Moon Base

It appears that the Moon may end up being the true base for man's exploration of the rest of the solar system and even the universe.

Up until now, most people believed that the moon was a dead, dry world. It turns out that our impressions were incorrect. It turns out that the moon has a lot of water ice hidden in craters shaded from sunlight. There is enough water on the moon to power 20 rocket launches for a hundred years. This is based on the estimate of how much hydrogen and oxygen could be created from the water ice.

The main problem with creating colonies on the moon is radiation, not only from the sun's solar wind, but also from cosmic rays, which come from outer space. The eruption of a coronal mass ejection from the sun would kill any astronauts on the moons surface. The only way to avoid this lethal dose of radiation is to be covered by rock.

It turns out that the moon has huge lava tubes just like the ones on Earth, except that the ones on the moon are hundreds of times larger. These entrances to massive underground tunnels are visible on the moon, and they are the size of football fields.

The funny thing the moon is that there is evidence for volcanic activity. In other words, the core of the moon had not cooled completely as it was once thought. The underground lava tunnels are from earlier seismic activity and they are extensive. It would be easy to build bases in these tunnels by sealing them off. It would be easy to create breathable atmospheres in these sealed-off tunnels and keep them at a constant temperature, which would be cold but not unlivable. Combine this with the fact that the rocky covering would protect astronauts from radiation and micro-meteor hits.

The best part is that launching a rocket off the moon would be much easier and require much less fuel than a similar launch from Earth. That's because the gravity on the moon is much less than the Earth's.

Frankly, this seems like a no-brainer to me.

Thanks for reading.