If we can make a telescope out of a crater on the moon, then we would just reposition the moon to point the ‘scope where we want to look. Simple, really.

Should I be shot into the sun for mentioning this?

YES!!!

What would this do to those “uncontacted” tribes everyone made a big deal about recently?

Mess with their heads obviously!

todd on 05 Jun 2008 at 11:04 pm
“Hi, I’m Todd from Regolithurinecrete Polishers, out of Fargo, wondering what’s the brew-ha-ha all about? Are you looking for an estimate?”

Sure are – mates rates of course!

Just double the cost and we’ll split the surplus $ 50:50 just like any govt deal!

“Mercury would be nice, but it weighs a ton. Getting it there would be prohibitively expensive. … Google pause … …. density 13.56 g/cc; 1 cubic foot weighs 841 lb.”

Wouldn’t there be mercury (chem symbol : Hg) available on the Moon somewhere that we could mine it locally there & not need to bring it from Earth?

Or could we get Hg from asteroids passing by more easily than Earth?

Or alternatively, substitute another different but also reflective enough & more easily aquired / found / transportable mineral for the Hg instead?

then sell ad space for a billions of dollars a day to pay for space exploration. Do you think coke or pepsi would pay $10,000,000,000 to advertise to a good portion of the world so easily?

Is this a bad idea? What if it was just one day a month? Should I be shot into the sun for mentioning this?

What would this do to those “uncontacted” tribes everyone made a big deal about recently?

it weighs a ton

Good point. Seems some magnetic oils can have down to a few weight percent of magnetic particles, so density of oil could be in the range of automobile oils (or heavier oils). Googles … < 1 g/cm^3, compared to your 14.

OTOH regolith is completely free. Wasn’t there discussion of melting regolith, solar energy being plentiful? Could perhaps be the core of a spin cast mirror.

Regolith would also make a natural building material. Given enough time and effort, we could build 5,000-ft skyscrapers in that light gravity field. (Whether we’d want to is another matter.)

Making a big mirror is a great concept. I don’t know how spincasting would work out in that gravity, but if it could be done, you’d have a big mirror that you could tilt. Put it in a really big Dobsonian mount. You could use a bit of adaptive optics to account for the small deformation. Since the Moon spins a lot slower than the Earth, tracking would be less of a problem. You’d be able to make week-long continuous exposures. On the other hand, you’d only be able to see half the sky each month.

Water may be less of a problem than we think. (A mere 62 lb/ft^3). But one of the Arab states is building a city that they claim will recycle 99.99% of their water. They’d only need to bring in a liter 2 or 3 times a year to replace what gets lost by evaporation or carelessness. Search for Masdar City. Let’s wait and let them build their city, look at it for a decade or so (what’s the rush?), and see how the recycling works out.

For that matter (lit/fig) why not just make a water mirror a couple of hundred miles across in zero-G far enough from the Sun to prevent evaporation.

Vacuum evaporation.

But mercury suggested here would work because of extremely low evaporation rates, and I believe even oils (well, long polymer liquids) as they are used in vacuum equipment. Instead of making mercury magnetic you could make a much lighter oil-ferrous particle magnetic liquids, which can be shaped by fields to assume some shapes, some of which could fit a telescope mirror. And figuring out how to make them perfectly reflective, or possibly coat them with a thin mercury layer (assuming separation by non-solubility, but adhesion).

If they really work it, I think they could do some fantastic solar collector (sun side) – magnetic controlled telescope (shadow side) “sail” construction. But a reasonable moon telescope construction seems so much more achievable.

IIrc, doesn’t the moon tend to get a layer of dust floating around up to about twenty feet when the sun shines and ionizes particles?

That was what I was thinking of. But is it speculation or verified?

Coating crater bottoms to produce a parabolic-shape is simply a ridiculous idea, if not impossible, as they ratio of crater depth to crater diameter is far off the required mark (we’re talking here about micro-metre-wave stastisitcs for, say, a 50-metre diameter telescope).

I think, however, that it would be wiser to look at this research as being applied to producing smaller diameter mirrors (say, a metre across), which could then be segmented together (like the SALT telescope setup in South Africa) to eventually produce the proposed 50-metre diameter (and upwards) mirror.

The machinery used for producing these 1-metre diameter-sized mirrors is quite a possiblility, and wouldn’t have to be huge in contrast to those used for producing the same sizes on Earth. And, as the moon’s gravity is 1/6 that of Earth’s, assembling them together (yes, inside craters) wouldn’t be at all to hard, I would guess.

John — http://www.moonposter.ie

A few days ago I was watching a documentary about the “new race to the moon” and there was a little blurb about a guy working out ways to use native lunar resources. He was working either at a NASA lab, or a lab contracting with NASA. He has worked out a method of extracting water from “simulated” lunar regolith. Of course the documentary didn’t give the details, but basically the process involved simply heating the regolith to a certain temp. (800 C ?). Anyway, it looks like there is a good chance that water is available most anywhere on the moon with the right equipment. How much, I have no idea. I Am interested in learning more about this process if anyone has heard of it.

There may be some bad astronomy in that concept art. Look at the shadows: They’re all nice and shaded, like the light is being scattered through an atmosphere. They’re not knife-edged sharp.

