frankthetank wrote:There are ways around solar radiation...
On Jan. 20, 2005, though, there were no humans walking around on the moon. And it's a good thing.
On that day, a giant sunspot named "NOAA 720" exploded. The blast sparked an X-class solar flare, the most powerful kind, and hurled a billion-ton cloud of electrified gas (a coronal mass ejection, or CME) into space. Solar protons accelerated to nearly light speed by the explosion reached the Earth-moon system minutes after the flare; it was the beginning of a days-long "proton storm."
January 2005 was a stormy month in space. With little warning, a giant spot materialized on the sun and started exploding. From Jan. 15 through Jan. 19, sunspot 720 produced four powerful solar flares. When it exploded a fifth time on Jan. 20, onlookers were not surprised.
This January storm came fast and "hard," with proton energies exceeding 100 million electron volts. These are the kind of high-energy particles that can do damage to human cells and tissue.
The Jan. 20 proton storm was by some measures the biggest since 1989. It was particularly rich in high-speed protons packing more than 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) of energy. Such protons can burrow through 11 centimeters of water. A thin-skinned spacesuit would have offered little resistance.
On the moon, Cucinotta estimates, an astronaut protected by no more than a space suit would have absorbed about 50 rem of ionizing radiation. That's enough to cause radiation sickness. "But it would not have been fatal," he adds.
To die, you'd need to suddenly absorb 300 rem or more.
The solar storm of August 1972 is legendary at NASA because it occurred in between two Apollo missions: the crew of Apollo 16 had returned to Earth in April and the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon landing in December.
Cucinotta estimates that a moonwalker caught in the August 1972 storm might have absorbed 400 rem.
KevO wrote:towns perhaps?
JPL wrote:Can I be officially recorded as the first person to invent the word: 'Moonstead; ?
JP
kpeavey wrote:The significance to finding water on the moon is that it offers HOPE. Hope that we as a species can make the leap off our homeworld and into the heavens. Hope that the limits of a single planet does not come crashing down on our civlization. It is a single chance to give it everything we have to start over, this time doing it right.
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mididoctors wrote:I heard they found water on earth as well
TWilliam wrote:Funny thing about this is how it's being touted as some great revelation. I recently found that Carl Sagan's Cosmos series is available for viewing on Hulu, and during the first or second episode (I forget which) there was a comment at one point about the presence of water on the moon. Not a speculation mind you, but stated as an already known fact. This was back in the late 70's. Tho' no details were given, I assume the presence of water was discovered by the Apollo missions...
hillsidedigger wrote:It would be much easier and feasible to terra-form Anactica, the Sahara or the seabed 5 miles down than to try to survive on the Moon or Mars.
Sys1 wrote:we figured out it would be great to sterilize our own planet.
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