{"id":180,"date":"2019-10-18T14:12:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T14:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/?page_id=180"},"modified":"2020-01-29T17:31:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T17:31:13","slug":"moon-town","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/moon-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon Town"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Developing high technology's very own town<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The moon\u2019s treasure is in its qualities, not its materials. It’s a small, airless, lifeless world turning ever so slowly just 3 days from Earth. Once we had the machines and knew how to make use of that, it was golden.\u00a0<\/p>

To engineer in Moon Town, here is everything you need to know.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Space Transport: Heavy traffic<\/div>
No business in space made sense before two things: cheap bulk transport and extremely capable robots. Both things evolved rapidly after 2010. By the era of Moon Town, things had gone much further. Major transport modes include:

\n\n■   Nuclear rockets for people, delicate cargo, or speedy arrival
\n■   Mass drivers for frequent launch of bulk cargo from the lunar surface
\n■   Skyhooks for a broad mix of transport needs<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Robotics: remotely commanded smart muscle<\/div>
Working with a space suit on is like working in a giant mitten. Robots with the agility, programming, and hardiness to be operated remotely to do any work a human can arrived in the 2020s. Since they can\u2019t die, don\u2019t breathe, and don\u2019t eat, making them cheaper than a person was pretty easy. Soon they were cheap enough to send lots to mess around until we figured out how to make useful things. They took over the vast majority of work in space and ushered in heavy industry. \n<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Industry: fruits of the moon<\/div>
Here is the list of resources there were to make money with: vacuum, sunlight, low gravity, cold, and location. Basic processes work differently on the moon. Digging, heating, cutting, mixing, burning - it's all different, almost every industrial process had to be redesigned. Once they were, they could do things impossible on Earth - and with no concern for the environment or worker safety.<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Space Solar Power<\/div>
Strong sun is everywhere always above the Earth. Arrays of solar cells started catching that energy and beaming it around as microwaves even before the moon got into the business. Then the moon set up automated robotic factories, manufacturing all the components for such arrays. They launched packages of them on a daily basis. In a few years those arrays were producing more power than the Earth does. Then they kept going. <\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Asteroid Mining<\/div>
Missions to asteroids rich in carbon and water-bearing minerals flourished once the moon was able to support them. Asteroid mining had developed separately at first, pursuing its own course to sourcing rocket fuel from water in space. Then the moon provided the market for the carbon found in the same asteroids. As lunar manufacturing developed, the probes headed to asteroids started launching mostly from there. Eventually, most processing of asteroid material was centered in the moon\u2019s great orbital shipyard.<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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The orbital shipyard<\/div>
A rotating skyhook orbiting the moon\u2019s equator grew an O\u2019Neill space station and busy shipyard. It became Albatross shipyard. Chunks of asteroid were berthed at factories processing them into goods. Cargo from the lunar surface and Earth arrived daily. Robots crawled over everything. Engineers, technicians, and artisans supervised from the station nestled inside a crust of slag, enjoying a full Earth gravity.
\nAlbatross makes craft, stations, satellites, and probes of all kinds - from vast solar sailing ships to gigantic spooled skyhooks sent off to bridge the heavens to the ground of another world.<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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AI: Home of the robot mind<\/div>
From the beginning Moon Town was home to the most advanced collection of robots anywhere. Unlike on Earth, those robots had more autonomy all the time even after some started passing initial Turing tests. Moon Town's impressive robotics community decided being on the moon made that safe. \n\nMeanwhile at the south pole, advanced quantum computers and super-cooled mainframes ran massive simulations sheltered in the deep freeze of Shackleton Crater. One quantum \/ mainframe pair became an ongoing project in consciousness.<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Sundry Feats<\/div>
There are few endeavors on the moon that don't involve new technology and engineering feats. Some that don't fit in previous categories: ecosystems and farming, medicine, ground vehicles and personal transport, research in fields such as cosmology, particle physics, and astrobiology. \n<\/div>Show me<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Map of Moon Town<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n \n \n 1<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 2<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 3<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 4<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 5<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 6<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 7<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 8<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 9<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 10<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 11<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 12<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 13<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 14<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 15<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 16<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 17<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 18<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 19<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 20<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 21<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \n 22<\/span><\/span> <\/span>\n <\/span>\n \n \"\" <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Developing high technology’s very own town The moon\u2019s treasure is in its qualities, not its materials. It’s a small, airless, lifeless world turning ever so slowly just 3 days from Earth. Once we had the machines and knew how to make use of that, it was golden.\u00a0 To engineer in Moon Town, here is everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1228,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonwards.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}