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May 7, 2016

Life In A Lunar Lava Tube: Nearside Tunnels As Ready-Made Moonbases

Posted by in categories: education, habitats, space

New reports that Russia is considering lava tubes as habitat; here’s one from my lava tube archives…


Nearside of Moon, by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With only a trace of an exosphere, future lunar astronauts working nights outside will likely feel as if they are walking a catwalk through space itself.

But night or day, they will be totally exposed to whatever the cosmos can throw at them; from solar x-flares and coronal mass ejections to galactic cosmic rays. As a result, radiation shelter on the lunar surface will become as paramount as the underside of a school desk in a 1950s-era “duck and cover” civil defense film.

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