this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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I've legit read articles from people unironically saying we shouldn't ruin the environment of the moon with mining. The moon. The place often compared to bombed cities. They were worried we would look up to the moon and see big dust clouds, which doesn't even work without an atmosphere.
There is no atmosphere on the moon, but the moon is composed of rock which is very responsive to vibrations.
The lunar impactors from the 60s and 70s made detectable vibrations on the other side of the moon when they struck. We know this because one of the Apollo missions left a surface experiment running when they left. That experiment also picked up the vibrations of the descent module as it expanded and contracted due to the sun. Vibrations on the order of millimeters being picked up from a 70s era instrument placed several meters away from the descent stage.
I do wonder if large scale mining on the moon could negatively impact any human settlements, as the vibration from the mining would certainly propagate to them eventually.
That’s so weird! Why doesn’t earth rock do that?
I mean, it does. But it takes a lot more energy.
We have earthquakes all the time, but the earth is very big compared to the moon, and we have a hot liquid mantle and core that probably dampens a lot of those vibrations.
The moon is basically a giant rock, with no other medium to transfer energy into. So when it gets hit by something, that energy just gets transmitted around the surface of the moon until the energy is depleted.
I’m imagining people knocking morris code to communicate from one side of the moon to the other lol