Over the Moon

Over the Moon: What if we, over at the mother company Earth, Inc., looked at "assets" in our solar system like a corporation looks at its assets? What if we set our sights on that ne'er-do-well moon? Find out how we could harness the moon's resources to do more of Earth's bidding. Mahahahahawaha.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, whatnot the stuff to Blow your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie, what
is What is your relationship with the moon? Hell about it? Yeah?
Don't you? Well no, maybe I should. Maybe it would

(00:24):
you could do to get in touch with my primal
self when never when you see a full moon, you
just ever scream up at the sky la la la,
and then start howling. No, I guess when I see
the see the full moon, I my hit just runs
with some of those uh you know, logical theories about
the moon making everyone crazier and bringing out the teen wolves.

(00:45):
Well possibly between wolves. Yeah, pregnant ladies going to the
labor teenager is turning into wolves. It's weird. I don't
actually buy into any the supernatural ideas about the influence
of them of the moon over human behavior, but I
still kind of buy into it at an almost subconscious level.
Like I end up, it ends up moving around in

(01:06):
the back of my mind anytime I see a full moon.
I think it's because it's one of those really primal
things where that relationship where you look up and you're like, Wow,
it's just it's, you know, this big luminous light in
the night sky, and you know, our ancestors thought a
lot about it, and we'll talk a little bit more
about that, but um, we're kind of looking at this

(01:26):
topic the moon and thinking of it in terms of
of a corporation. You know, we're we're Earth Ink and
we've got that moon. It's one of our subsidiary. Because
we're jerks like that, right, we think that we are
just the center of everything, and so we're looking at
all of our assets here in the milky Way and saying,

(01:49):
you know, what can we do here to increase our
earthly profits? And of course we set our sights on
that glowing orb in the night sky to say, I
hope you're not thinking of letting the men go, because
it's it's a very important subsidiary. If we're going to
discuss it's it's not just it's we're not we're not
losing money on this investment, the totally delivering. It's more like,

(02:12):
how could we make the moon more productive for us?
And what sort of resources and outputs could we nudge
from it? Right, And when we can talk more about
we can kind of review its resume here in a
minute and kind of see what it's been doing for us,
and then maybe what else it could produce for it.
But let's talk about this idea that the Moon is

(02:33):
really our companion in orbit. Well, first of all, where
the Moon come from? Right, what's the the origin story
on the Moon. Well, the leading origin theory right now
is that a Mars sized body collided with her at
approximately four point five billion years ago, and then the
resulting debris from both the Earth and this uh alien
sphere accumulated all right to form this big molten Moon,

(02:58):
which um over the course of time cools down um
most of the magma ocean crystallizes, with the less dense
rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar crust. Okay,
so essentially like a big glob of the Earth came
off and then combined with other materials out there to
form the Moon. Yeah, and the Earth is unique among

(03:20):
terrestrial planets and having a large satellite. This Moon, which
relative to the Earth, has the largest mass of any
satellite parent system. And this is really important because we'll
talk about this relationship between the Moon and the Earth.
But it has really set us up for success here
on this planet because as a result of its orbiting

(03:42):
around us and it's coming it's materials coming from the Earth. Uh.
The subsequent evolution of the Earth and the emergence and
development of life has been strongly influenced by the presence
of the Moon. But certainly it's not the only moon
in our solar system. Jupiter has a number of moons,
but but none of the Jovian moons, even several of them,
are incredibly fascinating and important to our understan evolving understanding

(04:07):
of of the cosmos. They're not as essential, uh in
their relationship with their host planet. And uh and and
that's really to your point. The remarkable thing about our
moon is that it's a very important subsidiary. It is,
and of course the Sun is as well, but we're
not discussing the Sun today, and the Sun talking about
egos and this corporate structure of the Sun is pretty

(04:27):
big there. Um. But you know, we often overlook the moon.
And let's take out the the resume of the moon,
because there's some really very powerful stuff here. A stabilizing
factor for the axis of rotation of the Earth, basically
ensuring that the difference and heating between the poles of
the Earth and the equator is sufficient to promote healthy

