In , researchers went to test out the suitability of using lunar soil to grow terrestrial plants by testing out marigolds. When bacteria were added, the resulting plants were entirely healthy. Inside a series of seeds, eggs, and dormant, single-celled organisms were aboard. During the lunar day, which lasts 14 Earth days, a cotton plant grew from seed: the first time ever that a seed sprouted on the Moon. The successes of these experiments, combined with the known composition, location, and other properties of the Moon, make a strong case for it to be the first world beyond Earth that we attempt to build an extraterrestrial civilization on.
Even though the space age only began in — less than a single human lifetime ago — the largest obstacle to terraforming is the investment of resources. By following these steps, we could create our first long-term home for humanity beyond the confines of planet Earth. As long as we have sufficient battery power to sustain, heat, and possibly illuminate the environment during the long lunar nights, the first human extraterrestrial civilization is well within the realm of reality.
Rather than attempt to terraform an entire planet, going to the Moon would give us the luxury of terraforming only the area of interest, a little bit at a time, while we learn valuable lessons that could potentially be applied worldwide.
Skip to content A hypothetical Moon base could consist of a set of domes, where rather than terraforming the entire world all together, we terraform just a small bit of it at a time, enabling us to build up the infrastructure we need while slowly growing a human colony on another world. Credit: European Space Agency.
Key Takeaways. Ethan Siegel. Copy a link to the article entitled Share Terraforming: why the Moon is a better target than Mars on Facebook. Share Terraforming: why the Moon is a better target than Mars on Twitter. Four theoretical phases of terraforming that would take Mars from the red, desolate planet it is today top left to a world where life sustained and thrived, very similar to Earth lower right.
Although this is an ambitious dream, terraforming the Moon might prove much easier. Lava tubes, found on Earth, the Moon, and Mars, but expected to be on many planets, provide underground shelter from harsh surface conditions. With the appropriate infrastructure, the first Martian settlements might benefit from using such a location instead of surface-dwelling. The Martian atmosphere presents a major obstacle to safely and precisely landing on the surface, and also hinders any attempts to return contents or people back to Earth.
Mars is a very great distance away from Earth; at the speed of light, one-way communications take anywhere from 7 to 22 minutes. Mars is very remote as far as the delivery of resources goes; it can take months to over a year to deliver a payload from Earth to Mars, depending on the configuration of the planets at any particular moment in time. Some still have defined outer rims and clear features within them, while others are much smoother and featureless, almost seeming to run into one another or merge with their surroundings.
NASA created this chart in to illustrate the flight path and key mission events for the then-upcoming Apollo missions to the Moon. Compared to Mars, which has a light-travel time of minutes and requires a journey of many months, a light signal can reach the Moon in 1. Credit : R. This is because running on the water requires less muscle power if you do that in reduced gravity.
Would you move to the Moon to experience all that? Every morning or every night. Before going out. Definitely after the big game. For most people, showering is routine.
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