The moon has been in the news lately more than it has been since the Apollo 11 moon landing. Why is there a sudden interest in the Lunar surface? Perhaps the moon is seen as a seeding platform for other planets, so mankind can finally stretch out into the stars. Of course building a lunar base would be incredibly difficult, since building materials would be more expensive than gold by the time they reached the surface. A new mysterious tunnel may, however, be the answer we’ve been looking for.
Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency first spotted the hole while studying photographs taken by Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft. The tunnel is suspected to possibly lead to a massive underground tunnel system created by sub-surface geological activity. That’s right, lava. If the moon proves to be a geologically active entity, then it could explain the varicose looking troughs and veins running across its surface in some areas. It could also be just the ticket to begin terra-forming the moon. If the hole leads into a dormant magma pipe, it could possibly lead to a pre-constructed tunnel system that required astronauts to merely place furniture, seal up the walls, and search for a wall outlet for the tv. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be that simple, but a tunnel would be far easier to make livable than the radiation soaked surface complete with its 300 degree difference in temperature between night and day. If the tunnels could be sealed, stress tested, pressurized, and filled with breathable air and water, the once thought impossibly ambitious project could become a reality. The concept of a habitable self sustaining Lunar base was once a joke, to be enacted possibly in a few hundred years when technology granted us far more than we could possibly dream.
Others, however, are not so sure. There’s still a big “if” involved. If the hole doesn’t lead into an interior magma tube that connects to a system of tunnels beneath the Lunar surface, then a huge roadblock will have to be overcome. While it would still be easier to drill into the side wall than it would be to build an entire Lunar dome city, the connection tunnel between the hole in the moon’s surface and a chute leading to a hollowed out antechamber ripe for building will be a core selling point of future expeditions.
Why the sudden interest in moon colonization? And who will get to colonize the surfaces first? It’s curious that this entire project is being largely cooperative at the moment, but will it always be so? As pulp science fiction as it sounds, will there some day be Lunar territory disputes? Of course at this point we’re still all trying to work together to get our foot in the door. Perhaps if we work together long enough to actually plant people permanently on the moon, we’ll be able to hold to that philosophy permanently. What challenges may arise from an extended stay in Luna’s subterranean caverns? What will we find there? It seems every visit we take to the moon these days yields an unusual and surprising discovery. I wonder what lies just beneath the surface.
