This image of "moon tourists [discovering] the pleasures of this Moon beach," is from the 1988 book The Earth's Moon (Isaac Asimov's Library of the Universe).
Imagine seas on a terraformed Moon! By creating an atmosphere on the Moon, we could capture sunlight and turn the Moon into a celestial tourist trap. This would be fun, but many scientists feel it is more important to keep the Moon pretty much as it is. Then we could use it to help us better understand Earth and the cosmos.
See also:
Vacations of the Future (1981)
Welcome to Moonbase (1987)
New World's to Radically Alter (1981)
5 comments:
Why do you need an atmosphere to "capture sunlight"? What, in fact, does it mean to "capture sunlight"? Do they mean warm the planetoid?
Nice blog, full of good infos, keep the good work going.
Doubtless human beings will have an impact on the environment wherever/whenever/if ever they go. Terraforming is the extreme pole (hard to imagine how we'd keep the air around with only one-sixth gravity); somewhat more moderate is Robert A. Heinlein's 1950s story, "The Menace from Earth," which imagines an enclosed soaring facility in a vast lunar cavern.
Actually, the moon HAS an atmosphere already, a very thin one though, mass is expressed in tons rather than megatons, pressure varies between 0.001nanotorr and 0.5nanotorr. This bit of gas was easily polluted by the multiple rocketlaunches that took place in the late 60's and early 70's by the Apollo-missions' lunar modules. For more and better founded information on pollution of the moon's atmosphere and vacuum, check http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/moonair.html
btw, it is to hope that none of those glideers get tangled in that springboard-tower! Even when falling with 1/6 of earth gravity, you can make quite a drop. Also, why isn't that springboard equipped with an elevator? I am sure you are bound to make a BIG splash, though, if you land on your belly from that height in extra-light water....
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