(04:49):
and diverse range of climates without veering off into one
extreme or another. So if you look at Mars, for instance,
and you see that that rotational access has um changed
and spanned from thirteen to forty degrees over the last
tense twenty million years, this causes really unpredictable swings and
fluctuations of climate. And this instability, of course is not

(05:12):
good for life. Right. So the Moon basically brings a
lot of stability. In fact, you could say as a
as a a corporation kind of speak, it brings a
a a culture of stability to the overall Earth environment. Exactly.
It is a stabilizing force and hippie speak, it is
our big satellite of love out there. Now. The other

(05:33):
big area, of course, is it's it's impact on the tides,
and this is something that we've creates tidal patterns that
promotes the the alteration and the migration of organisms from
one environment to the other. It, I mean, just the
remarkable aspect of the tides to both reveal and then
uh and then flood areas, you know, creating these Uh,

(05:53):
these transient areas for life to flourish in. It is
pretty remarkable in and of itself, right, is basically seeding life,
spreading it over the planet. Now, as I look at
the Moon's resume, I see a third point here, a
third bullet point, and it's pretty huge. Um. It says
it helped to establish a twenty eight day period of
observable differences in light emittance, establishing a reliable rhythm for

(06:18):
early humans to create complex systems by which depend the
concept of time too. And it says my existence ability
to reflect the Sun's light in orbit helped to create
conceptual calendar systems, seasons, best agricultural practices, not to mention
greatly influencing navigation explorations, and mythology, including the one about

(06:38):
the Moon being made out of cheese. Yeah, you really
can't overstate the importance of the moon for uh, just
our basic understanding of celestial mechanics of our even earliest
stages of beginning to understand that the cycles in our
immediate universe. I was actually reading a little bit about
eclipses the other week. Espectually, I was interested in uh,

(07:01):
in ancient Indian ideas of eclipse as well as as
ancient Indian astronomy, because you see this, you know this
sort of on one hand, you have religious and and
mythic ideas of what's going on with an eclipse is
perhaps the decapitated head of a fallen ostra trying to
consume the sun and or the moon. Um well, there's

(07:23):
that idea. But then also you had early Indian astronomers
who were really figuring out exactly how eclipse has worked
and uh and and exactly how the Sun and the
moon and the Earth are are are playing with each
other in these in these amazing phenomena. Yeah. So you
have all of these um this mythologies, these narratives that
are just rich tapestries of different cultures. And then you

(07:46):
have something like the Farmer's Almanac, which is at a
very basic level just this this sort of like, hey,
this is how you grow your crops the best way,
but it is absolutely dedicated to the moon, this almanac. Yeah,
because you have all theseferent cycles of the moon and
uh and the not not only I mean you get
into all the weird moons too, because there's there's the

(08:06):
there's the basic full moon and half moon, etcetera. But
then you get into. Yeah, then you get into all
these like strangely colored moons and the different harvest uh,
you know, letting you know it if a sailors should
take warning or not. We just get really rich in
our attempts to just almost psychoanalyze what the moon is
doing and what the Moon is trying to do to

(08:27):
the planet. All we're gonna take quick break and we
get back. We're gonna talk about harnessing the energy of
the Moon, changing some of this duties. All right, we're back.
We are reviewing the Moon. We're reviewing its potential to

(08:48):
the Earth Corporation, all the stuff that it is doing already,
but also the places in its schedule where we could
conceivably insert more duties, more work to make us an
overall stronger company. Yeah. I was just looking at the
review that Earth Inc. Handed down, and it says the
candidate has proven over billions of years to be a
stabilizing influence for the foreseeable future, at least for the

(09:11):
next two billion years. Candidate is expected to continue supporting
efforts to maintain life on Earth in a fairly consistent manner.
As a result, candidate may have extra time and resources
to offer. Yeah, we get into this area of things
that we have done to the moon, things that we
are doing to the moon, and things that we would
like to do to the moon. Uh, to get more
out of it. Now. Of course, we've been through the

