Obsessed by the improvements of StarTrek and the fourth millennium, while feeling restricted by the limits of today's technology or that boring second law of thermodynamics? Just let your imagination flow - you needn't be Scotty to beam your thoughts in here!
By Mason Says
#10737
First off: Glad to have found this forum and I hope to return with some regularity(?) Secondly; I'm sure the idea below has been thought of and bounced out many times before, but I still think it needs proliferation no matter who else has cast it out there. Usually people are shocked and denounce it as wild and abhorent as if the surface of the moon was some kind of pastoral scene painted by Vangough. I say bah humbug! Trash the moon because the alternative is to continue poisioning ourselves by trashing ourselves.

~~~~~~~~

It's reasonable to expect that one day we'll be up to our necks in garbage and desperate to put our waste somewhere else. Naturally we’ll want that somewhere to be “not in my backyard,” and that category will one day soon cover the entire planet. We’ll want the somewhere to be where our waste will never harm any living thing, as it has many living things on Earth over these many years of dumping within Earth. We may want to remove the waste we have already dumped and add it to the export. It is inevitable; burying what’s left of our garbage after recycling will no longer be an option sooner than we might think. On average each American [ http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/infor ... waste.html ] uses 4.5 pounds of waste per day. Our nation buries 229 MILLION pounds of garbage per year (each of these rates only increase – where recycling has only slowed the rate, the problem sill grows). This is only the “municipal waste,” a.k.a. the stuff you put in a can at your curbside, which only represents about %20 of the entire flow all waste materials in the U.S. per year. [ http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/1998StateOfNation.htm ] p. 3. Exporting and importing waste has become practically a trading commodity by governors and state waste commissioners. New York toped the list recently with 4.5 million tons shipped out, on trains, and on barges.

The raw human energy and the carbon monoxide smog, and the fossil fuel involved in disposal of all of the waste in our country is immeasurable, but be assured, this would be a huge and troubling number. Another immeasurable consideration is the workers who are faced with the ill health effects of spending forty hours per week breathing in everything from carcinogens released from industrial and household containers, to large amounts of methane, and petrol carbons from the vehicles they work on or near.

What do we humans do? We are literally piling-up our problem with bull-dozers and sweeping them under the carpet of the Earth. Do we all start wearing artificial lungs on our backs? Do we convert our largest landfills into ski slopes, fall-out shelters, hang gliding launches? Sure, in the interim, that’ll be fun. But a long term solution is needed:

There it is above us. The Moon, or “our moon.” Staring us in the face. That gray and lifeless chunk of rock that may have broken off from our planet a billion years ago. Radioactive. Without atmosphere. Too hot in the sun. Way too cold on the dark side. Any dessert landscape on Earth is more attractive to look at , than this moonscape of shades of grayness. If we were one day to establish a moon colony, complete with residential homes (or survival bubbles?), the families residing there would go nuts and kill each other or leave within months, having realized their big mistake. It might be a good place for a giant Death Ray to protect us from Socialists and alien invaders from the planet Mexico (formerly Mars). The point is that the moon is not worth much in a non science fiction context.

Let us send our waste there. All of our waste there. Perhaps we could use the waste up there to form a hydrogen atmosphere, largely of methane, and unbreathable matter, but in the future the possibility exists that this atmosphere could be altered and repaired, and sustain life. The project will initiate scientific advancement which will yield numerous helpful discoveries and technologies. The project will new astronauts all over the world. New jobs by the tens of thousands will be needed.

We would build and design an efficient launch to get our waste into space. Perhaps a tether and elevator system between the ground a large low orbit space station to reach shuttles that would be docked and waiting hook-up to waste containers arriving from the ground. A single burst of fuel can send a shuttle with a train of waste containers on its way to moon orbit within three days. The dumping shuttle would be remote controlled by a waste manager’s station on the surface, for precise dumping at various moon altitudes.

The garbage would be dumped strategically to form an artistic pattern to display back towards Earth. A resident artist will reside at the moon manager’s station to direct the art-work. Several artists will win a chance to reside and to contribute their vision over the course of more than two generations. This artistic creation will have been one of the large selling points to the people of Earth who will have paid for the project in a long funding transitional phase for waste removal services.

