Talk:Colonization of the Moon

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False statement
The article states: "The lack of a substantial atmosphere for insulation results in temperature extremes and makes the Moon's surface conditions somewhat like a deep space vacuum." This is obviously wrong in attributing the function of insulation to atmosphere in this respect. What the moon lacks is a source of atmosphere for convective heat transfer, which in turn results in extreme temperature differences between light and shadow. While this is obvious to anyone with a little engineering education, obvious facts are not always admissible in an article based on common knowledge of the contributors familiar with the topic. Having a reference for a particular statement is best. I will tag the false statement as citation needed, and remove it by and by. - Fartherred (talk) 01:59, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Source [10] leads to an error page.
--Turkeybutt (talk) 00:33, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061209110937/http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov:80/results/ice/eureka.htm to http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/results/ice/eureka.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061209110937/http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov:80/results/ice/eureka.htm to http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/results/ice/eureka.htm
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10 TIMES WHAT??
In the future 3He may have a role as a fuel in thermonuclear fusion reactors.[106] If the technology for converting helium-3 to energy is developed, there is the potential that it would produce 10 times <<< WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? 10 TIMES WHAT?? >>> more electricity than fossil fuels. It should require about 100 tonnes of helium-3 to produce the electricity that Earth uses in a year and there should be enough on the moon to provide that much for 10,000 years.[107] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.22.175.37 (talk) 18:24, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I clarified it. Gap9551 (talk) 22:19, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

In the future 3He may have a role as a fuel in thermonuclear fusion reactors. If the technology for converting helium-3 to energy is developed, there is the potential that it would produce 10 times more <<< MORE LIKE 10,000,000  >>>  electricity per unit mass than fossil fuels. It should require about 100 tonnes of helium-3 to produce the electricity that Earth uses in a year and there should be enough on the moon to provide that much for 10,000 years.

READ THIS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

But if you have a PhD is Astrophysics you already know this. So are you saying a NET of only 10 times more assuming there are huge efficiency losses in the fusion reactor? I look at it as a Star or Thermonuclear bomb vs a can of gasoline kind of comparison. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.22.175.37 (talk) 22:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, the ratio is about 10^7. Thanks for finding and fixing this error, I had missed it yesterday. The exponent must have dropped off in the source and someone copied the error here. I only reverted your last edit today because comments should be made here, not in the article, and I was checking the exact number. 10^7 is close enough. Gap9551 (talk) 23:01, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I put my comment in the article. I should have used the talk section instead. I have only made several edits to Wikipedia in my life. I am thankful for the dedicated people like yourself that make it the great resource for humanity that it is.

For a brief moment I was worried the laws of physics had changed while I wasn't looking and my car's gas tank was suddenly at risk of leveling the entire city. LOL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.22.175.37 (talk) 23:18, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Haha. No problem, feel free to make edits more often, or create an account. ;) Gap9551 (talk) 00:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Please don't do your own math. Please use numbers (and their meaning) from sources cited. I would also advised to avoid popscience numbers from popscience sources (such as helium-3 has 10 times more energy as fossil fuels in the cited source. Obviously it is an estimate. It is unsourced in the ref and we don't know what exactly, by whom and how was estimated.) Staszek Lem (talk) 00:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

To Staszek: I did not see if Gap9551 is a man or a woman in the profile so please forgive me if I wrongly assume male. Gap9551 has a PhD in Astrophysics! We can certainly trust him to "do his own math" We should be thankful someone of his science caliber donates his time to Wikipedia. As far as sources, I would trust Gap9551 himself to be a credible source on this topic. I found this article to be excellent and I am very glad it exists for the public as an education resource. The issue at hand was just a typo. Anyone could easily miss it.

The enormous energy density of fusion reactions is widely known. Indeed this is the central point of why helium-3 mining on the moon would be an absolute game changer for space colonization if two things happen: 1) Fusion reactors become practical. 2) Fusion reactors for any application work significantly better with Helium-3 than with Tritium. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.22.175.37 (talk) 02:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Staszek Lem is right though. We can do routine calculations ourselves per WP:CALC but this goes further. If we could have shown the source made a typo using a simple calculation, maybe that would have been acceptable. But reading the source again, the critical sentence The energy stored in helium-3 is 10times the amount of energy found in fossil fuels. may actually mean that the total amount of He-3 on the Moon's surface stores 10 times the amount of energy as all fossil fuel reserves on Earth, so the whole interpretation about the dropped exponent is probably wrong. And the source is not of the highest standards either, as Staszek Lem pointed out. It's just written by someone. It may be an expert on the matter, or it may not, hard to tell. On Wikipedia we need reliable secondary sources and can not simply go by the word of an editor, nor by whatever unverified qualifications they claim in user profiles. That would become a mess quickly because no added content could be verified. What we can do now in the article here is find a reliable source that makes a statement about the ~10^7 number regarding He-3 fusion and fossil fuels, or some similar interesting comparison, and use that. Feel free to look for one. I agree it is widely known, and that should mean that such sources exist. :) Gap9551 (talk) 03:25, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
 * ~10^7 number per se is irrelevant to the subject. If anyone findss a ref to this number, then it must be added into the He-3 fusion article, not here. On the other hand, the total amount of available energy from any source found on the Moon would be relevant.