(09:33):
phase of lunar exploration where we've send sent machines there,
we've sent men there, we put a flag on it. Yeah,
we uh. At one point with Project A one nineteen, Uh,
this is pretty amazing, we actually considered detonating a nuclear
weapon on the lunar surface in order to see how
the mushroom cloud would expand and contract in a low

(09:53):
gravity setting. And even more interesting, this was a United
States Air Force planned by the way cold war scheme.
Even more interesting, though, a young Carl Sagan was a
part of the project. Uh, the very man who would
go on to champion nuclear disarmament and the dangers of
nuclear winter. And he even tried to use his research
from the project to acquire an academic fellowship, possibly breaching

(10:16):
natural national security in the process. Wow. So you know,
he gotta wonder if he tried to get involved in it.
So he'd be like, hey, guys, this this terrible idea.
I know it shows the sort of pyrotechnics that we can,
you know, put forth towards the Soviet Union and try
to scare him during the Cold War. But really bad,
bad idea, I think. I think that's possible. Also, I

(10:38):
can't help but but but think it might be a
situation where saying his thinking that is a horrible idea.
But if we're gonna do it, it's pretty cool. So
I would like to be a part of it. I mean,
if someone's gonna nuke the moon and it'll then at
least let me get in on the science of it.
Let's at least nuke it, right people. Yeah, And you know,
I can't help but think about him in a turtle
kneck as a young man and m now I'm thinking

(10:59):
about him as a baby, the turtleneck, like he was
born with the turn neck, like a baby saging like
a muppet baby Sagan. Yeah, all right, that is completely irrelevant.
Let's get back to this moon. How do we put
it to work? Well, one of the big areas, of course,
is can we get energy from the moon. That's and
there are a few different answers to that, but one
of the the more readily available ideas here is we

(11:21):
have the Moon up there in orbit, and it's exposed
to a lot of sunlight, so we're just reflecting it. Yeah,
it's not really doing anything. It's just sunlight bouncing off
the Moon. But what if we could harness that energy,
use the Moon to harness sunlight, and then send it
back to Earth. It's brilliant, right because here here on

(11:42):
Earth we're having problems with us, right, like how are
we going to really service our future energy needs? And
we do need to think about this in creative ways.
So someone came up in an extremely creative way to
deal with this, and it's called a solar belt. And
this was or this is a plan as being championed

(12:02):
by the Shimizu Corporation. We're talking about installing on the
surface of the Moon via a massive twelve mile wide,
six hundred mile long lunar ring of solar panels. Yeah,
it's pretty amazing looking. Essentially, you would look up into
the night sky and on a on a good night
when you could really see the Moon, you would look

(12:23):
like it's wearing a crazy disco belt. Because because this,
the strip of solar panels would go all the way around,
uh the equator, and it would and and The idea
here is that you'd have a thirteen thousand tara wats
of continuous energy sent to from the Moon to receiving
stations around the Earth, and then it's distributed to the

(12:45):
power of you know, the power the population to power
all the stuff that we have to charge up. And uh,
they think that we could begin construction on this by
five if we if we really wanted it. Yeah, And
the plan here in addition to this is that um,
the corporation can develop robots that will mind the Moon's
natural resources to produce the concrete and the solar cells

(13:07):
some of the materials that they're going to use there.
So that gets into this whole idea of like, well,
that's right, the Moon does have a couple of resources
to mine, doesn't it. Yeah. The building material thing alone
is interesting because because, as as they point out, water
can be produced by reducing a lunar soil with hydrogen
that is imported from the Earth, and then submitting material

(13:28):
can also be extracted from the lunar sources resources. So
suddenly you have concrete, you have bricks, you have you
can essentially build yourself all the buildings and infrastructure you
need right out of the lunar surface. Right, you don't
have to bring your legos with you. The legos are
there essentially. Yeah, of course you're gonna need machines to
do that, and you're gonna need machines to continue to

(13:48):
care for what you've built, because the Moon is a
pretty harsh and bombarded surface for a reason. So so
if you build a massive disco belt, you're gonna need
not only the robot to build it, throw us to
maintain it and uh and deal with any of the
holes that emerge there over time. Indeed, now, one of
the things that NASA is working on is a little

