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Underground caves do exist on the Moon, radar observations confirm

https://www.techspot.com/news/103833-underground-caves-do-exist-moon-radar-observations-confirm.html

A new study published in Nature proposes the first true evidence of an "accessible cave conduit" on the Moon, located beneath the Mare Tranquillitatis pit. A future...

Underground caves do exist on the Moon, radar observations confirm

"Permanent lunar colonies could soon become an attainable target for space agencies"

48 comments

TheFeatureCreature

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It's where they keep all the cheese.

Gsus4

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this is closer, though https://modernfarmer.com/2022/05/cheese-caves-missouri/ :D

Fermion

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Sssshh don't go telling Nicholas Cage where our national treasures are kept.

vetehinen

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This is great even from the standpoint of wanting to go to Mars since it means setting up camp in a cave is now possible to try out much closer to home first. Kinda like sleeping in a tent in your backyard first. Makes the moon that much more exciting to know there's caves too.

@technology@lemmy.world

MonkderDritte

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Moon has different challenges though. One being no erosion, moon dust is abrasive af.

Gsus4

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Yea, like a giant pile of statically charged asbestos that are hard to clean away.

AbidanYre

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So, together it sounds like you guys are saying that moon dust is "coarse and rough and irritating… and it gets everywhere."

superminerJG

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dammit

Gsus4

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The OG moonwalker

Asidonhopo

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They've found hitting it with microwaves sinters it together pretty readily, so that would be the likely way they'd deal with it. Apparently also an effective way of making bricks out of it!

Gsus4

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Niice https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352710224007617?via%3Dihub

petrol_sniff_king

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Listen, I've been in an asteroid's cave in Outer Wilds and I didn't fucking like it.

TheDarksteel94

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Hey, at least there aren't any fish there, right? 😅

original_reader

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In fact, we might be able live there.

“Lunar cave systems have been proposed as great places to site future crewed bases, as the thick cave ceiling of rock is ideal to protect people and infrastructure from the wildly varying day-night lunar surface temperature variations and to block high energy radiation which bathes the lunar surface,” said Katherine Joy, professor in earth sciences at the University of Manchester. “However, we currently know very little about the underground structures below these pit entrances.”

Source

Gsus4

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This is so exciting because it sounds doable. Unlike Mars, which is a tragedy awaiting the overconfident.

Confused_Emus

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~~a tragedy awaiting the overconfident~~ a fun destination for billionaire excursions!

We’ll let them work out the kinks first, you just gotta know how to sell it.

UltraGiGaGigantic

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A tragedy awaiting the prisoner slaves we send there.

Australia 2.0!

Num10ck

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i wonder if the craters ground has 5-15 meters of regolith too?

GBU_28

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Just throw it out

FlyingSquid

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No shit there are caves on the moon. Have these scientists never watched The Clangers?

ianovic69

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Permanently Deleted

LordWiggle

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You make it sound so bad. As if diving in a submarine is dangerous. I mean, we can go to the Titanic without issues, so we should be fine going to moon caves right?

Right?.... 👀

I don't get what would be the benefit, really. Scientific research, sure. But do we need monkeys on sight? We can land robots and rovers. What can a monkey do what a robot can't? Keeping anything alive in space, on the mokn or on Mars makes every operation so much more complex. It's stupid and unnecessary. But it's a dream of Musk, the world's biggest scam artist. So why not spend billions of tax money on his stupid dream, making his company a shit to of money. But Trump is probably getting re-elected, so Musk isn't the stupidest thing out there anymore.

BearOfaTime

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"It's a dream of Musk"

Guess you were born recently, because this stuff predates Musk even being born.

But you're so blinded by Musk living in your head rent free, you don't even bother to learn about the windmill at which you're tilting.

Luddites, using the very high tech they're trying to destroy...oh the irony.

LordWiggle

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We've already been there. We did it. Done. We quit doing it a looooong time ago. Why are we trying to go back now?

MonkderDritte

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I don't get what would be the benefit, really. Scientific research, sure. But do we need monkeys on sight?

Moon mining, likely yes.

LordWiggle

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When we send monkeys to the moon, we will send robots first to autonomously / remotely controlled build a base. All so we can send people, who will have to wear suits costing millions of dollars each which will wear and tear extremity fast with the sharp regolith on the moon (the old moon suits could only last roughly 2 days, the new anti static suits just developed can only last a few days longer). And we want them to mine? When we can send robots to build a habitable base, we can send robots to mine. No monkeys needed. There is literally no benefit in sending humans, it only complicates everything to an extreme level, makes everything way more expensive and increases the risk factor exponentially. When we can work with rovers on Mars with an extreme time delay, we can work with the minor delay to the moon.

Remember, a human needs a precise climate. The right type of air, water, temperature, humidity, but also food, radiation protection, dust protection, human waste management, redundancy in case of a failure, physical and mental health care, physical exercise. For transport back and forth, re-entry into our atmosphere and for survival on the moon. A robot needs a connection, radiation protection, temperature control, dust protection, only a one way trip. If it breaks, we just send a new one. No return needed, no precious climate control just to keep it alive.

We still sometimes use humans for mining on earth because often it's cheaper (in third world countries), while machine mining is still way more efficient. Humans for mining on the moon is much more expensive, so a dumb choice.

We also use humans in rich countries for mining, but they are just controlling heavy machines. It's less complicated to use humans instead of remote controlling machines deep underground. This benefits do not apply on the moon, a control relay is cheaper then a human.