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"insufficiently protected structures"
"Even small pebbles and dust (micrometeoroids) have the potential to damage or destroy insufficiently protected structures." This seems to me to be a tautology. This would be relevant if it read something like "even small pebbles and dust have the potential to damage structures without massive protection" or whatever the facts are.--2607:FEA8:D5E0:A24:711F:924:B15F:7115 (talk) 01:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

"importing volatiles from this region (asteroid belt) via the Interplanetary Transport Network may be practical in the not-so-distant future" The article on the ITN says trips between Earth and Mars would "likely take thousands of years".--2607:FEA8:D5E0:A24:711F:924:B15F:7115 (talk) 01:14, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

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Strange request
Dear fellow Wikipedians

Would it be possible to include this brief article in this topic?

Colonization of the moon SSERVI Professor Darby Dyar (Astronomy and Geology) from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts (USA) and chair of Astronomy is part of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) which used to be the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunar Science Institute. https://sservi.nasa.gov/ SSERVI stands for a partnership between science, technology and space exploration which was formed to facilitate a greater understanding about the Moon and airless bodies. https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/tag/airless-bodies/ The NASA Science Mission Directorate and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate support SSERVI. The institute presently concentrates on scientific aspects of exploration relevant to the Moon, Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and the moons of Mars. However, SSERVI’s objectives can multiply depending on requirements of NASA. The institute’s research consists of multiple properties of the surface, interior, outermost region, near-space environments, and dynamics of said bodies. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015DPS....4721601P https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/colonizing-the-moon/ Dyar has written over 200 papers published in scientific journals. The NASA and NSF International, a product testing, inspection, and certification entity in Ann Arbor (Michigan State) have awarded Dyar around $4.1 million in different grants. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/people/m-darby-dyar

Thank you! LOBOSKYJOJO (talk) 03:48, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think so? JustinTime55 (talk) 21:14, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Why not, but would that not fit better in Lunar outpost (NASA) --Kharon (talk) 03:36, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

"Inflatable module" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Inflatable module. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 05:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Right title for all forms of permanent human activity?
Hi there the article deals with human settlement as well as simple human missions to the Moon.

I though would argue that "colonization" is a very particular type of human presence, with a lot of historic baggage.

Since Mars for example has an own article about human mission to Mars, I would argue that the issue needs differentiation in a similar kind with different articles for different issues like "Moon based activity", "Lunar settling" and "Lunar mining". Or the article should be called something more general, like "human presence on the Moon" or/and "Moon based activity" (the former including remains from missions, and the latter handling the activity of human installations like e.g. possible observatories or refueling stations.

What do you think? Nsae Comp (talk) 13:30, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Thinking more about it "Mission...", "Access..." or "Accession of/to the Moon" would be an alternative, but is rather a particular chapter, like "Sattlement" (instead of "Colonization") of the article "Human presence on the Moon" (the latter being my preference for the article). Nsae Comp (talk) 05:48, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Well since there was already an article "Moonbase" redirected here, I took the state and seriously planned examples out from here and move them there, so now there is one more real and less hypothetical article similiar to "Human mission to Mars" and one that treats the very particular agenda of colonization. Last but not least because it is wrong to call any station (like on Earth) a colony. No one for example would consider Antarctica as colonized even though it has national claims and bases. Nsae Comp (talk) 14:23, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

While the term might not be a proper fit given Earth-bound definitions, the terminology of "moon colony" is the predominant one in both the scientific and speculative literature. A person looking for the topic of "people living on the moon" are likely to look up "moon colony" or "colonization of the moon" rather than whatever "better" term we could come up with. The job of the dictionary is not to judge but to reflect, for better or worse. - Keith D. Tyler &para; 17:44, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Moon settlement as problematic
The intro section includes this bit:


 * Beside its technological and financial challenges, colonization and particularly exploitation, like its realizations on Earth, has contemporarily been reflected on and criticized as inherently problematic colonialism

I marked this as dubious. Even if I'm charitable to the cited source and its relevance to the article, the source doesn't really say that moon settlement is problematic, but rather, the language of discussions of moon settlement (specifically the use of the term "colonize"). (The title of the article even explicitly says "the language of space exploration." It also later talks about how this language may impact power and superiority relationships between colonists and their mother countries or even Earth dwellers as a whole.) That opinion about the terminology of the topic may be valid and maybe even encyclopedic, but it's not a reflection of the topic itself, just the terms used regarding it. - Keith D. Tyler &para; 18:04, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree. The term colonialism is associated with the forcible exploitation of native peoples by external nations wherein the external party institutes a social and economic hegemony over the native residents of the area in question. The moon, having no native people, cannot be said to be a subject of colonialism, even if colonies are developed on it. 73.222.226.146 (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that this should be removed. Generally speaking, the "some people think that..." argument has few places on Wikipedia, especially at the top of the page as it is here. It's an interesting thought experiment & no more, perhaps better suited for Quora or Reddit. Dlobr (talk) 02:16, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Everything but the moon
The criticism section never actually addresses lunar colonization. 2600:8801:710E:7E00:F99A:7C45:C42E:10E8 (talk) 07:05, 27 September 2022 (UTC)