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Exploring the "Hidden Valleys" of both Moon and Mars

The popular conception of both The Moon and Mars is of worlds that are nothing more than desolate dusty rubble piles. Yet scientists have known for decades that there must be extensive networks of spacious lava tubes on both worlds. These "Hidden Valleys" offer protection from the cosmic elements such as radiation and thermal extremes, for industrial parks, warehousing, agriculture, and settlements. On the Moon, these features were formed as part of the way great sheets of molten lava spread across many large basins to form the "Seas" or "maria," the familiar dark areas on the Moon's Nearside, with some on the Farside too. On Mars, we will find them in the flanks of the great shield volcanoes such as Olympus Mons and Pavonis Mons.

Surface clues are the many winding valleys, called sinuous rilles, such as Hadley Rille visited by the Apollo 15 mission, that are universally interpreted as collapsed lavatubes. Here and there, we expected to find places where an incoming meteorite of large enough mass, made a direct hit over a tube, and created a skylight pit. But until Japan's Kaguya orbiter mission, we did not have good enough image resolution. Now with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter getting into the act, the confirmed number of skylight pits on the Moon is up to 5, and counting. And on Mars, at least 7 have been found. In an effort to prod NASA to brainstorm a skylight probe mission, The Moon Society and Lunar Reclamation Society are working on an Engineering Concept Demonstration competition aimed at SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) and other student groups to come up with workable designs.

The current commitment of the ISS International Partners is to keep the International Space Station operational to 2020. What then?  Scuttling this $100B investment would be the ultimate in financial insanity.  If the station has been kept up, and routinely refreshed, it would make sense to keep it going. But lets say that by then, there were cheaper alternatives, such as new more spacious and much less expensive inflatable station complexes?

One suggestion a few people have been playing with is to slowly move a decommissioned ISS to a new location: Geosynchronous Orbit, 23,000 miles up? Or perhaps to the Earth-Moon L1 point to serve as a gateway to the Moon? Or should we take it apart and land all the usable modules on the Moon somewhere as a first moonbase? L1 might be the better option considering that these modules were all outfitted for operation in a weightless environment.

A Lunar Greenhouse Prototype

Moon Miners Manifesto India Quarterly: MMM India

http://www.moonsociety.org/chapters/chapter_events.html - Chapter Events