CREDIT: BEN BROMLEY, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
In an astro-engineering approach to climate change mitigation, researchers calculate how dust could be fired from the Moon into space to attentuate the Sun’s rays.
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Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000133
Article Title: Dust as a solar shield
Author Countries: USA
Funding: The University of Utah Office of Undergraduate Research provided a stipend to co-author SHK through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (http://our.utah.edu/research-scholarship-opportunities/urop/). The funder(s) had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
JOURNAL
PLOS Climate
DOI
ARTICLE TITLE
Dust as a solar shield
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
8-Feb-2023
COI STATEMENT
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Abstract
We revisit dust placed near the Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point as a possible climate-change mitigation measure. Our calculations include variations in grain properties and orbit solutions with lunar and planetary perturbations. To achieve sunlight attenuation of 1.8%, equivalent to about 6 days per year of an obscured Sun, the mass of dust in the scenarios we consider must exceed 1010 kg. The more promising approaches include using high-porosity, fluffy grains to increase the extinction efficiency per unit mass, and launching this material in directed jets from a platform orbiting at L1. A simpler approach is to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon’s surface on a free trajectory toward L1, providing sun shade for several days or more. Advantages compared to an Earth launch include a ready reservoir of dust on the lunar surface and less kinetic energy required to achieve a sun-shielding orbit.
HT/Frazier
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Help me, when will I wake up from all this madness? I assume they modelled the process…aargh!!They’ll need a pretty big vacuum cleaner if they got it wrong.
A plan to be held in reserve for about a billion years.
Their problem is the market. To get such a story published in the old fashion way they first need to convince a publisher that their story will sell, then it actually has to sell once the book hits the shelves, then maybe they get some money. This way they just have to convince a clueless grant administrator.
A better use of moondust is to bring it down to earth and extract the helium 3. The helium 3 can be used in a special fusion reactor that is safe and efficient. This would provide clean energy for thousands of years.
If even a small percentage of this dust lingers near lunar orbit couldn’t it pose a debris problem for spacecraft traveling at a couple thousand miles per hour?
Reading these objections to putting extra dust anywhere near the Earth, suggests to me that any really ambitious solar power satellite schemes or comparable space colony schemes could also create unacceptable risks to our planet. Think of the effects, if really large satellites might be diverted to burn up in the atmosphere, or if heavily radiation shielded space stations, massing maybe a million tonnes or more per station, could possibly fall on us as well!
If really heavy asteroid material use, say, is to be possible and beneficial, it would maybe help to do such things well away from our planet? The orbital space around planet Venus comes to mind here, as a possible future industrial “ring” of accumulated material. For instance, imagine bringing in chunks of asteroid material, and using Venus’ heavy atmosphere for aerobraking such chunks into a stable orbit. In such a situation, were anyone to deliberately, or inadvertently, divert something heavy our way, at least we’d have a planetary situation far enough away from the Earth to allow a timely response.
Anyway, maybe that’s a somewhat different topic from moon dust ‘sunshades’. I’m just trying here for a ‘mega engineering’ idea that might be worth pursuing at some point (as opposed to the patently silly idea of throwing a bunch of moon dust around).
Why not use nukes to blow up the moon into dust and rubble and be done with it? Make dust, not war!
This is Bond-villian level of crazy…
I clearly recall some dweebs suggesting putting into orbit a giant “sunshade” to reflect solar energy away from the Earth, with no speculation about the possible (extremely likely) negative effects,
This proposal just goes to show how, no matter how bad an idea is, someone can make it worse.
Well…..
hahahahahahahahahaha
stupid people. with power given to them by other stupid people. what could ever go wrong
It is counter-intuitive that those that worship Lucifer, Lord of Light, want to block out the light.
But not if one understands their viewpoint on life.