(14:09):
plan with private corporations because as we know, they have
a mandate not to spend any more money on the Moon, right,
so how are they doing this? Uh, they are working
with Bigelow Aerospace to develop a commercial sector which would
be involved with them, and is especially focused on plans
to build a lunar base and mind the moon for

(14:31):
helium three as well as rare earth metals. Yes, the
helium three, of course is important, not because we need
to fill up a bunch of balloons here on Earth,
but by because mainly because helium through would play a
vital role in nuclear fusion power. Helium three, just to remind,
everybody has two protons but only one neutron, and when
it's heated to really high temperatures and combined with deuterium,

(14:56):
which is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen, the
reaction really just an incredible amount of energy. So just
two point two pounds or one of helium three combined
with one point five pounds or zero point six seven
kilograms of deuterium produces nineteen megawatt years of energy. Roughly
twenty five tons of the stuff could power the United

(15:16):
States for an entire year. That's nuts, right, Yeah. The
other side of that is that the Moon has tons
of it, not so with Earth. Indeed, actually there are
seventeen chemicals in the periodic table that are an increased
demand because they're heavily using everyday electronics. So if you
look at that lunar soil, it is rich in these
coveted rare Earth elements and the moon could provide those.

(15:39):
So again it makes sense to kind of look at
and say, so you're up there, you're stabilizing us, thanks
a lot, but we're not just gonna step on you
and and take a peek at what some of your
soil is composed of. We're actually going to put you
to work here. Yeah. And the really the great thing
about about some of these plans we're discussing here is
that ultimately the goal of NASA and sort of the

(16:01):
goal of humanity's efforts in space, it's to get that
foothold on the Moon, to explore Mars, to get to Mars,
to get more robots and hopefully people on Mars and
then bring them back again. But to do that, you've
got to you've got to build up, and you've got
to build out. And what better way to get boots

(16:22):
on the ground, on our boots on the lunar ground, uh,
than to have there be a profit in the mix
their minerals energy. Yeah. And uh, NASA is not just
looking at the actual Moon itself, but also asteroids. And
we've talked about this before a couple of ideas about
how to ensnare an asteroid one because it could be

(16:42):
a threat, it could be in the orbit orbit and
coming right out of us UM. But in this scenario,
NASA is looking at building a robotic spacecraft to grab
a small asteroid and then place it in a higher
lunar orbit where they can kind of look at it
a little bit more of the asteroid itself and um,
and then kind of dock it over on the Moon

(17:03):
after they put a huge bag around it. I'm not
kidding this. These are the descriptors, like, we're going to
take this giant bag and then bag it and haul
it over to the Moon where they can mind the
asteroids as well. Yeah, it's it's This is a great
idea because in the same way that the the ultimate
goal is to say, explore the cosmos, get to Mars, etcetera,
the larger goal here would be let's develop and perfect

(17:25):
a way to deal with near Earth objects that pose
a risk to our planet. Uh. But in the to
get us there, well, let's harvest the asteroids and and
then in the process we're also studying and we're learning
more about them, we're developing our means to catch them.
And somebody can make a buck or two off of me. Yeah,
and that's always kneel the grass. Tyson's argument for going
to the moon right, like, hey, don't abandon it. This

(17:47):
is a really great set up for us to try
to figure out best practices elsewhere in the universe. And
also to have resources. Yeah, I was really thinking about
our past conversations of Neil yesterday because I heard part
of a Fresh Air interview with him um during a
Pledge drive for NPR yesterday, and I was thinking back
to our conversations with him, And then I thought about

(18:08):
our recent episodes about Future Shock, uh by the book
by Alvin Toffler, which which really of course drives home
the idea that that no technology happens in a vacuum.
When new technology comes around it it changes us. It
changes culture, that changes the way we think about things
and the way we think about ourselves and what and
what we're going after and uh and Tyson seems to