Yes, that’s nit-picking. But decades ago I sketched a pencil moonscape from an Apollo photo, and couldn’t get the shadows right. I ended up using black ink to achieve that shadows in a vacuum effect.

Somehow I don’t think that’d actually happen. The ‘scope collects light not reflects it & I’m pretty sure it just wouldn’t work – you’d need to actually focus and aim the light like a gargantuan magnifying glass …

Mind you, (switches into evil genius mode) if you could do that and direct the beams then that’d certainly be one way of sorting out the Chinese competition & resolving (by solar fire) all the Middle East issues such as the Iraqi’s …
(Winking red emoticon with horns!)

Be careful what you ask for you may get it!

Pictures one lady astronaut wearing rubber gloves and holding a feather duster & a vacuum cleaner (would that even work on the Moon?) standing all alone on the vast, grey, cratered, empty, “magnificent desolation” landscape of the Moon …

Would hope you’ve got a lot of spare Oxygen tanks to tide you over on that job!

… Actually, some would like to try scifi looking EM “shields” to decrease radiation problems for, em, “mooners”; relatively small mass and cheap energy in the sun. Maybe they would serve double use.”

That’d be good. I’ve heard a few possible names suggested by Sf authors for further Lunar residents – Lunatics being one & Selenites perhaps a better alternative!

@ # shane on 04 Jun 2008 at 6:48 pm :

“The pretty artwork and ideas are essential. Many people don’t have much imagination when it comes to space exploration. Anything that helps people visualise the possibilities is important.”

Agreed. Personally, I love the space-art even if only for its own sake. But when its inspirational and helps us picture a better future too – better yet!
&

“You can build all the infrastructure you want but what does it get you? You build infrastructure to support things like the telescope. To get funding you need a reason to go. So more big ideas please.”

Reasons to go?

Because its there mate!

Quite seriously, its part of being human I think .. we do have an innate need to explore further, to learn further – and its a good thing that will have hepas of spin-offs and advantages for us at the most fundamental level. There’ll be lots of spin-off’s cultural and artistic and social as wellas technological, they’ll be lots we can learn from doing this and .. well, heck, read some Carl Sagan, (‘Pale Blue Dot’ for one is superb) he explains it better than I could & he’s spot on.

(& puh-leese folks, don’t use the stale old canards about “isn’t that money better spent on Earth solving our problems here?” That won’t happen. If the $ isn’t spent on space exploration then it’ll just be spent on needless wars & politician’s salaries & stupid junk like that. Besides no amount of money can by itself alone stop poverty, environmental woes, ad nauseam anyhow. )

Plus too because if we don’t then the Chinese or somebody else – who will
probably hate America (as much of the planet does) – will do so and colonise the Moon with their people & their militaries & will use that “high ground” advantage over us in ways we are sure NOT to like.

We’ve got to go there or we’ll suffer badly in the future and regret it for centuries to come. The sooner our leaders realise this & get a
properly directed, properly funded, properly diven program in place to
get us there and beyond the better.

I honestly do think Apollo was the greatest thing the USA has ever done in all of history.
… & doing this could top it!

“If one did coat an entire crater to create a lens, how would we readily reposition the scope to see what we want?”

‘Readily’ requires some thought, but some pointing would be accomplished the same way Arecibo does it: by moving the receiver (or secondary mirror).

To everyone:

The artwork is nice, but would the floodlights look diffuse like that? That that was an atmospheric effect…

# nihon 04 Jun 2008 at 4:57 pm
“where to get liquid on the moon?”

I have just one new word for you: urinecrete. They just have to stop drinking so much of it.”

&

# Keith on 04 Jun 2008 at 7:13 pm

“How poetic would it be to turn the Kepler crater into a giant telescope? Weee!”

Yes, Keith you go weee! to produce the urinecrete to cover Kepler crater …

Now I know there’s a lunar Alps & Appennines & so forth but is there a lunar equivalent of the yellow river? Or will there be?

I love the thought of doing this …

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070620154940.htm

So you can actually bring your telescope to the Moon in a bottle. It is over 10 to 20 time less expensive then conventional mirror. All you do is spin the mercury around to get your telescope.

The downside of it is your telescope is always pointing at the zenith…

If I remember well, last talk I talk to him (E. Borra) he was adding iron in the mercury and move it sideways ~10 degrees with magnetic field.

“The pretty artwork and ideas are essential. Many people don’t have much imagination when it comes to space exploration. Anything that helps people visualise the possibilities is important.”

Hear, hear, shane. It’s all part of the process.

To establish a permanent human presence in space will of course take sustained political support; that’s the nature of the game we have to play. Right now I don’t see that happening in the U.S. The Chinese have voiced ambitious plans for space exploration, though their own aerospace infrastructure will have to overcome significant hurdles.

Private enterprise, particularly in the U.S., may be able to rally public interest in manned space development. If companies like Virgin Galactic can succeed in “space tourism” on a regular basis, competition in the private sector might succeed where the political will falters.

Yeah, yeah; pretty big ifs and mays, no argument. A very long way from the pretty pictures to turning an entire Lunar Farside crater into a giant radio / optical scope. But we have to start somewhere.