Chapter 10 Chapter 5 Colonizing the Moon

The lunar world, which is the same size as Africa, will be rapidly developed in the future, and the fact that a large number of human beings will emigrate is just around the corner.The development of the moon is the first step of the human space program, and it will be used as a springboard to develop other planets. Astronomy, observed with telescopes on Earth, has almost reached the end of its life.Interference from tens of thousands of city lights and household appliances seriously disrupts most of the optical telescopes and radio telescopes in the world today.There is an urgency to move these telescopes to space or to the moon within the next decade.Because there are too many interferences, it is becoming more and more difficult to take a photo of a distant faint star.For example, under the implementation of the urban plan, many mercury street lamps were set up; not bad!It has reduced many traffic accidents, but it has caused great troubles in astronomy because they produce strong ultraviolet rays, which are the same as some starlight.If city lights and advertising lights are similar in nature to starlight, it is very likely that a photo taken patiently for several hours will become waste paper.When the roads on the outskirts of the city are paved with reflective cement, some small particles will reflect the light in the big city like a mirror, and the light like a rising moon can be seen almost fifty miles above the horizontal plane.The lights of the building could be seen for miles, and searchlights shot into the sky to make the situation even worse.The Wilson Telescope, built before the war, faced such a problem that the light from Los Angeles interfered with the 48-inch telescope; even the world's largest optical telescope, the 200-inch reflecting telescope on Mount Palmer, is now located in the wilderness of California. Suburbs, but in 1980 may also be disturbed by light from Los Angeles and San Diego. Telescopes are far more sensitive to disturbing light than the helpless naked eye.

The Great British Radio Telescope on the banks of the River Yeowell is facing the fate of moving to Whiskey Valley, because at its present site it is impossible to distinguish whether a signal is from the universe or has recently been moved to the thousands of houses nearby. Household appliances clutter.Astronomers are looking for a farther place to build their telescopes, but the population spreads fast, and even if they find it, it won't last long.If we continue to develop the universe, the telescope can leave this interfering city and put it on an observatory in earth orbit or on the moon, and it will not be disturbed again.

Even without the interference of city lights and household appliances, the thick layer of atmosphere will affect the results of observations, which are much worse than observations from space.We have learned enough astronomy from under this overlying atmosphere that looking at the night sky is still like a fish looking at things above the water from a few inches below the surface. The fish might see a moon clearly, but the moon sees nothing. It always makes the water cover some of her original nature, and because the water moves, it seems that the outside things are moving every second.The stars flickered faintly, and there was seldom a moment of stillness, even when the water was very still.The rest of the time is moving slightly, and the whole scene is hazy and disturbed by water shadows.Even on the clearest night, it still seems to be covered with a layer of fog.

But outside the atmosphere, the background suddenly became clear, the clouds dissipated, and the stars no longer faltered in their correct positions.Even on the most cloudless night, the sky is still not very clear when viewed from the earth.People in space outside the atmosphere can see thousands of times more stars than on the earth. The biggest difference is that the former is separated by a layer of atmosphere while the latter does not.The atmospheric curtain obscures many star signals.A large portion of the light spectrum is cut off from our eyes. Ultraviolet and X-rays are cut off by the stratosphere and oxygen. The heat flow of the air disturbs images of starlight, making them appear doubled.The edge of the planetary system cannot be distinguished, and the entire surface is also hairy.There are seldom times when the tumult of the air is calm, as a fish astronomer rarely enjoys a calm sea.Most of the important astronomical discoveries are made at this time, but this kind of weather rarely lasts long enough to take a clear picture.Better results can be obtained with a telescope on a balloon, or on a sub-orbital rocket, but balloons can't get higher than twenty miles, which is still in the atmosphere; the rocket will be wobbly .

