Against lunar exploitation

[Phenix]

Hello everyone.

I am really against exploiting the Moon for two main reasons.

- This natural satellite is near from Earth, any Human actions such as using explosives for mining activities can affect its orbit will affect Earth's ecology.

- Any huge orbital station interacts as well the Moon's orbit and again will affect Earth's ecology.

I am suggesting to set the Moon under International Protections Law againts any Man kind activities.

Thanks,

[Rhyshaelkan]

This cannot be. We need Luna as a stepping stone to go further into the beyond.

All the mining and all the explosives both conventional and nuclear in the entire history of mankind would not daunt the mass of Luna.

I do not agree on a hands off policy regarding Luna. However all of those exploiting the resources there should be mindful of what is taken from and to Luna and Terra. They are in a balance I agree, and care should be taken from upsetting that balance.

However Terra's dense atmosphere and gravity preclude refueling after leaving the confines of her. This is most easily accomplished at her child Luna.

[Boxy]

Well, as Ryshaelkan mentioned, there's not a whole lot we as a species could do to significantly change the mass of the Moon. There's just too much moonrock on that blessed globe for us to move.

And... there's not any amount of explosive we could use that would knock moondust into Earth. It's a quarter million miles away, ten times greater than the distance around the Earth's equator. Do you know of any explosive device that knocks something ten times around the Earth?

[Phenix]

Do you know what is chaos effect ?

[Boxy]

Yes. What exactly are you suggesting? That development on the Moon could destabilize the Earth-Moon system in some way?

[Phenix]

Exactly. Playing socerer apprentices on the Moon is not an option.

I really believe that actions we would be doing on the Moon are beyond our comprehension and even toward time reaction fix what we have done.

Again, we should always consider as a primary priority: safety of our Home planet "Earth".

[Rhyshaelkan]

And if the safety of Earth requires us to use Lunar materials to get our foot in the door? What then?

Again I must emphasize that all the mining and all the explosives ever used on Earth by the human race, for industry or for war. Were these used on the Moon, the Moon has too much mass to be bothered by such trivial forces.

Currently scientists know that the moon is slowly drifting away from Earth. By our efforts over the next thousand years. The human race might actually stabilize the Earth-Moon system by exploiting Lunar resources.

In my own opinion, I would much rather mine the Moon than push an asteroid in any direction close to my home planet. Least of all LEO. Were PERMANENT to get the wherewithal to push an asteroid, why not EML1 or any of the other Lagrangian points.

[Phenix]

Rhyshaelkan,

I will not try to convince you nor other pro Moons exploiters. I just wanted to point out my disagreement based on my thoughts...

It is always better to warn than to say nothing. That's all.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Independent thinkers are good. For they look from outside the box. You will probably have to raise the objection again from time to time. You never know if something might be over-looked which really could mean disaster or a great boon.

[Boxy]

To give a better perspective on just how much stuff there is on the Moon:

Imagine that total worldwide iron production moved entirely to the Moon, seeing as how it doesn't damage the ecology where the ecology does not exist. In 2006, total worldwide production of iron ore was 1,690,000,000 tons. Now, imagine that instead of doing sensible things with that ore, like building arcologies on Earth or colonies and industry on the Moon, we ship it off to some backwater colony that is unrelated to the Earth-Moon system. Let's say Ganymede.

That would remove the entirety of human ore consumption out of the Moon every single year. Now let's imagine that humanity flourished in the solar system and continued this breakneck pace of strip-mining the Moon for thirty thousand years, for a total of 50,700,000,000,000 tons (5.07 x 10^16 kg).

Even with this fantastically enormous amount of iron ore removed completely from the Moon, the total change in the Moon's mass would be jokingly negligible. It's not a 1% change. It's not even a tenth of 1% change. It's 0.00013%. Furthermore, this change in its mass would never affect how the Moon orbits the Earth, as a space station at that distance would orbit the Earth at a similar pace. The tidal effects on the Earth's bodies of water would be negligibly affected -- we're talking about thousandths of inches here being changed after a ridiculously large change in the Moon's mass.

[Phenix]

At http://globalecology.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_17/SCOPE_17_1.1_Chapter1_3-24.pdf , there is a serious study on Lunar tidal effect on Earth's climate at page 15...

[Boxy]

Did you even bother to read it? The article you posted doesn't refer to the Moon at all. At best it refers to lunar forces tipping the balance of volcanic forces into spewing ash into the air.

The conclusions of the paper are that the biggest climactic inputs are variations in the sun's light radiation and volcanic activity:
"The main contributing factor for climatic variation over the past few hundred to few thousand years is short-term periodic changes in the luminosity of the sun and in the volcanic dust concentrations of the atmosphere. In contrast, CO2 in the atmosphere has not been a climate-controlling device in the past, but will become the principal anthropogenic agent over the next hundred years."

The paper discusses planetary tidal forces (i.e. the 180-year cycle of gravitational forces exerted by the all nearby planets), but no lunar effects. The lunar cycle of 28 days is too short to affect the climate. Even if we thrusted the Moon into a decaying orbit around the Sun and therefore out of the Earth's orbit, the only climactic effect it would have is that there's no longer a daily tide, and the only evolutionary effects would be that some animals that use the Moon's nighttime light for navigation would be horribly confused.

[Phenix]

Great point. As mentioned if the tidal effect comes to disappear how much of fauna and flora extinction would you go for ? Are fauna and flora less valuable than lunar minerals extraction ? Please, tell me.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Are you trying to agitate other forumers Phenix? Baseless comments could be seen as such.

The facts remain, it would take alot more than human intervention to influence the orbit of Luna.

[Phenix]

OK, I am ending up my inputs on this thread. I will not insist.

[Boxy]

Even if we completely removed 100 million tons a year for 30,000 years, we would only change the gravitational force of the moon by 0.0037%, as I noted earlier. I mean, that would be roughly the equivalent of changing the tide by maybe a millimeter or two.

So no real chance of us killing dolphins and causing algae blooms by mining the moon. Unless you've got some numbers to crunch that say otherwise?