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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2017-10-26, 15:42

Mooooon Tuuuubes... 🌓

A newly discovered moon tunnel could be the perfect place for a colony, scientists say
The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...cientists-say/
At the close of the Apollo age, a year before the final moonwalk in 1972, a NASA researcher argued that vast tunnels lie beneath the lunar surface.

There was good reason to think so. Lava from ancient volcanoes might have bored miles-long voids beneath the moon's surface, just as volcanoes formed the Kaumana lava tubes in Hawaii.

What a sight a lunar lava cave would be. Protected from meteors and radiation that bombards the surface, the tunnels might preserve evidence from the moon’s early history and clues to its mysterious origins. And many scientists have long dreamed of building bases inside natural moon caves, where lunar explorers might sleep safely in inflatable homes, protected from the storms above.

But the lava tunnels of the moon, like the mythical canals of Mars, proved elusive.

NASA’s Ronald Greeley hypothesized in 1971 that one of the great channels in the moon’s Marius Hills region might in fact be a collapsed tunnel. But he admitted that no mission had yet photographed a lunar cave entrance — and some doubted they even existed.

Half a century after Greeley’s paper was published and NASA left the moon behind, in a paper published this week, Japanese researchers say they've found proof of the tunnels no one could see.

... continues ...

For more technical data... the JAXA linked paper from near the end of the WaPo story.
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/topics/001159.html

I would say “who knew sub-surface bases were so doable?”, but apparently...




All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2017-10-26 at 16:10. Reason: Better pics
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