A few astronomical telescopes have indeed been launched into Earth orbit to realize this idea, but apart from these space laboratories, they are all operated by remote control from the Earth, so their usefulness is also limited.When people operate directly, the telescopes in orbit will be more efficient. People can check the photos they take and send them back to the earth. People can check the exposure time; Take a shot once, and do things that various remote control devices cannot do. In the next two decades, more complex telescopes will be put into orbit or put into manned space stations to participate in this work.Although more fascinating than ground-based observations, many problems remain:

1. Even a slight movement can make the photos taken by the Space Astronomy Laboratory unclear, and you have to do it all over again. 2. The earth covers most of the sky of the spacecraft, which depends on how high the spacecraft is; the earth will create or cause light interference like Los Angeles does to the Wilson telescope. 3. The Van Allen belts around the Earth emit intense radiation; this too would interfere with observations, and telescopes would need tons of protective covering to protect it. 4. The signals of radio, television and aircraft on the earth will interfere with radio astronomical telescopes.

5. For the health of the astronomers on the spacecraft, the spacecraft must rotate to generate gravity, which means that it will rotate in the sky very quickly, and the rotating telescope will make the photos taken inaccurate. If the telescope is placed on the far side of the moon, all this will not be a problem. The diameter of the moon, 2160 miles, constitutes the best shielding of radio signals from the earth.The future moon watchers under this shield of more than 2,000 miles will become very important space astronomers, and these shields are the reason for its importance.Fourteen Earth days are such a long night on a moon, and skywatchers can observe good results everywhere.If an astronomer observes with a telescope on the moon for the first time, he will definitely feel that the effect is much better. The stars no longer look wobbly and seem to be magnified. They can’t see such brightness when doing astronomical observation on the earth. star.On Earth, the brighter the star, the more it looks like a disk.When we take a picture with a powerful telescope, on Earth these starlights pass through the atmosphere causing an illusion of refraction. This frustration allows us today to know that starlight travels through trillions of miles of space, but is disturbed in the last hundred miles.In fact, even after such a long distance, we should still get a dot with no size when we observe it with a powerful telescope.We enlarge this dot into a small disk, which should be the actual size or proportion, and it is only as big as a pear when enlarged to the size of the whole of Europe.In this case, the situation without error amplification can only be obtained on the moon.

On the moon, astronomy can have amazing developments.The most advanced radio astronomical telescope in the world, the largest built is a behemoth with a diameter of 1,000 feet, which is built near the crater of Fort Arisi in Puerto Rico.In order to withstand the strong tropical winds, a platform was made to support it, with a total weight of 600 tons.Buildings like this would be unnecessary on the moon, where there are no strong or stormy winds.We can build radio telescopes in craters out of sheets of aluminum.The cables below the focal point can also be supported by volcanic walls, and the entire structure can be as large as fifty miles in diameter.Because the gravity of the moon is small, the weight of everything on the moon is only one-sixth of the original weight, so the cables can also be hung like spider webs, which shows an advantage.There is also no humid air on the moon that would corrode metal parts or other accessory parts.There is no problem, we can go deeper into the universe dozens of times on the moon than before.Both optical and radio astronomical telescopes can be built in this paradise. Without the interference of clouds and atmosphere, we can see stars thousands of times brighter than now. The farthest star we can see from the Poma astronomical telescope is about five The constellation Coma, trillion light-years away.We can only see this point of starlight, as a small dot, when the film is enlarged to the extent that the emulsion grains on it can be seen clearly.They are so faint and fuzzy that we have to use a magnifying glass to see them.The largest spot can be imagined to be composed of trillions of stars, but if we observe it from the moon, we can clearly measure its distance, just as we can see the Andromeda constellation today, and the latter is its It's only one-two thousandth of the distance.

The diameter of the Mount Poma telescope is 200 inches, which is about 17 feet. When the weight and stress constraints on the moon do not exist, we can build a reflecting telescope with a diameter of 2,000 inches. If the environment on the moon permits, we can It will be even bigger!The rotation of the moon is 30 times slower than that of the earth, which means that the exposure time of a fixed point of the sky on the moon can be longer.The Mount Poma Telescope will be disturbed every morning when the sun rises, but there is no such situation on the moon. Its day and night cycle reaches 336 hours, which is 14 earth days. Exposure to take a photo.It is night at both poles of the moon. If we want to take astronomical photos, we can take them at will, and we can get many opportunities to make new discoveries. We are much luckier than Galileo at that time.

