How long would it take us to turn our natural satellite into a habitable place? How would this Earth-like Moon look? Would this even be possible? Wondering why we chose the Moon and not Mars? But with zero experience of terraforming, we might consider colonizing our natural satellite first. So, how exactly do we engineer a habitable planet? Just to be clear — we are not talking about building a permanent Moon base.
All these gases would gather near the surface creating an atmosphere. The newly formed seas would reflect much more sunlight, making the Moon appear 5 times brighter if observed from Earth. The more comets we batter into the Moon, the faster it would rotate. A lunar day would drop down from incredible 28 earth days to just 60 hours.
But how do we save the newly built lunar atmosphere from being stripped away by solar winds? That shield would work as an artificial bow shock, making up for a missing magnetic field.
That would be the start of the life on Moon. The terraformed Moon would get very warm from greenhouse effects. It would be mostly cloudy, too, and with tides as high as 20 meters 65 feet. In , he wrote Earthlight , in which a lunar settlement is caught in the crossfire as war erupts between Earth and an alliance between Mars and Venus. In , A Fall of Moondust was published, where a tourist cruiser Selene sinks into a sea of Moon dust. Rendezvous with Rama , released in , also makes mention of a colonized Moon, which is part of Solar System-spanning polity known as the United Planets.
Robert A. Heinlein also wrote extensively about human settlement on the Moon. One of his earliest was The Rolling Stones , which centers on an exceptional family the Stones that lives on a settled Moon, but chooses to leave in order to explore the Solar System.
In , he released the Hugo Award-winning novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress , in which a largely subterranean lunar colony supplies Earth with food and minerals. With the help of an artificial intelligence, a group of independence-seekers launch a revolt and wrest their independence from Earth. In , Kim Stanley Robinson released The Lunatics , which deals with a group of enslaved miners forced to work under the lunar surface who launch a rebellion. The list goes on, with literally hundreds if not thousands of examples of humans living on the Moon in the near and distant future.
Over the course of the past few decades, numerous proposals have been made for constructing a colony or colonies on the Moon. Most arose with the advent of the Space Age and the Apollo Program. And in more recent years, with proposals to return to the Moon by the s, there has been renewed interest in creating a permanent settlement. However, there are some scientific proposals that predate the 20th century. Famed Russian rocket and astronautics scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky — who first proposed the concept of a Space Elevator — also suggested that a lunar settlement would be a major step in humanity becoming a space-faring species.
By the s and 60s, proposals began to snowball with the establishment of the Apollo Program, where plans for placing astronauts on the Moon naturally led to ideas for creating permanent bases and even settlements there. In , Arthur C. Clarke proposed that a lunar base could be created using inflatable modules that would then be covered in lunar dust for insulation. Initial settlement would involve astronauts building igloo-like structures and an inflatable radio mast, which would be followed by the establishment of a larger, permanent dome.
His proposal also called for air purification provided by an algae-based filter, a nuclear reactor to provide power, and electromagnetic cannons i. In , John S. This concept was based on the then-accepted theory that there were oceans of dust on the Moon which were up to a kilometer and a half 1 mi deep in some areas. Several plans also emerged during this era for military installations on the Moon. The US Air Force also proposed the Lunex Project in , which envisaged the creation of an underground air force base on the Moon by Their concept called for a sub-surface base located at the Sea of Tranquility, which would rely on nuclear reactors for power and an algae-based air filtration system.
In more recent years, multiple space agencies have drafter proposals for building colonies on the Moon. In , Japan announced plans for a Moon base by Russia made a similar proposal in , which would be built between In August of , representatives from NASA met with industry leaders to discuss cost-effective ways of building a Lunar base in the polar regions by When it comes to terraforming the Moon, the possibilities and challenges closely resemble those of Mercury.
For starters, the Moon has an atmosphere that is so thin that it can only be referred to as an exosphere. These problems could be addressed by capturing comets that contain water ices and volatiles and crashing them into the surface. The comets would sublimate, dispersing these gases and water vapor to create an the atmosphere. These impacts would also liberate water that is contained in the lunar regolith , which could eventually accumulate on the surface to form natural bodies of water.
The transfer of momentum from these comet would also get the Moon rotating more rapidly, speeding up its rotation so that it would no longer be tidally-locked. A Moon that was sped up to rotate once on its axis every 24 hours would have a steady diurnal cycle, which would make colonization and adapting to life on the Moon easier. Using solar mirrors and a dome, this crater could be turned into a micro-climate where plants could be grown and a breathable atmosphere created.
Compared to other planets and moons in the Solar System, there are several advantages to colonizing and terraforming the Moon. The most obvious is its proximity to Earth. Compared to Mars, Venus, Mercury, or the outer Solar System, the cost and the time it would take to transport people and materials to and from the Moon would be significantly lower. Share Terraforming: why the Moon is a better target than Mars on Twitter. Four theoretical phases of terraforming that would take Mars from the red, desolate planet it is today top left to a world where life sustained and thrived, very similar to Earth lower right.
Although this is an ambitious dream, terraforming the Moon might prove much easier. Lava tubes, found on Earth, the Moon, and Mars, but expected to be on many planets, provide underground shelter from harsh surface conditions.
With the appropriate infrastructure, the first Martian settlements might benefit from using such a location instead of surface-dwelling. The Martian atmosphere presents a major obstacle to safely and precisely landing on the surface, and also hinders any attempts to return contents or people back to Earth.
Mars is a very great distance away from Earth; at the speed of light, one-way communications take anywhere from 7 to 22 minutes. Mars is very remote as far as the delivery of resources goes; it can take months to over a year to deliver a payload from Earth to Mars, depending on the configuration of the planets at any particular moment in time.
Some still have defined outer rims and clear features within them, while others are much smoother and featureless, almost seeming to run into one another or merge with their surroundings. NASA created this chart in to illustrate the flight path and key mission events for the then-upcoming Apollo missions to the Moon.
Compared to Mars, which has a light-travel time of minutes and requires a journey of many months, a light signal can reach the Moon in 1. Credit : R. Winglee and E. Harnett, Geophys. From the near side of the Moon, the Earth is always visible. Through a series of domes or even an underground network, the barren lunar regolith could be transformed into a surface where human civilization makes its first foray into expanding beyond the Earth.
But if we bring: a self-enclosed structure the air necessary to fill it the bacteria needed to properly enrich the soil Simply crushing lunar rocks to make soil will be sufficient to begin the process of lunar agriculture. Three sample containers containing crushed-up rocks designed to mimic Moon rocks.
In the two containers at left, bacteria was added; in the right-most container, no bacteria was added. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Nov 11, , pm EST. Nov 11, , am EST. Nov 10, , pm EST. Edit Story. Aug 7, , pm EDT.
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