Re: starship-design: Ice Impact Terraforming

["bugzapper" <bugzappr@bellsouth.net>]

> > The moon, for example, would only hold air pressure for 4000 years; so?
> > Refreshing the pressure with another ice ball, every millenium or so, we
> > could live with.

>From Chris Walker:
> I'm not entirely convinced that the people living on the moon, developed
and
> colonised as it might be over a period of 1000 years, would "live with"
the
> impact of a great big ball of ice on their wee world. How did that Dave
> Barry quote go?
>
> "What happens if a big asteroid hits the Earth?  Judging from realistic
> simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can
> assume it will be pretty bad."
>
> ;)
>
> Perhaps best keep this technique for terraforming large bodies that are
> going to hold their atmosphere. Alternatively, once you've pummelled the
> moon the first time, then use a gentler technique (insert speculative
Sci-Fi
> method here) to maintain the atmosphere...
>
> Chris
------------
Yeah, I kind of figured that. If someone can move big ices in, they can be
parked in orbit and sliced into smaller pieces. Small and slow enough, and
ice cubes could be dribbled in without touching the surface, for they would
vaporize in Lunar air. Grinding them up seriously, might make for pretty
rings, when we determine the correct feed rate to compensate oxygen escape.
Gently decaying orbits in these rings would snow imperceptibly into the
upper reaches of the Lunar atmosphere. We might be able to calculate it so
fine, that it would regulate the air and water for as many millenia as it
matters. It's possible as far as I know, that a highly complex dynamic
solution could be found, that would let the Moon's ice rings cast the
periodic shadows needed for higher plants to thrive.

See, you can't trick me into saying what I didn't want to mention, about
what I might have in mind for the Moon!

Johnny Thunderbird