I never though I would have a conversation on planetary terraforming on a games forum! Mind you this isn't just any games forum. Great!
(Note to DB: make sure that Venus is rotating very slowly in retrograde fashion in E4.)
oh, oh terraforming moon, i guess no way,
i think if at all we should take a close uninhabited system to make our first steps in terraforming on a suiteable mudball.
solar system is very sensitive, and we wan't destroy it, or what? (in fact we're on the right way to do so).
like any complex organism, change just a little bit you will never know what is the result of.
might cost us some years to get there and probes or manned spacecrafts will be abandonned completely (what an idea, i would subscribe right today, not to be listed in history as first who did so, no, just to do something that get's us to our goal).
moons surface is fertile, yes under the right conditions, though will be any piece of rock in a wide range. to reach the right conditions, hm.
if you ask me, think about the possibility that it costs ~20billion years, and a whole universe just to make one mudball fertile. strongly i believe that.
it took a long time for the universe to generate enough heavy matter by repeatingly dying and rebirthing suns, just to get a system like ours.
chances are low, even when you have endless possibilities.
if you look at it from this pov, it's a wonder anything that can breath and think exists at all.
finally, we should start to take care about that, we are unique imho.
further it would be sad (i stated that somewher else before), if we didn't exist no more, if there is no creature that can describe and explore it's environment, there will be no more universe (it will be there but...... whatfor?).
to me the whole universe is a impossibility, it shouldn't exist, but it does!
and certain things let me think there is a masterplan, or can you explain me why this, to us very common, compound called water has it's highest density at 4° celsius (i know it's based on it's special structure, somewhere between solid crystal and loose single elements, but was there a reason for it?), in complete opposition to any else compound or element, that got it's highest density at absolute zero (-273° if i'm right).
without this fact, no organic life (as we know, might be other ways, but hard to imagine for me) would be ever possible in no universe. because a simple ice age would have cost the whole life to stop, when water would freeze completely, but due to this fact it never does (above a certain amount of). this was layed on it at the very beginning.
and also the start of it (as as we know by now) is a, countersubject by it self (i was aware of that since i'm 17, spirit is faster then light). the universe, creation in whole is symmetrical, but to get the wheel turning (time) it has cost a break in symmetrie (and then followed a lot more such breaks in symmetrie), was there a need for it?
it could have lasted peaceful in absolute symmetrie in a pre-matual state.
fortunately it didn't and we can have such highflying guessings like this (help my brains exploding ).
we are stardust!
i think if at all we should take a close uninhabited system to make our first steps in terraforming on a suiteable mudball.
solar system is very sensitive, and we wan't destroy it, or what? (in fact we're on the right way to do so).
like any complex organism, change just a little bit you will never know what is the result of.
might cost us some years to get there and probes or manned spacecrafts will be abandonned completely (what an idea, i would subscribe right today, not to be listed in history as first who did so, no, just to do something that get's us to our goal).
moons surface is fertile, yes under the right conditions, though will be any piece of rock in a wide range. to reach the right conditions, hm.
if you ask me, think about the possibility that it costs ~20billion years, and a whole universe just to make one mudball fertile. strongly i believe that.
it took a long time for the universe to generate enough heavy matter by repeatingly dying and rebirthing suns, just to get a system like ours.
chances are low, even when you have endless possibilities.
if you look at it from this pov, it's a wonder anything that can breath and think exists at all.
finally, we should start to take care about that, we are unique imho.
further it would be sad (i stated that somewher else before), if we didn't exist no more, if there is no creature that can describe and explore it's environment, there will be no more universe (it will be there but...... whatfor?).
to me the whole universe is a impossibility, it shouldn't exist, but it does!
and certain things let me think there is a masterplan, or can you explain me why this, to us very common, compound called water has it's highest density at 4° celsius (i know it's based on it's special structure, somewhere between solid crystal and loose single elements, but was there a reason for it?), in complete opposition to any else compound or element, that got it's highest density at absolute zero (-273° if i'm right).
without this fact, no organic life (as we know, might be other ways, but hard to imagine for me) would be ever possible in no universe. because a simple ice age would have cost the whole life to stop, when water would freeze completely, but due to this fact it never does (above a certain amount of). this was layed on it at the very beginning.
and also the start of it (as as we know by now) is a, countersubject by it self (i was aware of that since i'm 17, spirit is faster then light). the universe, creation in whole is symmetrical, but to get the wheel turning (time) it has cost a break in symmetrie (and then followed a lot more such breaks in symmetrie), was there a need for it?
it could have lasted peaceful in absolute symmetrie in a pre-matual state.
fortunately it didn't and we can have such highflying guessings like this (help my brains exploding
).we are stardust!
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