Lunar bases may need to be quake-proof (2006)

The biggest road block to building a sustainable society is that we have to make changes to the well and truly entrenched non-sustainable society we already have.

If you were starting fresh on a new planet that doesn't have instantaneous communications or easy travel options with Earth, it would be a lot easier to build a fundamentally different society.

Moving off Earth might actually be the easiest way to achieve what you're talking about.

> if we can't figure out how to build a long-term sustainable society here on earth, there is no way we're going to be able to build a long-term sustainable society on the moon

I have to ask, what do you mean by sustainability here? Biological life has existed on earth for about 2 billion years, the human race for a million years and civilization for thousands of years. So in what sense is life on earth not sustainable, and what would have to change for you to consider it sustainable?

In the ultimate long run life anywhere isn't sustainable; the sun will eventually die and then the universe itself will experience heat death. So what's your cut off?

This argument is nonsense. Maybe the problems of our society is rooted in history and institutions and a fresh start is what's required. Maybe an equitable society requires a frontier to satisfy some aspect of human psyche and provide fresh ideas.

I could spend all afternoon coming up with alternative explanations. Ultimately your point of view is not popular on HN because it amounts to the logical fallacy of whataboutism and is a rude change of subject.

Humanity will find equilibrium one way or another. Exponential growth is merely a symptom of an insufficiently hostile environment.

Hawking argues that due to the fact that we can't have a long term sustainable earth we need a backup in the form of a moon base and or mars outpost .

> And the only way to build a long-term sustainable society is to figure out how to build an economy that does not rely on exponential growth.

Oh, there was - look back in ancient history, with tribes using only what they needed in terms of resources and land (and for what its worth, some of these cultures still exist in remote places). The problem is capitalism and the imperialism that rose with it, beginning in Ancient Rome. By now, it's deeply ingrained into our societies, even those who call themselves "communist". I believe that only the natural constraints of a moon/Mars base, together with their initially small population, will force the settlers to cooperate on equal basis and thus lead to a small-scale sustainable economy.

The only problem is, small colonies won't be sustainable in genetic terms: there will be an "incest bottleneck", and the only way to solve this is to expand the population base - where the effects of a capitalist society will become apparent again more sooner than later...

Amen. Not only that, I'm tired of hearing about going to Mars when we can't get to our own moon anymore or sustain a colony there.

Different risks: using up all resources (running out of fossil fuels) vs an instantaneous mistake/disaster (global fallout some some weapon, or an asteroid, or freak solar flare, or something like that). Colonizing another planet protects against the latter and probably shouldn't be dismissed simply because it is not yet a solution to the former.

I think your first argument about sustainability has a key issue: An enormous proportion of Earth's current issues are historic in origin. The population explosion is a result of rapid development in SE Asia and Africa - developed societies hit steady state populations and actually shrink without immigration. Climate change is extremely real and dangerous, but ultimately historic. A society starting fresh from our current level of development, particularly one populated primarily by explorers on a foreign planet, will carefully find and account for externalities like damaging emissions. Automation-derived unemployment is the most historic crisis imaginable - the result is unalloyed paradise if you don't have a suddenly penniless underclass to account for or a societal structure obsessed with puritan work ethic.

Your argument about new resource growth is interesting, but misses A) the previously mentioned steady state populations of developed society disproves the 'population explosion' and B) the enormous efficiency gains we'll reap from expansion to new worlds.

For me at least, the drive to expand isn't Malthusian, it's roughly cultural. If you buy into Hirschman's Voice and Exit dichotomy[0], a frontier provides the ultimate exit to society's current structure. We're observing the effects of a voiceless society with no exit right now, and it's far from good. The last great round of expansion birthed all sorts of new societal structures, some of which ultimately out-competed those of the old world and now dominate this world.

Lastly, beyond the social/cultural effects of the frontier, this frontier in particular is going to be really, really good for our technological development. The absolute quantity of resources available to us will only grow as n^2, but specific resources will grow by unimaginable factors within that. Platinum group metals will plummet in price[1], orbital manufacturing will enable amazing new materials, and built-in-space orbital structures are too transformative to even try predicting [3].

