Do We Really Need the Moon? Page #5

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There are some microbes with a very unusual genetic structure

which can live in deep-sea vents and geysers

at temperatures over 100 degrees.

But they can't cope anywhere cooler.

And that's the problem.

If the Earth tips over,

the seasonal shifts will be too fast and too extreme

for evolution to keep pace.

Even though there are a few organisms that can adapt to living in

excruciatingly hot temperatures,

and there are plenty of organisms that can live in very cold temperatures,

much colder than your freezer at home,

to have the same organism being able to shift between these extremes

during the course of a single year is nearly impossible.

And I suspect we're never going to evolve one that could do that.

Let us be clear,

we are in no immediate danger.

It will take at least a billion years

for the Moon to drift far enough away for the Earth to tip over.

So we have a little time to prepare.

But all this speculation makes me realise how lucky we are

the Moon is where it is right now.

A tiny shift and life on Earth could be so different.

And what about life beyond Earth?

Are we alone?

Or are there other planets with lifeforms similar to ours?

These radio telescopes are scanning the heavens, looking for any clues.

But where do we look?

Even our own galaxy has 100 billion stars

and each one of those stars has who knows how many planets in orbit.

I reckon, given what we now know about the Moon,

how it's influenced life here on Earth,

we should focus any future searches on planets with moons like ours.

There are many moons in the solar system

but they're not like ours.

The moons of Jupiter are too small and far away

to influence their planet.

The same is true for the moons of Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.

Only our moon is big enough and close enough to affect us,

but not so big to make life here unbearable.

It's not too big and it's not too small.

Like Goldilocks and the porridge, it's just right.

One day, I'm confident we'll find other planets with moons like ours.

But will we ever visit them?

Will we ever boldly go out into space?

If so, then the Moon has a big role to play.

So far, only 12 people have ever been there.

And they brought back a very precious cargo.

'That's 20 pounds of rock!'

'Oh, Tony, it's got some beautiful crystals in it!

'Good show.'

When geologists analysed these rocks, they learnt a great deal

about the composition of the Moon,

and the history of the solar system.

But they didn't find what they were looking for -

any sign of water.

The Moon, they declared, was bone dry.

But now, they're changing their minds.

The Moon rocks are stored in a clean room

at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

Dr Gary Lofgren has the job of keeping them pristine,

as if they were still on the lunar surface.

So this is it, this is a piece of Moon rock?

Yes, this is a piece of lava from Apollo 17.

For me, this is a fantastic moment because I've always dreamed of

going to the Moon, and so to be this close to a piece of Moon rock,

this is brilliant.

This is spectacular. If you look, you can see all the shiny crystals reflecting back at you.

They're all very fresh. That's one of the unique things about Moon rocks.

I was expecting it to be quite dull, but it looks so shiny.

Yeah, shiny it is, it's because there's no water there to alter and weather the minerals.

- So no reactions?

- There's no reactions going on, that's right.

So that gave us the idea the Moon was very dry, very inert.

And we thought that for 40 years, but within the last few years,

we discovered that there is a lot of water on the Moon, in fact.

- It's water that's trapped. Because it's cold, it's frozen as ice.

- Yes.

Recently,

probes have analysed some of the darkest craters on the Moon,

at the lunar poles,

and have found that they're packed with ice -

frozen water that has come from comets crashing into the Moon over time.

It now seems there's at least 400 billion litres of water

in these craters.

Having water on the moon opens up a whole area of possibilities.

Oh, yes, it allows humans to survive.

We need water to drink and water to survive up there.

But just as importantly we can use that water

to make rocket fuel, because rocket fuel is gaseous hydrogen and oxygen,

and we can make that on the Moon.

The Saturn V rockets

used by Apollo

burnt 2,500 tonnes of rocket fuel to escape Earth's gravity

and get into space.

But if we could produce fuel from lunar water,

that would make all the difference.

It would be far more efficient to travel into deep space

by launching rockets from the Moon, not the Earth.

Perhaps, one day,

the Moon will become a springboard for exploring the solar system.

Spaceships will make the short hop from Earth and then re-fuel here

before setting off on the long journey ahead.

But if this seems a bit too futuristic,

then one man has more immediate plans for the Moon.

For 30 years, space scientist Dr David Criswell has had a dream -

to put thousands of solar panels on the Moon

and harness the energy of the Sun.

We can have solar panels on Earth, why take them to the Moon?

You want to take them to the Moon

because the sunlight on the Moon is absolutely predictable.

There's no air, there's no water, there's no mechanical vibrations,

so you don't have to build massive facilities like this.

On the Moon, you could replace these with solar arrays that are the thickness of tissue paper.

The plan is to build thin solar panels along the rim of the Moon

so they get almost constant sunlight.

The electricity would then be transmitted back to Earth using microwaves.

He believes he can produce enough energy to meet global demand.

The Moon receives 13,000 terawatts of power,

solar power that's going to waste.

By going to the Moon, we can collect that power at the cheapest cost

and send it back here to Earth.

He's hoping to create an unlimited supply of energy

with the least environmental impact.

You see, the plan is to make everything on the Moon itself

from what's already there on the lunar surface.

When you look at the Moon, basically what you see is dust.

It's very, very finely ground-up rock and glass. You can make it into fibreglass,

you can make into containers, you can make into rods and tubes and all of that sort of stuff.

You make it sound so straightforward, so why aren't we doing it?

Well, you've got to be on the Moon, we've got to go back to the Moon.

Somehow we've lost the will to do this commitment,

going back to the Moon and making it a permanent stay, rather than just a short visit.

Now, this grand scheme would cost at least half a trillion dollars.

But that's less than oil companies spend every two years

getting oil and gas out of the ground.

There's nothing to stop us building solar-powered bases

on the Moon right now.

And I, for one, can't wait for the day.

For a few years during the age of Apollo,

we were all mad about the Moon.

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