If you think your commute is bad now…

  • Darkard@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The secret Nazi moon base will be getting Nuclear Communist neighbours

  • Moghul@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Which part of this is not-the-onion-y? Building stuff on the moon might give us a good jumping off point for solar system exploration, and having a power source there would help construction. Is it that it’s Russia and China doing it?

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Is it that it’s Russia and China doing it?

      I mean…

      If I were writing a fictional story about world domination by ruthless politicking, overthrowing foreign governments, and assassinating key opposition figures around the globe without an effective concern for local populations, it would be about the US.

      But if I were writing one where the first step to world domination was an advanced moon base… pretty much gonna be Russia or China.

      • MrBusiness@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        So we either go capitalist cyberpunk or 40k grimdark? How do we unlock the star trek option?

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          FWIW the first one is pretty much actual US Imperialism.

          Unfortunately for Star Trek we need to go through the Bell Riots first.

          The Bell Riots were of such significance that their absence from Earth’s history led to an alternate timeline, in which the United Federation of Planets was never created.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Here’s my assumption:

      • people think nuclear is bad
      • it goes without saying (because to that crowd, saying things breaks their worldview)
      • duh, nuclear bad, duh
      • on the moon
      • oniony because it’s a bad idea, and they’re doing it

      They’re reading it something like:

      Microsoft plans to cool data center using cow urine

      You gotta be in a certain worldview, but from that worldview nuclear plants in space sounds crazy.

    • resetbypeer@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Because Russia has still a pretty good way of sending rockets to space. The bigger question would be, why you want to do this? And 2nd how would you cool this with no water on the moon

    • Hubi@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      Uranium and materials probably. The only rockets that Russia can build are the ones that blow up.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      As I see it, three possibilities rise above the others:

      • Russia is dusting off and refining plans that the Soviet Union made decades ago, and will claim it as a “huge innovation” or something like that, despite being a concept from the 70s or 80s that just never got off the ground for one reason or another. This could conceivably be done well under the right circumstances, but based on the incredible amount of manufacturing and production issues Russia is having as a direct result of Ukraine War sanctions, it might be that they can’t actually do anything without China’s help, because the highly specialized western equipment they’d normally use is no longer being sold to them, so they need a replacement supplier.
      • Russia’s last moon mission went tits up fairly publicly, so Roscosmos is probably thinking they can avoid getting egg on their face if they can persuade China to unify their lunar base ambitions with their own. Note that this ignores the fact that China almost certainly wants to build a moon base entirely on their own, both as a matter of national pride, as well as the fact that they want to fully own any knowledge and expertise gained from such a mission.
      • Putin is trying to entice CCP leadership to more closely align themselves with Russia in a geopolitical sense, as a more unified adversary to the west, which these days they both see as an implacable foe that they want to defeat. To me, this is the angle that would make the most sense in terms of convincing CCP leadership… but at the same time, remember that China is absolutely measuring Putin’s back for a knife at this point, because Russia’s got a shitload of natural resources up in Siberia that the Chinese would LOVE to exploit.
    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      The lunar night is 14 days long. During this time you don’t get any sunlight for generating solar power. If you want a permanent base in the moon you need a continuous power source. Oh and also to power that mass driver they’re going to use to threaten the entire world with destruction.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          A lot of people believe we can, yes. However there are a few technologies that still need to be developed, such as a reliable power source that can work during a long lunar night

          • solar won’t work, because night is too long
          • RTGs can’t scale up enough to power a base
          • Fission reactors as we have them so far generally rely on a liquid coolant and a lot of maintenance attention
          • Even assuming we’ll be able to mine ice, it’s not something we can rely on to power a base, and we haven’t yet figured out how

          So, if we can develop a small fission reactor that never needs any attention, can work in lower gravity, no atmosphere, huge range of temperatures , and doesn’t have anything that can leak, boil, or freeze, that would be perfect

          • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            My personal favourite is orbital solar. With no atmosphere, it should be doable. But of course it’s just as hypothetical as all the other options at this point.

              • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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                9 months ago

                You beam down the energy using microwaves. On earth that’s difficult because of the atmosphere. On the moon that doesn’t apply, obviously.

          • lowleveldata@programming.dev
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            9 months ago

            How do we get all the materials and tools for the constructions up there to begin with? And how do we supply the base with Oxygen, food, water, etc?

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Sure, there’s lots of questions needed to be answered

              • transportation is in progress. Everyone must have heard about Artemis andStarShip: one or both are planned to get you there, plus I believe SpaceX has a contract for a lander
              • maybe you heard the excitement over discovering ice. With sufficient power, the hope is they can make their own water, oxygen, rocket fuel
              • there have been quite a few experiments in ISS with growing plants. Hopefully they can grow at least some of their own
        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Yeah we just haven’t done it yet. Just like you and I are capable of writing books, we just haven’t yet.

          I can’t think of any tech we’re lacking to build massive space infrastructure honestly.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    This is really bad. We can’t afford for these countries to be the model of interplanetary civilization.