(18:30):
to really push that idea as well, that that it's
not just it's not just about oh, let's develop this rocket.
It's in developing that rocket, other technologies spin off of it.
It changes that the mindset of the people who build it,
the mindset of the culture responsible for exploration and innovation.
Oh gosh, I mean half of home Depot's items wouldn't
exist without NASSA. If you think about the cordless drill,

(18:52):
you know it did not come about because people were like, hey,
it would be great if we had this cordless thing.
It was really trying to figure out pragmatically how to
do things um in space and do them in a
way that made sense. So yeah, I mean there's all
these sort of benefits, these indirect benefits that flow out
that you don't really have a grasp of what those
are going to be until that technology is in place. Yeah,

(19:14):
and with a lot of these efforts, it's it's more
about that. It feels like it's more of a definitely
a dangled carrot as opposed to residual effects. It's instead
of like a bunch of little residual effects saying here's
the big one. Look at all this energy to be gained.
Let's get up there. Yeah, and any sort of moon mining,
asteroid mining, of course you're gonna have to and we
had a whole episode on this, but you're still going

(19:34):
to have to consider space junk and the removal of that.
So in a way, this could be a boon to
those concerns that people have that mining uh the Moon
would just create more and more debris or stripping of
resources as we have seen here on Earth. The actual
pursuit of mining really does necessitate a pretty big degree

(19:57):
of responsibility on our part. You know, as we're reviewing
the moon's performance here, I do have one critique. I
think the moon could dress it up a little bit more.
We do have a dress code here at ear. Think, uh,
could the moon lighten its appearance a bit, make itself
a little more shiny in the night sky and thus

(20:18):
a little more illuminating. You know what's crazy about that
is that when the moon is only it's full brightness,
it appears to our eyes as being like half is bright.
So I don't know, I think the moon, to play
devil's advocate, might turn around to us and say, ah,
but if you guys could just enhance your visual systems,

(20:38):
you could see how hard I am working to be
bright for you. Well, that's all well and good. But
the Fourio Institute they have another idea, of course, and
this is this is why you know, I started looking
at this. I was awfully skeptical, because the idea is,
let's make the moon brighter so that there's more so
that our nights are brighter, that we can cut down
on our energy usage of or street lamps and what

(21:01):
have you. So, I mean, you think about natural sunlight
streaming into your windows, right, and how you don't have
to always put on the lights. Yeah, basically that this
is directly from the four Other Institute's pitch for this.
They say the four Institute has found an extremely smart
and feasible solution that can deliver enormous results to address
the global energy crisis. Nobody has ever considered that a
small transformation of the moon face is possible by increasing

(21:23):
the reflectivity of sunlight, that can bring the equivalent of
four extra nights of having a full moon. Combined with
smart street lighting sensors are used to dim or completely
power off lights when not needed. Uh. This will dramatically
cut the world's energy consumption. And so the ideas you're
using materials already on the moon. You just make um

(21:44):
portions of the moon uh more reflective and overall the
moon becomes brighter. Now that just makes me think that
I have to get a really massive blackout shade, get
like a serious one. Well, because you're thinking about it,
I'm not gonna be able to sleep. It's gonna have
an effect on my health, right. Well, they they thought
of that. They argued that it should not be an

(22:06):
issue because we would have a gradual process here. This
would this brightening of the moon would take place over
thirty years, so you have time to adjust. But they
do admit that additional scientific studies are required. Likewise, Um,
as far as the environment goes, they state, because moonlight
is four hundred thousand times less potent than sunlight, Uh,

(22:26):
there's gonna be a negligible impact on the environment. But
research is on going. I'm shaking my head because I
gotta tell you, on the full moon nights, I mean,
besides the fact that I get, you know, tons of
hair all over my face and grow fangs. Um, I
do seem to wake more often and perceive that light.

