The Lunar Deeps
Inspired by, and also posted to as a comment, johncwright's post at http://johncwright.livejournal.com/281607.html
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While the very first Lunar outposts will be surface huts with some regolith tossed on top for radiation shielding, I think it's almost inevitable that within 100-200 years from now there will be large towns and perhaps even cities on Luna, and these will be able to be architecturally exuberant. For one thing, Luna is likely to have the largest population of any other world for some centuries to come, which means that Lunar architects will pioneer low-gravity construction, developing techniques which will be copied on other low-gravity worlds such as Mars, Ceres and Callisto.
Plasma torches would be used to shape and expand natural caverns, while fusion or antimatter charges could hollow out very large underground spaces. With appropriate planning (mostly in the placement of charges and the positioning of support members), it might prove practical for the Lunarians of the 22nd century and beyond to create miles-wide Deeps, which could be provided with artificial "suns" (we are already close to being able to duplicate natural solar lighting), pressurized, and turned into miniature paradise (in the old Persian sense of "garden") cities.
Miles-high structures would climb the walls on all sides. Forests and parklands could break up the artificiality, and semi-tame animals of all sorts, bred or conditioned to be safe around humans, be allowed to roam freely. In a full atmosphere at Lunar gravity, humans could fly with strap-on wings or by means of ultralight man-powered vehicles, allowing appreciation of the beauties from all angles.
Some Deeps would be vast centers of commerce. Still others could be made environmental preserves, made to duplicate any Earthly biomes that are now or ever were, in all respects save extent and gravity. The Earth of the Early Holocene, which is what we think of as "unspoiled nature," or of the Pleistocene, which is what we evolved to fit, would be available to vacationing Lunarians. Even long-gone ecosystems, such as the sweltering jungles of the Eocene or the dinosaur-filled worlds of the Mesozoic, could be re-created and used for both scientific and recreational purposes.
Other Deeps would of course be devoted to industrial purposes. Because each Deep could be airlocked from the others and from the inter-Deep system of cargo and passenger tubes (which would probably be kept at vacuum to eliminate air resistance), the most polluting processes could be safely managed by robots, while residential, commercial and environmental Deeps enjoyed the utmost in pure air, water and soil. Luna would undoubtedly become one of the industrial giants of the Inner System, the natural port for interplanetary ships to offload their cargoes in the Terrestrial System, while shorter-ranged Earth-Moon shuttles would bring them to Earth.
When you get beyond the limitations of the near future, the prospects for not only a useful and profitable, but also a humanly and artistically magnificent, colonization of Earth's Moon are bright ones.
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While the very first Lunar outposts will be surface huts with some regolith tossed on top for radiation shielding, I think it's almost inevitable that within 100-200 years from now there will be large towns and perhaps even cities on Luna, and these will be able to be architecturally exuberant. For one thing, Luna is likely to have the largest population of any other world for some centuries to come, which means that Lunar architects will pioneer low-gravity construction, developing techniques which will be copied on other low-gravity worlds such as Mars, Ceres and Callisto.
Plasma torches would be used to shape and expand natural caverns, while fusion or antimatter charges could hollow out very large underground spaces. With appropriate planning (mostly in the placement of charges and the positioning of support members), it might prove practical for the Lunarians of the 22nd century and beyond to create miles-wide Deeps, which could be provided with artificial "suns" (we are already close to being able to duplicate natural solar lighting), pressurized, and turned into miniature paradise (in the old Persian sense of "garden") cities.
Miles-high structures would climb the walls on all sides. Forests and parklands could break up the artificiality, and semi-tame animals of all sorts, bred or conditioned to be safe around humans, be allowed to roam freely. In a full atmosphere at Lunar gravity, humans could fly with strap-on wings or by means of ultralight man-powered vehicles, allowing appreciation of the beauties from all angles.
Some Deeps would be vast centers of commerce. Still others could be made environmental preserves, made to duplicate any Earthly biomes that are now or ever were, in all respects save extent and gravity. The Earth of the Early Holocene, which is what we think of as "unspoiled nature," or of the Pleistocene, which is what we evolved to fit, would be available to vacationing Lunarians. Even long-gone ecosystems, such as the sweltering jungles of the Eocene or the dinosaur-filled worlds of the Mesozoic, could be re-created and used for both scientific and recreational purposes.
Other Deeps would of course be devoted to industrial purposes. Because each Deep could be airlocked from the others and from the inter-Deep system of cargo and passenger tubes (which would probably be kept at vacuum to eliminate air resistance), the most polluting processes could be safely managed by robots, while residential, commercial and environmental Deeps enjoyed the utmost in pure air, water and soil. Luna would undoubtedly become one of the industrial giants of the Inner System, the natural port for interplanetary ships to offload their cargoes in the Terrestrial System, while shorter-ranged Earth-Moon shuttles would bring them to Earth.
When you get beyond the limitations of the near future, the prospects for not only a useful and profitable, but also a humanly and artistically magnificent, colonization of Earth's Moon are bright ones.