I’ve worked with companies who do tunnelling (most recently on Crossrail in London) and the new technologies for spray-lining tunnel walls are incredible. I have no doubt that it would be well within the bounds of what is possible to adapt this to a low gravity environment and seal lava tunnels to an acceptable level of permeability, allowing atmospheric pressurisation. Urban metro derived laser measuring equipment could instantly sense any movement in the structures, too.
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The arguments against this idea in here are all just arguments against building habitats on the moon or Mars. However, building habitats on Mars feels like a no-brainer exploration goal, to me. We don’t need a reason beyond knowing we always learn and grow as a species when we push our frontiers, our technology, and ourselves to new limits.
If you accept that a habitat on Mars is a worthy scientific and inspirational goal, then a habitat on the moon makes immense logistical and scientific sense. It’s a low energy transfer point, and a potential source of fuel, oxygen, water, oxidizer and concrete. It greatly reduces the mass we have get out of our gravity well, and it’s a practice run in a much safer place (only three days away instead of 6mos-2yrs away).
If you thus accept that habitats on the the Moon and Mars are a good idea, underground tubes are an immensely practical way to do it. Protection from radiation, micrometeorites, and extreme temperature all nearly for free. It solves a lot of hard problems in one swoop.
Also, for people imagining a hole in the ground, I’m not sure everyone appreciates how big these tubes are. They are 30 miles wide in places. You could build entire cities in them without feeling cramped.
I’m a bit surprised at the negativity in this thread, I guess. If you care about space exploration even a little, this is a fantastic area of ongoing research. The idea moves entire categories of currently unsolvable problems into the range of highly practical solutions. Easy wins like that are hard to come by in space exploration.
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I agree with everything you said here. Eventually, if humans are to survive, we’ll need to become a spacefaring race. And setting up a base off-planet is a good step in that direction.
But regarding colonizing other places, I’ve had conversions with a number of people who seem to think that “well, when we screw up the Earth too much, we’ll just go live on Mars.” Like it’s a simple matter. They have no idea how incredibly hard it would be to get a self-sustaining (and expandable) colony off-Earth. And these are people who I’d label as smart and educated.
And then of course, if humanity is so bad at managing Earth that we have to abandon it … why would we be good at managing something on the Moon or Mars? If incompetence is what drives us off the Earth, Mars is gonna kick us right in the jimmy.
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Life in space will be relentless with little room for error, and the long term effects while speculated on are also fairly unknown. If humanity went off-world we’d also need to contend with a big scarcity of resources that we’d need to not just grow but also do large scale mining, manufacturing and synthesis of products. The immensity of what’s needed is daunting, I like to be optimistic and believe it’s doable but it’s going to take something akin to the industrial revolution
You mean X AE A-XII Junior? Or is that X AE A-XIII?
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Continue fucking over Terra’s biosphere, and Lunar or Martian tunnels may be humanity’s last refuges.
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