(22:47):
And maybe I'm just a really sensitive sleeper, but that
kind of drives me a little bit nuts. I feel
like they need to do a little bit more research that. Yeah.
I mean, well, there is certainly tons of light pollution
issues to wonder about here. You have to wonder about
the effects and all the various animals that depend on
the moonlight for navigation. UM. It is interesting though that
only they state that only point one percent of the

(23:09):
Moon's surface, a chunk about the size of Switzerland, would
need to be transformed to reach of the desired brightening effect. Well,
that is impressive, but again, we're talking about billions of
years of evolution in in animals responding to the environment
that has been you know, fairly constant. Right. Uh so, okay,

(23:32):
well it's it's an it's incredible idea. They also have
an electric toothbrush they're working on. By the way, if
they visited their website, Um so if you're not down
with brightening the moon, then maybe you would like to
try out a fancy silicone electric toothbrush to brighten you're
pearly white. Yeah. I think if they funded both projects,
but the toothbrush I think has a little more potential

(23:52):
to hit the market. Uh here, I feel like the
toothbrush gets a lot of play out there in the
corporate world because I remember that there was when we
were looking at robots and machine um creativity that there
was one program that created something like eight hundred designs
for Oral b H to choose like the best design

(24:13):
for the toothbrush. Really, are they that important? I mean,
you know, they don't change much. I mean you just
brush your teeth. Yeah, And it's not one of those
things where it's like, all right, we've perfected the toothbrush,
and now we go out of business, so you have
to continually buy new toothbrushes or new parts for your toothbrush,
and then replace the electric after a while. But I
don't know that's I guess that's that's one word to

(24:33):
analyze what the four Institute is doing here. You kind
of feel like maybe they said, all right, let's choose
two projects that are gonna get us a lot of
a lot of attention. Uh, let's get get into this
toothbrush business. Designers are going crazy. There's so many designs
out there. If we can actually create a design that
sets ourselves apart for the rest of the of everyone
that we're doing, we've done a great job. And likewise,
let's figure out something kind of crazy that people will

(24:57):
overreact about. Let's talk about doing something to the more. Yeah, okay,
I see that. Let's let's focus on this super industrial
tooth brush complex. Oh and the Moon. Alright, so what's
your final uh corporate analysis here? What what does the
Moon need to do to to fit into the new
corporate environment. I think it needs to think dynamically. I

(25:18):
think that it really needs to show us that um,
even though it doesn't have many resources other than its
own right now, that it can provide to us a
long range plan in which it can really deliver and
impact to the Earth, one that doesn't actually smash into
us and obliterate us, but one that really enhances life

(25:42):
here on Earth in a way that is fiscally responsible
and in a way that I think lifts humanity to
its highest degrees um you know, really just sort of
feeding the better angels among us, better angels of among
us who are trying to gain more band with more
energy and really trying to bring this synergy to focus

(26:08):
in a sort of singular point of light. Alright, So
there you have it. Some some ideas for the moon, uh,
ways that we can we can take more advantage of
its positioning and uh and take advantage of its energy potential.
I do wonder this is a question I'd like to
toss out to our listeners. Imagine a time in the

(26:28):
future decades from now. Does it does it frighten you,
does it terrorize you? Does it just kind of amuse
you or excite you even to to envision yourself looking
up at the night sky and then turn on a
full moon, and then turning to a young child and saying,
I remember when the moon didn't look like that. Believe
it or not, the moon that hasn't always had a

(26:50):
big shiny belt and it always has hasn't always been
that bright in this scenario, is the the older human
being and the young child are the outfitted with up packs? Um? Yes,
that makes it different then? Okay? Alright, so hey, you
want to get in touch with us, you want to
see what we're up to, see what our latest podcast

(27:10):
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(27:32):
You'll find the link there as well. And Julie House
can they get in touch with us? All right, let's
see you guys have some thoughts you want to share
with us about maybe the moon showing up in UH
culture like songs? Right, moon is goodying and looked at
my playlist the other day, and I had like two
hundred songs that contained Moon in the title moon Shadow,
Moon River, Nico cases, Uh, Moon song, I Wish I

(27:56):
was the Moon. Anyway, point is, do you want to
share your favorite move a song with us or your
moon thoughts? You know you want to answer Robert's question
about staring up at the moon forty years from now
and discussing it with young lingk. You can do so
and blow the mind at Discovery dot com for more

(28:18):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
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