Science Leads Industry This is not the first miracle. After the first moon landing, a group of NASA engineers and scientists debated: which one should be the priority for the next moon landing mission.An engineer nervously suggested that one of the scientific experiments should be eliminated and a backup safety device added. The scientists quickly stopped this suggestion, and the safety device was not added to future missions. Engineers know that without the science behind them, moonshot development won't discover anything.But this point is often overlooked. From 1957 to 1961, from 1957 to 1961, it can be seen from the development of the space program in Soviet Russia. During this period, most scientists were not very interested, but purely because of developed for military reasons.Looking back at the American Pioneer Project and the Mercury Project, we can see that the long-term useless competition in the space field has no results, and the main cause is the launch of Sputnik 1.After the launch of Sputnik 1, there was great concern that Soviet Russia might put nuclear weapons in orbit.Even the future Sun God plans have this kind of political threat, which is only different from military force, and there are different levels.This kind of military needs purely scientific facts, so that military aggression will retreat, and it will also lead to a more refined approach to landing on the moon.

The government has to pay a huge amount of money for moon observers, and it may have reached its limit.One can often hear complaints about who should spend money on the space program and sewage treatment.Scientists now know how long it will take him to win the battle against such slogans.In this same war von.Brown's misfortune failed in the mid-1950s (his satellite launch was scrapped) and did not become important until after the launch of Sputnik 1, when there were military concerns.If a war is to be fought under such circumstances, science is the most important thing.There is no political or economic reason to compel humans to understand the universe so deeply, or to spend so much money on the government.But since Feng.After Brown, scientists learned smarter, and they discovered the basic principle of scientific attitude: if there is no threat of Sputnik, they should also develop science. Pure scientists should band together in order to fight for special research grants.Military generals are not interested in pure science.But he has two virtues for ambitious scientists, his irritability and his ability to speak forcefully in meetings.If his aides had told him how important astronomy was to the moon, he would probably have received this funding. Of course, the scene was a little simpler, but the actual situation was similar. In a club in Washington, if it is a place where ordinary people and military scientists often meet, we can imagine that we can probably hear such a conversation in the bar: I think we should develop more in the field of lasers! Lao Maozi has always been ahead of us in this regard. They have developed high-energy carbon dioxide lasers, and their army has found funding! This news is not very good. High-energy lasers may be the best weapon in the 1980s. They have an effective range of hundreds of miles and can destroy invading missiles almost effortlessly. We don’t have to fear human aggression! Hello!Wait a minute, I don't think the old man can keep a secret. If he tries the laser on the earth, our artificial satellite can see it! Whoever said that they will try it on the earth, and they will try it in space, no one will know. Just think about it, the old man wants to build a radio astronomical telescope on the moon, which may become a cover for the development of lasers! Sir!I should say I really don't know whose responsibility we national security guys are sitting around all day watching this aggression and not doing anything about it. These conversations, or any conversations like them, would of course not be recorded in the archives, but if they were transmitted in such a way, or so skillfully, that they would at least be dubious at all levels of the military, and thus be easily accessible. Funds to build a large telescope on the moon to counter real or imagined laser aggression. This laser weapon is possible in my opinion, it is cheaper and more reliable than the anti-missile system developed in the past, but even if the Russians did not use large radio telescopes to cover the experiment of this weapon, we should be on the moon ourselves build one.Military generals feel compelled to keep their weapons and equipment up to date.Dr. Strelenchlove has a cartoon that satirizes that the Pentagon and Soviet Russia have been competing over the difference in force.In the 80's it wasn't just the fear and fear caused by high-powered lasers, although most people imagined that.Logically the situation is a continuing competition between air-to-air and air-to-air missiles.In the future, there will indeed be such weapons that use the moon to conduct experiments to cover the eyes of the world.Military technology has never stopped, and every major breakthrough