The only reason I can think of for humans on the moon would be for repairs. But remote controlled repair stations are also possible, so no humans needed for that either. Maybe less repair capabilities possible but it is still cheaper to send a new machine then to send a human.

TimeSquirrel

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Taking your argument to the logical conclusion: why the hell do we do anything at all if we can just lock ourselves into pods with feeding tubes and have machinery take care of everything?

We go because we can, and we want to. That's a good enough reason for me. Probes have their place. At some point, we need to get TF out there and start building a society. The Solar system has vast secrets and riches, all for us, and we don't have to share, because it's our system.

Bernie_Sandals

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The Solar system has vast secrets and riches, all for us, and we don't have to share, because it's our system.

That is until we find the massive moon worms whose tunnels we tried to colonize. /s

LordWiggle

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Awesome argument to justify anything. Fuck logic, let's do it because we can! Genocide? We can do it! Invade a country because Vladi tells us to? WE CAN DO IT!

Seeing the amount of down votes, I guess some Musketeers made it to Lemmy too.

Seriously, give me any supported argument why it would be beneficial to send humans to the moon (and Mars) instead of just robots. (other then "we want to be faster with humans on the moon then the Chinese", I do get the second space race although it doesn't make any scientific of economical sense.)

Don't get me wrong, I see the value of moon mining, mars mining, asteroid mining. I'd rather see us mining those the the fragile ocean floor. It just makes no sense to use humans with the technological expertise we have right now.

We sent humans to the moon, because the computer used on the Apolo rockets was as fast as a Playstation 1. We didn't have the tech to send a self landing drone.

Now we have several self landing drones on Mars, outlasting their life expectancy way further then anyone could have dreamed of.

We are so far with our technology, yet bringing humans to the moon brings us back to the '60's while costing us billions more then needed, funds we could use for robots to do an even better job for us with less risks.

Please, come with a supported counter argument, I'd love to see a different side. But anything like "because we can" just isn't anything I can understand or support.

The argument of "sitting in pods eating from feeding tubes" is a weak argument. We have home delivered groceries and our entire world is being automated so that's exactly what we are focused on. If you find a way for a factory to replace 10 workers with an automated machine, they'll tell you "shut up and take my money".

Again, I see the benefits of mining rare metals and ice (fuel) on the moon and other celestial bodies, just not by humans in person as it complicates everything exponentially, with a fitting price tag.

dgriffith

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Seriously, give me any supported argument why it would be beneficial to send humans to the moon (and Mars) instead of just robots.

Robots, in particular mining equipment robots that everyone seems to be jazzed up about, they need maintenance. Earth bound mining equipment has minor service intervals of 250 hours of operation, major intervals every thousand hours, machine-stopping breakdowns occur on a bathtub curve but there would be a dozen or so before the first 4000 hours of operation.

For reference, 4000 hours of operation is less than half a year of 24/7 work.

Even with the addition of a few hundred million per machine in hardening and robustness, the environment they will work in is much, much worse than earth. Seals will need frequent replacement, the parts that do the digging need replacement, hoses will burst or leak, etc etc.

On the moon you could (probably) laboriously tele-operate repair robots with the 2.5 second lag you'd have to Earth.

Mars? Not possible.

So I look at all these plans, where they'll send ice mining equipment to mars to run for two years unattended to make fuel and what-not, and with my 30 years of experience in the mining industry on earth, I just say, "that must be some good crack they're smoking".

Someone is going to have to go, just to repair and maintain all the machines.

LordWiggle

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Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. For Mars I agree it's not possible with the insane delay, unless AI will be able to automonously repair, something which might be possible in the future. But for the moon it would be much cheaper to remote control repairs. I've seen what surgeons can do with remote controlled machines for precision surgery. The delay still might be annoying but maybe that can improve by using laser instead of radio waves.

Cars are mostly, if not completely, built by precision robots. Why not have a precision robot replace and lubricate parts on the moon?

But first we need to find a way to mine on the moon in the first place. Regolith is extremity nasty stuff, nothing survives long with that tiny sharp dust. The people who went to the moon complained a lot about it. It gets everywhere, it sticks to every surface and shreds everything. There's also the radiation, micro meteors and extreme temperature fluctuations.

TimeSquirrel

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Permanently Deleted

MonkderDritte

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Permanently Deleted

alekwithak

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Hear me out...

The Descent but it's on the moon.

TimeNaan

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Or the game Descent. Although that already took place in space.

LucasWaffyWaf

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Okay I haven't seen that movie, so I was confused cause I could have sworn you visited many moons in the first Descent game.

ivanafterall

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So many movies to redo.

The Cave...On the Moon

Cave of Forgotten Dreams...On the Moon

The Clan of the Moon Cave Bear

hogmomma

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The Notebook, but it's on the moon.

GBU_28

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40 year old virgin, but it's on the moon.

aeronmelon

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Or Dig, which was on an asteroid that became Earth’s second moon.

BaronVonBort

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Shackleton identified, establishing Jamestown now.

urda

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I call Moon Marine !

BlackLaZoR

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This would be especially nice if water ice was discovered inside

Gsus4

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I mean, lunar water exists...they just have to figure out if it flows when the moon faces the sun for 14 days at a time and gathers in these lava tunnels or stays in the form of beads

https://www.sciencealert.com/huge-amounts-of-water-on-the-moon-may-have-just-been-located