Would the Moon be a bad place to live?

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I mean, on the Moon you can't walk outside without a spacesuit on.

It would be a very bad place to live, I suspect during a solar flare you might get a nasty dose of radiation. I am not sure how much of it would be gamma and how much would be charged particles such as protons but I recall that protons have a higher LET than gamma so it will do you more damage joule for joule than the gamma and beta background on earth.

I'd prefer to live somewhere that was terraformed. A place where I can walk outside without needing a spacesuit.

I thought the purpose of space domes was to combat the fact that you'd have to walk with a spacesuit.

It's not necessarily going to be like walking through a park or something like that, but the moon could be a great place to live once the pioneers find out how to take advantage of the environment. As for the radiation risk, we'd have to invent a form of glass that can withstand solar flares so that our eyes won't hurt and our bodies won't burn. But I do think there's a chance the moon could be Terra formed, just that it won't happen soon enough for anyone here to possibly experience it. :p

It gets worse, no natural protection from solar radiation, 180 celcius in direct sunlight and -180 celcius in the shade, and the gravitational force is one sixth of what it is on the earth. Prolonged periods in zero or low gravity has a negative effect on the human skeleton and general health.

The only thing going for it is that its far far closer than Mars.

oh, and this

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 04 Dec 2012, 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Why do you keep asking questions when you already know the answers?

I think living on something with virtually no atmosphere would be very risky. I think the risks could be minimized by living underground... I don't think the moon has any seismic activity does it? And while we are on the subject of the moon, how come it doesn't have a real name? Other moons in our system have names, but the moon's is just "The Moon". Why do we call it that, but we don't call Earth "The Planet"?

theres no getting around the low gravity problem though. I think lunar colonists will have to restrict themselves to 1 year stays, or 2 at the most.

Keep in mind that the moon has no atmosphere to burn up incoming meteors. If a meteor is on a path to strike the moon, then it is going to strike the moon. Any dome or other habitat on the moon would have to be strong enough to survive the strikes without massive failure and easy to repair the cracks and holes.

We do refer to Earth as "The World". The reason why our moon doesn't have a name besides "The Moon" is because it was the first moon that was known by humans, and then we started using "moon" to refer to satellites of other planets as they were discovered.

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 04 Dec 2012, 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't hold your breath for that to happen. We haven't even terraformed our own planet.

ruveyn

Only if they wanted to return to earth normal; gravitation. If a person wanted to spend his life on Luna eventually we may have long term habitations there to accomedate him. A person born on the Moon probably would not do well in Earth normal gravitation and his body would develop differently from those who are earth born.

ruveyn

If a lunar colony was far enough underground, it wouldn't have to worry about radiation. The last seismic event on the moon is believed to have taken place millions of years ago(googled it). Of course making a self sustaining habitat would require us to bring enough water and carbon on site and find a way to extract lunar elements for industrial use with little to no human involvement in the very beginning.

Being confined to a limited indoor environment is a terrible way to live though, I wouldn't live there unless there was a high ratio of free space to inhabitants.