Originally published at: It's "sweater weather" on the moon in some locations, scientists discover | Boing Boing
…
3 Likes
“I just love sweater weather, don’t you?”
19 Likes
3 Likes
Sure the temperature’s great, but I bet it has terrible atmosphere.
6 Likes
6 Likes
I think there’s a reason why ‘to boldly go’-themed depictions of space exploration don’t typically involve ending up living in a hole in the ground.
1 Like
Wait… that’s IMPOSSIBLE!!! I mean, unless you’re using some ARCHAIC and STUPID measurement system but who does that?
3 Likes
To be fair, you could live in a hole in the ground and have it be sweater weather here on earth - with the added benefit of having something to breathe and not having to travel nearly a quarter million miles to do it.
4 Likes
And also 60 miles of atmosphere overhead that incinerates small- and even medium-sized asteroids.
The crater-ridden surface of the moon is a clear warning sign that it isn’t fit for habitation.
Okay, so we tunnel into the ground, which will protect us from radiation. Great! Except that asteroids hitting anywhere else on the moon - at full speed, and without any atmosphere-related reduction - will create one hell of a moonquake, particularly since the core of the moon is solid metal (which conducts vibration really well) instead of molten lava (which doesn’t). So expect those dug-in colonies to get shaken to pieces, collapse, and be buried in moon debris. Expect buried pipes conducting water and buried cables conducting power to get sheared. Etc.
This sounds like a very very very expensive way to kill astronauts.
1 Like
It’s sweater weather 100km above me give or take a few km, but I would have some challenges living up there too.
2 Likes
So, do you live about 100 km, give or take a few parts of tenths of one, underground?
There is no part of the Kármán line with sweater weather, unless they are unheard of great sweaters.
Want one.
1 Like
Every weather is sweater weather.
There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong sweater?
1 Like
(Jumper == sweater)
2 Likes
Since the moon has (virtually) no atmosphere, we’re talking about the temperature of the surface of the planet–the rock and dirt. I would assume that digging a short distance down from the surface would get give access to rock where these highs and lows are averaged out to something just a little below freezing. Bury a bunch of pipe at that level, and you’ve got a nice heat sink for cooling. Place an array of photovoltaic solar panels above your habitat in order to provide power to make use of that heat sink. And the panels provide shade as well.
Of course, that means transporting a lot of material to the moon, so maybe living in an existing pit or cave is a more practical approach for first generation domiciles.
I was being silly. There will be an altitude at which the temperature of the thermosphere passes through 280K, but the air will be so close to being vacuum as to be quite irrelevant to the thermal regulation of anyone there.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