The finished canvas of color by design will face the people of Earth for nearly eternity. Perhaps the illustration could depict human history? Perhaps a replica of the surface of Earth from the moon’s perspective, like a huge mirror? Whatever is shaped and illustrated it will be a reminder of this first generation, to thousands of generations to come, of those who first chose to dump their garbage on the moon and recreate its surface into something magnificent, efficient, more healthful for our bodies and our planet, and beautiful to look at.

Interested? Other ideas and opinions at http://masonsays.blogspot.com
By damocci
#11190
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to send waste to the Sun? I mean, considering that in the next 100 or so years we will already be colonizing the moon and possibly Mars, it wouldn't nice to get there and still have to deal with waste.

Space agencies could create HUGE cheap, disposable containers, then using a space craft to somehow catapult these containers toward the sun, without hitting any celestial bodies. The Sun will then act like a nuclear furnace, obliterating the waste.
#14800
Thats the human response, send it to the moon.

There is no more wasteful animal than the human being. That creature wants it all but does not want to do anything to get it.

SO, lets not find a way to take care of the waste, we can just send it to the moon and make a huge dump of it. That will look great looking through a telescope and see used plastic water bottles, plastic bags, old cell phones, crushed cars, heaps of garbage bags, shall I go on?

The creature, man, needs to wake up and start taking care of business in his own back yard and forget about the neighborhood.

Everyone knows how lazy the creature man is, how wasteful and selfish he is. Why do you think there is so much money being wasted to find other habitable planets? Earth is overpopulated to a point that police could never control a rioting mass. You see it all the time. And yet the people ignore that fact and keep overpopulating. Our children or our childrens children will starve when the land can't keep up.

The forests provide our air and yet the creature man is cutting them down to sell the wood, not replenishing what they cut. Now they are finding this is also affecting the worlds climate in a bad way.

The creature man needs to wake up or the next creature to rule the planet will be the cockroach.


JAO
By amorriso
#14829
Do you know how much energy and money it takes to launch something to the moon? It will never be practical to ship our garbage there. There's lots of room to bury it on Earth. :^
By prem82
#15092
this sounds interesting.... what would we do when our future generations are done with the MOON?. We shall go for mars, no no no... lets go to Jupiter thats bigger, can sustain our waste for few more centuries...

before humans, our planet was green for millions of years..... So who is the culprit?.... why dont we attack the root of this burning issue rather than finding alternative temporary solutions?...

we, each of us need to give up few luxury for the benefit of our kids and many future generations to come...
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By mossitekidgage
#15710
damocci wrote:Wouldn't it be more reasonable to send waste to the Sun? I mean, considering that in the next 100 or so years we will already be colonizing the moon and possibly Mars, it wouldn't nice to get there and still have to deal with waste.

Space agencies could create HUGE cheap, disposable containers, then using a space craft to somehow catapult these containers toward the sun, without hitting any celestial bodies. The Sun will then act like a nuclear furnace, obliterating the waste.

If we couldn't go with Apoc's idea (recycling.) I think the next best idea is the sending it to the sun. Wouldn't it just burn up there? Unless that ruins the sun. Which isn't worth it.

But honestly, I think we should all recycle. Ruining the moon because we don't want to take care of our trash is just ignoring our responsibilities. We made the trash, we should clean it up right.

Not offense. Even if you did try to make it an artistic idea.
By tem.ernst
#23788
In 6th grade, I was thinking we should send waste to the sun. :-? Why pollute any other place, was my reasoning. However, if we send stuff to the moon, wouldn't we be changing the weight of the moon? that could affect our tides, which in turn could affect everything else. Of course, if we take anything off the planet anyways, we're changing the weight of the earth, and therefore, what's the difference???

OOOH, someone did say something about the sun. :)

Recycling sounds great, except that it would be cool to build a rocket out of garbage, then send the garbage in the garbage rocket to the sun and watch the garbage melt. lol. :) :b

But... yeah. I love everyone's awesome ideas.
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