The Astronomy Thread

Aaron said:

Come to think of it, after writing that about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress I read a tweet (that I can't find now) where someone said that the opening up of a "Moon city" is just an way to paper over the militarisation of the Moon by the USA, in that they can then quickly create some sort of a bombardment system on the Moon whereby they can launch large Moon bolders at the Earth to target enemy nations, simar to what the Lunar Rebels did in Heinlein's novel. It's a crazy idea, but at this stage, I wouldn't put it past some people in the Pentagon and other think tanks to think along those lines.

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It wouldn’t be that much of a “super weapon”

1) You’d still have to launch your payload off the moon. Even if gravity is lower, the rocks still have mass. To launch anything of size/mass, you’d basically need a lunar trebuchet, otherwise you’re spending a fuckton on mass drivers or a rocket system that can evenly lift a large boulder

2) You’d need something precise/guided, otherwise you’re just lobbing rocks

3) your rock would still be slow as fuck relatively speaking and since it’s hard to hide and load a moon boulder launcher, it would be pretty easy to figure out when one is coming

4) the rock has to be large enough and dense enough to survive atmospheric reentry without breaking up