Can high-tech cavemen live on the Moon?

> Moon caves would make good homes for astronauts and should
> therefore be mapped out, a space scientist argues.

Space scientists have been arguing this for years; it's fairly obvious. There has been a fair amount of work done already in searching for potential lava tubes, but it'd be great if LRO can provide better data on them.

The big question is how accessible they're going to be -- a natural opening is most likely going to be a collapsed roof, which would leave a big drop onto a lot of rubble. Better might be to drill an elevator tunnel through an uncollapsed roof, but then you have the complexity and limitations of an elevator.

Ideal would be someplace where a lava tube intersected the surface of a mountain, leaving a fairly level natural opening -- but I don't know whether that's even possible.

Best,
- Joe

P.S. Please don't cross-post to ssi_list and spacesettlers. A lot of us are probably subscribed to both, and don't need duplicate copies. Those who aren't subscribed to both are presumably desiring less traffic, so cross-posting defeats their goal too.

Joe Strout -- joe@...