often exceeds our estimates, and I predict that the demand for this technology will eventually fall on astronomers one day.They may also not need military funding to assist them, but they will do so in very different ways, and this will only be done when public opinion prevails. I don't doubt that setbacks will eventually come, let's see in 20 years, people don't have to go to the moon for pure science and military purposes, it's a good idea to use his special environment for commercial and industrial purposes , we only need to look back at any episode of the magazine Vacuum Technology to know that vacuum engineering that failed on Earth has a good chance of being realized on the moon.The vacuum on the earth is limited to a small volume, which is inconvenient and expensive, Neil.Rucci, editor of American Industrial Research, once asked 1,742 members of the American Vacuum Association which devices and materials might be easier and better to make on the moon, and they had every answer Approved percentage of replies: Vacuum alloy casting: 70% Vacuum welding: 56.8% Electron Optics: 24% Certain other optical parts including lenses: 17.5% Pharmaceutical and Biological Products: 13.3% Industrial Chemistry: 6.7% Petrochemical: 4.1% Plastic: 3.3% Someone else: 5.8% Many devices used on Earth, from simple ordinary light bulbs and hot water bottles to complex televisions, rely on vacuum technology.Many industries pay three dollars for a cubic foot of space to manufacture their products.The best efficiency is only about 80%. Vacuum science and technology often report some new expensive instruments in order to detect and maintain a very high vacuum. However, workers rarely think of a complete vacuum from outside the atmosphere. vacuum. People seldom think about what is going on with industry in this situation. Bonding metals, for example, requires complex welding techniques on Earth, but can be done on the Moon at no extra cost.Welding new hard metals on Earth is difficult if not impossible.In the vacuum of the moon, simply put them together for welding.The natural vacuum and low gravity allow the development of many different and strange new technologies and new metallurgy.They can expect: improved lens and optical technology, single alloy and metal products of special strength and weight, complete bearings and spherical products, large volume single crystals, high purity and high crystallization of electronic components, basic materials for advanced semiconductors wait. There will also be amazing progress in biology and medicine. If the product is perfect, at least the efficiency will be higher.Vaccines and antibiotics can be produced in factories in lunar or Earth orbit, and serum and pathogens can be produced weightlessly, making our current immunization technology look very implausible by comparison.The moon will also become the best place for medical care.People with weak hearts could live a little longer in the moon's low gravity field.Nobody burns to death there, no muscular disease, no arthritis, no rheumatism.We can also expect that a large nursing home may be built there for the elderly to live in.A biologist, He Erdan, died of cancer. He wrote a letter to Clark, a science writer; Grace!Here's what he said: I, along with millions of surgical patients, are perfectly suited to the moon's gravity.He stated his opinion in a letter to Clark: I am annoyed when I hear ignorant people ask why the money spent in space is not spent on something useful, such as cancer research. The scarcity of metals is a big problem on Earth.Mining also seriously destroys the beauty of the landscape. In the United States, one trillion tons of non-organic waste is obtained from mining alone each year. In the next 150 years, we may dig out all iron, copper, chromium and Nickel, not to mention the ores of lead, zinc, mercury, bismuth, tin and cobalt.This is not to say that there are no such mines on the earth's crust, but we can't dig any further because the damage to the environment is too great.Of course it is possible to use a nuclear bomb to detonate mining, but whoever comes up with the idea is going to be a public enemy.Mining in the deep sea has the same difficulty.Moreover, deep-sea mining requires a high degree of technology and a strong and pressure-resistant submarine, which is more difficult and expensive than digging in space.And it is unavoidable to throw the waste back into the sea, which reduces the oxygen content of seawater and accelerates the death of sea creatures.No significant mining work has been done on the moon until now.The surface of the moon is as big as the whole of Europe. It will not affect anyone's environment to mine mines, and waste disposal is not a problem, just leave it on the surface of the moon.This plan may be a century away, because no country can afford it now, but they will eventually achieve it.Various factors will destroy the environment and culture of the earth. Indeed, in the coming ages, people will wonder why they only think of the earth as the object for making chain metals, and not think about other places. It is much cheaper to transport