NASA's Lunar Orbiter spots comfortably warm 'pits' all over the Moon Data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has led scientists to conclude that the Moon hosts around 200 "pits" that offer stable and human-friendly temperatures. The pits "always hover around a comfortable 63F/17C, NASA stated on Wednesday. A steady 17C contrasts markedly with the rest of the Moon's surface, which …
going to all the trouble of getting out of Earth's gravity well only to live in a cave.
And due to the location of the caves being the Sea of Tranquillity we'd also be returning to the ocean, which, incidentally, some people seem to think we should never have left (according to an obscure digital travel guide I remember reading once.)
Looking around me, I have a nasty feeling that they probably had a point...
"those are not pits, those are exhaust pipes"
If those are indeed exhaust ports, please make sure that any adjacent auxiliary ports are fully protected. Old school design guidelines called for ray shielding ports 3m in diameter an smaller, but that's been found to be insufficient.
I have a vague memory of the aircraft in question being a B-17, if we're both thinking about the same quality publication.
And here's the story, although the aeroplane is simply described as an 'American World War 2 bomber'.
If, somehow, I managed to miss the astounding news of a Lancaster being found on the Moon as well, I'll be profoundly grateful for any links to the full story.
Keep in mind the huge gravity difference. There is no indication that these pits follow the same pattern as similar structures on earth year. That said, it looks A LOT like a skylight into something like a lava tube, which would be an ideal find. In that case the breakdown of the hole in the ceiling would have more to do with cooling lava then gravity/impacts and could lead to an extensive and handy tube.
Flip side is that it could be a teacup impact crater in powdered regolith and act like a giant ant lion trap, collapsing tons of mass on whatever hapless fool disturbs it. Friction and low g can make for some interesting stuff. Or you know it could just be a giant vacuum adapted ant lion in there I guess, judging by some of the other comments here.
But finding a stable lava tube to use as shelter for further exploration would be a huge coup. That would mean we could line it with a lightweight structure akin to one of the Bigelow inflatable hab structures instead of trying to heavy lift something, or digging equipment.
Fun to dream right? How much gas would a cubesat with a hall thruster need to get there and check it out?
"I wonder how stable the holes are?
I wonder that too when I read these bits from the article:
"hypothesized the pit and others like it were created by the ceiling of a collapsed cave.
“For long term colonization and exploration of the Moon, pits may provide a desirable habitat:
As the first line was from the end of one paragraph, and the second line is the start of the next paragraph, it seemed especially jarring and maybe not such a good idea.
I'm wondering what you would need for a robot to explore these areas. Unfortunately, with the zero air on the Moon, no Helicopters would be possible. Rovers would also be out. I suppose with the low gravity, some sort of hopping robot, might be possible, but damping it so that it doesnt spring straight back out would be a challenge, and as a rule electronics are not normally fans of bouncing.
That's a project I would love to work on...
but damping it so that it doesnt spring straight back out would be a challenge
Shock absorbers and dampers are old, established technologies. Use a piston to launch your hopper and then separate legs with damping to cushion the landing.
electronics are not normally fans of bouncing.
Solid state electronics are pretty good about bouncing. If you don't have spinning rust in the system and take care to prevent the components from flexing such as by potting them in epoxy then you can get functional electronics launched from cannons at thousands of Gs.
I work with aircraft systems that can handle 11Gs in hard landings with a safety factor of 2 and an additional customer-is-antsy factor of 1.5. There are additional flight turbulence and operational requirements to handle more sustained bouncing than a brief hard landing. The microchips, components, and other circuit board doodads don't have weird aerospace-grade packaging, either. In fact, most of the electronics aren't even shock-mounted unless they incidentally share a mount with more delicate systems like optics.
ISTR the chips I worked on were specced to 50,000G - and that was mainly down to the wires that connected the chip to its carrier. Modern chips have far better methods of connection and I would imagine they have far higher immunity to bangs and vibration. However in an vacuum environment I would imagine static could reach extremely high levels!
Shock absorbers and Dampers might be old and established Tech on Earth, but in Space they're not so often used with moving rovers. At least not on the rovers themselves. Most shock absorbers use some sort of Oleo arrangement, but on the Moon your stuck with making it a hydraulic Oleo, since you cant use Air, and that's going to make it heavy. To make some sort of pneumatic system, it's going to have to be hermetically sealed, again upping complexity, weight and cost.
Crush dampers are fine if only needed once, but you then need some sort of extra mechanism to deploy your movement mehcnaism after the dampers have done their job. Again all this adds Compleixty, cost, weight, and potential failure mechanisms.
For me, for these holes, you would want something that's able to jump in the hole and then go cave exploring. A damper system would be difficult in that.
Also, your going to want a sensor package, so you are talking optics of varying grades, lights, comms, batteries, etc. Some of that is fine with vibration and bouncing, but a lot of it will need special mountings, adding again complexity, weight and cost.
Like I said such a project would be awesome to work on, but never underestimate just how difficult it is to design something to operate in a near vacuum environment, espeically something that is not just a lander, but which needs to move around and perform science.
Man, I miss working in the Space industry...
So if you keep your speed down the energy would be minimal. Probably could go spider if you wanted to be flashy, but for an important mission like this, with a likely short trip, I'd pack in thrusters and just fly down. Given the challenge to land adjacent to the site, then navigate the path inside in contact with the lunar surface it seems lower risk to fly in something with cameras and look around.
If someone is going to do a flyby in the next few years, maybe they could toss something out the door and guide it in Buzz Aldrin style while the radio delay is short. Maybe plant a little cocktail flag.
The counter argument would be that trying to preserve a pristine environment inside the first extra terrestrial cave we would be exploring would be better for the science. That's less fun though (and probably why I write code of dubious quality and not design lunar rovers for a living).
The problem with that would be guaranteeing you make it into the hole, landing from Orbit is not a precise business. Actually let me rephrase that because Landing is a hugely precise business, but the landing zone you choose is measured in square kilometres. So trying to hit a hole a couple hundred metres across in a landing zone a couple of kilometres across, is probably not going to be successful.
Although maybe if there was the Lunar Gateway in place, then you could drop it with a lot less lateral velocity, and have more chance of hitting what you want. Still I'd hate to be tasked with calculating the landing trajectories and planning for that eventuality...
Sort out the going down and getting back out, and more easily using lighter gear than on Earth.
Choosing a vacuum-tolerant rope is an exercise I suspect has been done.
Pitons, screws, rock anchors, Friends and chocks only depend on finding something solid in walls or slopes or above to belay.
If the floor is the interesting bit then wheels, treads and steppy things should suffice. Boston Dynamics may soon have a Lunar Rover.
"I suppose with the low gravity, some sort of hopping robot, might be possible, but damping it so that it doesnt spring straight back out would be a challenge,"
Clearly you never saw a Moon Hopper on UFO
Mmmm, I need to go lie down in a darkened room while a dream of sexy ladies in string vest outfits with silver miniskirts.
What is the physics at play ?
The physics for the temperature of an earth based sinkhole is going to be different, because we have air and convection changes everything ( https://weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/2020-01-15-temperature-sinks-cold-explained )
I can understand that living inside a sinkhole on the moon you will not receive direct sunlight (127°C/260°F), so it will always be cooler living in the shade. But at night time (-173°C/-280°F) how are the lows avoided, is it that the rim of the sinkhole rock that was previously heated all day is radiating the stored heat into the middle of the sinkhole during the lunar night ?
Smart move by NASA in calling them "pits" instead of "sinkholes", to avoid any negative connotations.
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