It's possible (though I don't buy it) that Earth society is unsustainable and doomed. Whether that's true or not, I think it has little bearing on our ability to create a 10,000x smaller society off Earth (1mm humans to start), and I think such a parallel society off-Earth would be enormously helpful in making Earth sustainable. Both through the effects of a frontier, and simple technological advancement.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-as... [2]: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experime... [3]: http://madeinspace.us/archinaut/

Piggy-backing on this a bit with respect to the article, moon bases will need to be quake-proof because, given long-standing and continuing human behavior (and arguably, life's behavior, at its most fundamental level), they will need to be bomb-proof.

Sustainability also equals controlling population growth. It means following Japan's lead into stabilizing population growth --even taking it into decline and into a sustainable population.

Our eggs are currently all in one celestial basket. We need to try, desperately, to ensure that the human race does not go extinct (by fault of our own or otherwise). This means an alternative habitat.

We've gotten really good at terraforming the Earth (unintentionally) and killing each other (intentionally) in the past century. In particular, one man has the power to end the world, he has no political experience, and he is in the White House. If we have a nuclear holocaust, the only silver lining can be in human populations on other celestial bodies. Hence, it is in the best long-term interest of humanity to go to the Moon and Mars - to ensure our survival.

Extreme scarcity is a good driver of sustainability. Maybe colonisation will help develop technology that makes living on earth more sustainable.

According to the article, the moon is seismically active.

> That's the surprising conclusion of Clive R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame after he and a team of 15 other planetary scientists reexamined Apollo data from the 1970s. "The moon is seismically active," he told a gathering of scientists at NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting in League City, Texas, last October.

I used to be of the same opinion as you, but there are actually some good counter arguments:

1) Two week day/night cycle: This means it would be hard to power your base with solar energy. You'd need massive battery banks. Or another power source. You could try nuclear, but cooling might be a challenge without air or water. Mars has a slightly longer day than earth, which makes solar power much more viable (though solar insolation is less than on earth)

2) No atmosphere, so all Oxygen has to be brought in (unless we find it somewhere else on the Moon). Also any carbon needed to grow plants needs to be brought in. Mars has a thin atmosphere, but we could get Oxygen and Carbon from it.

3) It's not clear if we can find water on the moon. Mars almost certainly has water underground, and for sure at the pole.

4) The lower gravity might have long term effects on humans. Though to be fair, we don't know if Mars gravity will be harmful as well.

Why not have both? :) as far as "backup of human civilization" goes though, Mars has more potential: water, atmosphere (thin though it may be), higher gravity, and a day similar to earth. If the s ever htf on earth, a mars colony has a better chance of surviving one day without earth's help.

I guess for me the question is if that will matter or we get strong AI first.

> so why not be a couple days away rather than a year

Hm, maybe because you'd get twice the gravity and a "day" that lasts closer to 24 hours than 24 days?

The seismometers were part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages (ALSEPs), which were powered by radioisotope thermal generators. RTGs use the heat from decaying radioactive elements to produce power, and gradually produce less energy over time as the isotopes decay into more stable elements. By 1977 the ALSEP RTGs were only producing enough power to run either one experimental package or the radio transmitter at once; they probably would have stopped working altogether in a few more years anyway and it's better to have a controlled shutdown rather than a failing radio transmitter cluttering up the airwaves. Wikipedia also mentions "budgetary considerations", and apparently they wanted the ALSEP control room for another project as well.

Edit: I've just found [1], which adds a few additional details: first, they were designed for a lifetime of one year, so 1977 was well beyond their expected activity; and second, after they were decommissioned they continued to send carrier signals (but no data) which were used for various purposes.

[1]: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/HamishALSEP.html

More detail than you ever wanted to know can be found in the ALSEP termination report: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/misc/documents/b32116.pdf

Thanks! Updated.