Basic Information
The Moon - also known as Luna - is a large rocky natural satellite (in other words, the moon is a moon) that orbits The Earth. It has roughly 1/4 the diameter of our Earth, making it about as wide as Australia1. It's the largest item you can see from the earth, and second brightest.
Thanks to tidal locking we only ever see one side of the moon from Earth. The far side of the moon is continually hidden from us, and is sometimes called the "dark side" of the moon, though that name is a bit misleading since the darkside actually gets a lot of light. The illumination (and thus visibility) of the rest of the moon from Earth varies, based on the relative angle to the sun as the three bodies circle around one another, varying from complete absence (a dark, or new moon) to full disc (a full moon). There are eight traditional phases in this cycle and these complete in roughly twenty eight days - a period known as a lunar month.
Mankind first started sending objects to the moon in 19592. We first put a man on the moon in 1969. It's pretty expensive to do so, costing around $10,000 USD per pound of material you want to send to the moon[2] (prices as of 2019). That's why we haven't put boots on the moon since 1972, though we do still sometimes send probes up there.
The moon could potentially be mined for significant minerals. Silicon, aluminum, quicklime, iron, magnesium, and titanium are all there in abundance. Given how costly it is to send materials to the moon, it's likely that any lunar colony would do some lunar mining to gather local resources. There is also thought to be significant reserves of helium isotopes - likely to be useful if we can ever get fusion power to do useful work - and limited supplies of water ice which, given the supply costs noted above, would be very useful for any lunar bases.
The moon's gravity is the most important external factor in the tides of earth's oceans.
See Also:
- Bad Moon Rising
- Escape Velocity
- Hollywood Science and Space Does Not Work That Way
- Lagrange Points
- Lunacy
- Lycanthropy
- Movement of the Earth
- News: India Gains on China in Asia's Space Race]
- News: LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water On Moon
- News: Moon Walker Claims Alien Contact Cover Up
- News: Small Asteroid Is Earth's Constant Companion
- News: With All Systems Go Sheboygan Shoots For The Moon With Spaceport
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Any humanocentric science fiction/speculative fiction game set much more than twenty minutes into the future could easily have a canonical moonbase or lunar colony.
- The far side of the moon is a particularly great place to put a radio telescope or supervillain's secret lair.
- It's also a great place to stash a precursor artifact, alien crashed saucer, von neumann probe, chariot of the gods, or other sign from the great beyond that is able to sit unnoticed until mankind advances enough to make our space exploration reach all the most remote craters of the dark side of the moon.
- The phases of the moon are likely to have an impact on a game/setting where lycanthropy or lunacy are active dangers. The effect on the tides could also be an indicator that the moon's cycle has an effect on the laws of magic.