What If? the Moon turned habitable in June 2018?

Urabrask Revealed

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Inspired by this thread:

On midnight EDT on the 1th of Juni, the moon turns green and blue, with a stable life- and human-substaining atmosphere around it. The moon itself has one large sea, and is otherwise mostly covered in flora similiar to the densest spots of the Black Forest, Germany. It has been determined that the landing spots of Apollo 11, 15, and 16, as well as Luna 21 and 24 are possible spots for new landings. The gravity of the Moon has increased to being equal of Earth, but with no observable effects on Earth's own gravity. It is unknown how, and the scientistic community has a vested interest in uncovering this mystery.

What would be the consequences of this happening?
 

Free-Stater 101

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Inspired by this thread:

On midnight EDT on the 1th of Juni, the moon turns green and blue, with a stable life- and human-substaining atmosphere around it. The moon itself has one large sea, and is otherwise mostly covered in flora similiar to the densest spots of the Black Forest, Germany. It has been determined that the landing spots of Apollo 11, 15, and 16, as well as Luna 21 and 24 are possible spots for new landings. The gravity of the Moon has increased to being equal of Earth, but with no observable effects on Earth's own gravity. It is unknown how, and the scientistic community has a vested interest in uncovering this mystery.

What would be the consequences of this happening?
Well physicists are going to have their head blow up due to every law of gravity being broken.

In politics their is a multinational scramble for claiming the now valuable moon and we will probably see wars fought at some point over it.
 

lordhen

Well-known member
Well physicists are going to have their head blow up due to every law of gravity being broken.

In politics their is a multinational scramble for claiming the now valuable moon and we will probably see wars fought at some point over it.
And a new group of conspiracy folks will claim that the moon has always been habitual but that we faked the moon landings to show it was not, until now.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
The moon has roughly four times the surface area of the US and now most of it is prime timber/farmland. New colonization era ho. The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space is going to last approx. 0 seconds with something that valuable on the line. I'd expect every nation that can launch to be working towards grabbing them some regolith as fast as possible and a lot of sabotage and maneuvering will ensue. Ultimately China, Russia, the EU, and the US will all put boots on the ground and claim them some land. India may be able to pull it off before all the land is claimed if they're willing to blow a massive chunk of budget on getting their fledgling program into high gear. Iran will claim they're going to launch and build a mockup of their planned lander. Canada has a decent program for people and know-how but doesn't have any actual rockets as they normally piggyback on European and US launches, if they can make a good case they might get Canadian colonists on somebody else's launch but I wouldn't bet on it at this point as the prospect of this much land is going to generate some greed.

Of course how many launches a nation can do is going to matter, a lot for establishing colonies. China looks like it has the most launches but their payloads are small and they're close to the bottom for actual crewed vehicles. That can change as pretty much everybody's going to be building max-crew capable vehicles as fast as possible to get boots on (claiming) the ground.

Apollo 11 and 15 look like the best sites to me, being close enough to readily build ocean ports which are going to be critical for initial food from fishing and easy transport, as well as letting the first colony readily spread out and claim more territory. As sea travel is simply faster and easier than land (and provides a steady supply of food from fishing) the initial colonized area will be the seashores of the main ocean, then colonists heading upriver and claiming land there with the sections in-between and viable only to land vehicles coming in third as forest gets cleared and roads are built.

One odd side effect is the Lunarians may actually develop into a different strain of humanity. Given the extreme expense of launching a person, most countries are going to be sending, well, astronauts, which is to say people who are both physically in the top percentile of health and geniuses as well. With a starting population of humanity's absolute best as the initial breeding pool and a significant time before any others show up, it's not impossible that Luna could wind up creating actual supermen. Of course it's also possible that what we think of as inferior genetics, weaker bodies and such, actually have unforeseen benefits and the lack of weak, stupid people actually hoses the genepool. Either way it would give us some interesting insights into human genetics... and also probably create racism issues that make everything we have now look like a circle singing Kumbaya.
 

aguy1013

Well-known member
Same as the guy above me says except that it will only be china,russia and the usa fighting it since the eu is too focus on there social programs to get anything going for the space race and india is way too far off to do it . Russia and China will Team up since both of them are hated by the USA so two minds will work better then one while the rest of the world will be begging the big 3 for some space
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Surmising that the Moon has atmosphere of the same thickness as Earth but electromagnetic field is much weaker there, so there is more solar radiation, which the colonisation attempts will have to take into account.
Currently we have capabilities to send only double digits of people per year there and that is with maximum effort, we would need a technological advance to make colonisation truly viable. Perhaps skyhook concept would come to fruition?
 

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
The Moon would still have it's month-long day and night cycle, unless it was no longer tidally locked to the Earth. This might be a problem for plant life.
It could be a fascinating problem to solve for both Man and Nature. Perhaps the plants evolve to store as much energy as possible before going into a month long hibernation.
 

aguy1013

Well-known member
If the moon has a 2 week long day and night cycle then the best spot is the middle area where the day meets the night
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Definite arms race to colonize it and try to prevent other people from colonizing it. Several motivations for nations:

  • 1. Resources. With oil reserves on Earth dwindling, and the moon having just turned into an Earth-like planet, there is a good chance that there is a ton of oil just within reach to begin harvesting.
  • 2. Population. If you can colonize the moon, you can grow a huge population and economy that will give you a huge advantage over everyone else. Imagine if America could triple its total population. More manpower to do stuff, more soldiers who can conquer other countries, etc.
However, these are long term motivations. No one would see the fruits of this within their lifetime.

Right now, no country on earth has the capability to get people to the Moon. The tech to build Saturn V rockets was lost decades ago. All of those factories and production facilities and logistical support chains would have to be rebuilt. It'd take at least a decade or two before anyone is going to the Moon again. And during all of this time, everyone will be sabotaging each other along the way, so it might take two decades. There might be satellite defenses in orbit over the Earth that try to shoot down rockets going to the Moon.

Inevitably, a handful of rockets carrying a few colonists will reach the moon. I can't imagine villages starting out with anymore than 50 or 100 people max. If they reproduced like pre-modern period reproduced and had huge families of like 10+ people each, a colony could grow to a few thousand people within a century. Would be in the millions 200 years after first colonization. So after 200-300 years, the Moon would begin to resemble Earth. Who knows what would have happened to the actual Earth by then; it might have bombed itself out of existence or something.

Either way it would give us some interesting insights into human genetics... and also probably create racism issues that make everything we have now look like a circle singing Kumbaya.

Gundam SEED and Gattaca touched on this. Yeah, that's a dystopian nightmare scenario waiting to happen. You have a caste system where people perceive that people with certain genes or genetical engineering are just better than those inferior, natural people. Tension is caused because genetically superior people are preferred for jobs (again, the power of belief trumps all, so even if they're not actually better they still get the job), and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as naturals can't get jobs and wind up being of lower economic class, and aren't allowed opportunities to perform incredible things so they are being squeezed out of the history books as all celebrities and heroes and public figures from then on are genetically engineered.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Imma disagree on twenty years to reach the moon. We went from first ICBM, not even orbit capable (1957) to first humans on the moon (1969) in 12 years. It will not take us as long with our current tech base as it did when NASA scientists were still using slide rules. Twenty years is what we'd need with current funding and efforts, not what would happen with an incredibly valuable and colonizable world up for grabs. I'd give it perhaps four-five, if only because they'll want to go way past carrying four or five people and aim at carrying dozens and that means significantly larger vehicles.
 

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