Aye, with a rail gun (either solar powered with significant battery reserves or hydrogen powered should we finally get to a source of water on the Moon) to help with the initial acceleration, it does make a Moon base a challenging. 

For the Moon, there is a slight lag effect so for near real-time comms, LEO (or VLEO) is much better, however if one is looking for data centers on the Moon and can build them with dust-resistant solid state parts (astronauts who went to the Moon report the Moon dust getting everywhere) that becomes interesting… and raises fun questions that I have been asking since 2017 with different audiences to gauge their answers: 

* a financial transaction resulting in a net monetary gain happens on a data center on the Moon, who pays - if anyone - any tax applications? 

* using a lunar 3D printer and other fabrication processes, the chassis for a satellite is printed and the satellite ultimately assembled out of multiple parts. The satellite is then launched from the Moon, what is the listed “flag” or country of origin for the launched satellite? 

* if a permanent Moon base is established on the surface of the Moon looking back at Earth, how many countries and/or companies have encrypted their ground-to-orbit satellite communications to prevent them from being received by a Moon base that’s also looking directly at Earth as the Earth revolves and the Moon completes its orbit? 

Moon in the middle (well to be more accurate, Moon overhead) RF attacks anyone? 

David Bray, PhD Principal, LeadDoAdapt Ventures, Inc. 
Chair of the Accelerator & Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center
Senior Fellow, Inst. for Human-Machine Cognition & Expert, MIT Horizon

On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 08:41 Douglas Goncz A.A.S. M.E.T. 1990 via Nnagain <nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
Hello Dr. David.

The gravity at the surface of the Moon is larger than might be expected since the volume to radius ratio is as r squared, so that with a difference of 100 times that is a factor of 100x in gravity at surface we can predict that the rocks they'll be throwing at us we'll be falling up that is thrown out of the gravity wall for 1/10 the trip roughly and falling down that is falling into that gravity well for 9/10 of the trip causing an overall Factor of enormous acceleration. Offhand I would say the process would achieve 80% of escape velocity.

The Australian science agency has a nice chart out for asteroid type objects on their website. It summarizes the relationship between the many many small rocks which are in our system and the very few large rocks which accompany them as they move at various speeds knowing only statistical information about how many rocks of which size and how fast they're moving and what energy the net result is 

They quote figures of atta joules. So once given the upward that is towards the Earth impetus a mere Boulder could do really significant damage assuming that the transit time could be controlled carefully in their was either accurate aiming or some type of midcourse correction to get the target secured.

Trying to find my way back on topic to Net neutrality. Maybe a moon base could be set up with a transmitter powered by a small nuclear reactor receiving signals from Earth and retransmitting them to make the connections for data and voice. Compared to lofting a satellite having the time to construct such an item on the surface of the Moon would be advantageous the way it seems to me. I'm pretty sure that a satellite would have to be put into place in orbit with its power supply and all that and that's what starling does bloody bloody blah.

By the way I'm running for president. 
/ / < GONCZ2028 > /


Cheers
Doug





On Mon, Oct 7, 2024, 10:04 AM David Bray, PhD <david.a.bray@gmail.com>
wrote:

...
>
> Meanwhile China probably will land humans on the moon within the next four
> years of whomever is the next U.S. President. That may happen before the
> U.S. returns to the Moon. Either way, a "base" on the Moon by 2035 (which
> is PRC's goal) even if it's robots - or humans with the risk of loss of
> life) raises some challenges in terms of SIGINT, GEOINT, and the general
> ability to hurl rocks into Earth's gravity well....
>


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