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TLDR:

Space nerds theorized moon caves since the 80s. Moon caves created by young moon lava flows billions of years ago found in early 2000s. Japanese space agency finished mapping a tunnel last week and found it's 50km long and 500m wide with a flat bottom perfect for building space buildings in.

This is news that's breaking to a revitalized moon rocket industry with all agencies and players building their own big moon rocket. New Glenn for blue origins, bfr for spacex, sls for NASA, ACES for ULA (boeing aerospace + lockmart ) Chinese have also expressed interest in a moon base.

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Oddly, the satellite that did the mapping ended its mission in 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELENE

Did it really take until now to analyze its data?

As someone whose job was once to work with that data, yes. It’s a tremendous amount of data and the resources allocated is often a half dozen grad students with a copy of MATLAB. The big iron is only really applied to create the official maps for the planetary science data archives, then real analysis is often paid for piecemeal with relatively small grants.

You worked on this actual data? It's amazing how Hacker News brings together people from such diverse backgrounds.

So, uh, who owns the moon, and that tunnel in particular? Is it first come first serve?

No one does according to the Outer Space Treaty. No one can according to the Moon Treaty. (Thankfully the major powers didn’t ratify that one.) In practice, common law has ruled that physical possession constitutes ownership with the precedent of the Apollo artifacts and Lunakhod rover.

Whoever gets there first, and can realistically form a threat credible enough to defend it.

You’ll probably need the backing of a nuclear power, although off-world representation of earthly countries might not turn out to be particularly credible threats (enough to intimidate new emerging space-based powers), or remain truly politically cohesive with their root terrestrial counterparts, depending...

Or maybe the people who get there can just agree to cooperate instead and share the land, unlike how we do things down here.

One can dream.

This is actually the way the Outer Space Treaty is written - a state party to it retains jurisdiction over any object it launches, but is required to keep it open to "representatives" of other state parties.

For a more complete look at the legal issues involved, seehttp://www.thespacereview.com/article/3286/1

That checks out. There is a treaty but space-faring nations have not signed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty

I have the sinking feeling we'll be teaching space marksmanship to our next batch of astronauts.

If it came to blows, chances are that the battles would be fought on Earth. Launching anything is expensive. Launching anything manned is prohibitively expensive. Armaments would just increase the cost and the risk.

Launching a rock back at earth would probably be quite cheap given you need to have propellents on hand to be there in the first place. So at some point of habitation, moon based folks will bid for Independence.

“Possession is 9/10th of the law” would appear especial relevant on the moon. However the United Nations Outer Space Treaty agreed that no one can claim sovereignty. https://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/02/lunar-proper...

Dennis hope [0]

I do recall buying an acre as a fun present back in the day..

0: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2654045/Id-buy-moon-...

1st google hit, but seems fittingly trash..

You were swindled.

Is there any advantage for a country to have a base on the moon?

Even without exploitable resources, space observation (telescopes) and communications systems on the Moon would have to contend with less interference from terrestrial noise, I’d guess. Having a foothold on the Moon would definitely assist further space exploration.

Getaways to the moon would also become a great new tourism industry for the ultra-rich and wealthy, whose money would in turn spur advancements in off-world habitation and comfort that could trickle down to the general populace.

I also think all human political leadership should be relocated to the Moon, at least for a week or two every year, to help them appreciate Earth a little better [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

If you ever want to do a lot in space a ton

Sorry meant to expand more. The fact that the moon has such lower gravity than the earth means it's a lot cheaper in theory to get stuff from the surface of the moon to orbit than from earth

But there isn’t exactly a lot of readily available resources on the moon, so until that changes your just paying to lift stuff twice. Water may be an exception to this?

You can use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, aka, fuel. Finding an underground ice lake would provide lots of fuel, and save on lifting the heaviest, most important substance for manned exploration from earth.

Water takes a lot of energy to split. Take a small size as a pot on a cooker with a litre of water.

Just to get that litre to bubble takes constant. Heating for minutes or imagine how long it would take to boil all that water away.

Sure you'll have a lot of fuel but its not easily accessible.

How much energy does it take to get stuff from the earth to the moon though?

Is it that much less than leaving earths gravity all together?

The point would be that the stuff we would use to explore/colonize the solar system would be made on the Moon with a relatively low investment in stuff having to be send there to set up the base and mining/production process. Ideally only humans themselves and a few personal items would be send up from Earth, with everything else having been produced in orbit.

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