things from the moon to the earth than to send them from the earth, and the journey back to the earth uses 97% less energy than the journey back, because the moon's gravity is only one-sixth of the earth's.In addition, because the mass of the moon is only one-eighteenth of that of the earth, any planet and the moon have a so-called gravitational well, which means that if we launch the total payload of the rocket into space from the surface of a planet, the energy and The diameter of a planet is directly proportional to its mass.Simply put, we have to travel seven miles per second to leave the earth, and we only need one per second to leave the moon.Five miles is enough, because the moon's gravity is so weak, it takes us to accelerate to one mile per second.Five miles is also much less energy than on Earth.Now; the speed of departure from the earth is 7 miles per second, which is 4.7 times that of the moon, and the energy from the moon back to the earth is about one-thirtieth of the way back, saving about 97% of the energy , so there is no difficulty in transporting items between the two. Once it reaches the lunar orbit, the spacecraft can land at the predetermined location with only a few minutes of driving the engine. I have heard people say: think about it, it would be so expensive to transport cargo thousands of miles from London to New York by jet, how much would it cost to transport cargo from the earth to the moon and back with a magnification of hundreds of times? ah!Even after the Helios project, there are still people who don’t understand this truth; a spaceship in space can maintain its speed until it reaches its target by turning off the engine. When the jet crosses the Atlantic Ocean, it must resist the air Resistance, once the engine is damaged and stalled, it will soon fall into the Atlantic Ocean.Newton published his first law three centuries ago: under the action of no external force, an object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion moves forward in its original direction at an original uniform speed.This law of the universe is something that even elementary school students understand. When launching payloads from the moon to space, it doesn't have to be a rocket, Clarke suggested that electric orbits could be used, an idea that dates back to the 1950s.This theoretical device we can call a lunar accelerator (specified by NASA), it can be a horizontal or a steady upward orbit, two or three miles long.It can give a spacecraft enough speed to launch, it is not suitable for carrying people because it accelerates too fast (unless its orbit is hundreds of miles long), but rocket fuel and other supplies can extend this orbit Shoot to any specific location; even into space among planetary systems.It can replace the fuel of the flying body in the earth orbit or resupply a flying body very cheaply, as long as it is taken out from the moon warehouse and put on the accelerator to shoot out.A spacecraft can reach the orbit of the moon as long as it reaches 5,000 miles per hour, which is much worse than the 25,000 miles per hour on the earth, and the low gravity of the moon is also very suitable for building spacecraft, so use It would be better for the moon to land on other planets.After the real self-contained rocket is invented, this kind of ship can move between planets without adding any fuel, then it can use the moon to launch and carry out proper detection in space. During the twenty-first century, thousands of permanent or semi-permanent colonies will be established on the Moon; It will be cheaper underground, and deep holes need to be drilled or blasted. A large plastic bubble is placed in the hole, and then the air is pumped in from the outside. This creates a large semicircular hard wall. The last step is to divide this hall into rooms, and they are connected by passages. In fact, underground cities can be built to any size. In 2050 A.D., anyone on the earth can easily see the reflection of the roofs of these colonies with binoculars. The light is like stars, but there should be no stars there; this is the brilliance of human civilization on the second planet , the word civilization is more appropriate here.Feng.Brown believes that at the end of this century, human babies will be born on the moon. According to many space scholars, such children only bear one-sixth of the gravity of the earth, and they will spend their entire lives in light-emitting machines. device, and will not reside on Earth forever.The six times the gravity of the home planet would be overwhelming for them, and there would be a new political and economic system between them, something that might be chaotic and dangerous.We have to put a lot of bacteria in their air and they have to be vaccinated if they are going to come to earth.The Moon will eventually attract many inhabitants, perhaps the entire Moon; this promised land the size of Africa will never be a promised land again.As Clark said: Two hundred years later, a committee will definitely be established, which is a committee to resist and save the land on the moon that has not been destroyed by humans.