[Edits added in italic]
BACKGROUND A few thousand years from now the moon has become one of many habitable places in the solar system. Economy, constant growing knowledge and human will made drastic technological progress possible.
Early on people sat up moon bases and mines and flourishing trade quickly drew more and more investors. In some hundret years domes and cities of domes rouse on the moons surface, as resources were extracted from underneath, experiments and modifications were made in a variety of fields, and AI became deeply engaged in the maintainenace of all of this. People made business out of the delivery of resources from and to wherever they were needed in the solar system. During the course of many centuries humanity learned to terraform effectively and domes became temporary startup solutions. Terraforming is not cheap, but the moons location as easy-to-access trading spot in the solar system (earth-to-moon-to-mars / mars-to-moon-to-io / Kuiper belt-to-moon-to-earth etc) made it rich and thriving for progress.
People have for long preserved earth's genetic heritage for multiple reasons and spread it to the other habitable places, in adapted forms. The moon, closest and therefore a perfect second hard drive, becomes over the course of a millenia swamped with flora and fauna. Modification in order to preserve is morally totally fine, but still not completely discovered. People, plants and animals feel fine (enough) to not suffer from living on the moon.
This future moon acquired the following conditions
- Energy is provided by mega structures (have to look into that), as well as provided by nuclear fusion with helium 3 mined on place, but there is a lot of solar energy around, especially from tall towers in more or less permanent sunlight on the poles. Waste-to-energy became also pretty efficient, and there are some neat setups that use waste for other productions, like biochar, and some waste heat is converted into energy as well.
- A thick, breathable atmosphere, rich on water vapour, is kept up with imported resources (AI and complex structures keep it dense, balanced and maintained). It keeps the temperatures in range and protects from space threats.
- An artificial magnetic field (AI is my cheap answer on that, too), to help keeping the atmosphere.
- Enough water to create lakes and seas with a depth of 10 meters, and more brought by daily delivery (just like the 1950s milk man, only a business some million times bigger, travelling from the Kuiper belt to the planets).
- 29 earth-day long days (14,5 days day time, 14,5 days night time, a sunset about 1 day long)
- 13 days per year. The four seasons as we know them are about 3 days long each.
- Temperature differences caused by the long "nights" and "days", ranging from -90 C to +70 C in the most extreme places. These provoke strong winds and thunder storms. The average temperature is +25 C in summer and -20 C in winter.
- Habitable places, close to the poles and further off from the equator, experience -5 C during "summer nights" and up to -50 C during "winter nights", and the days warm up to +45 C during "summer days" and +5 C on "winter days". Just like on earth now, no one lives long without a house of some kind, but you can be outside for a limited amount of time with the right clothing.
- [Comment: deep-freezing is apparently something to avoid, going to look into that]
- There are mainly fast travelling clouds, clearing off in the middle of the day in spring, summer and autumn (after about 8-11 earth-days) when air starts to get heated up by the sun, and clouding in during or after sunset when the temperatures drop again, often resulting in thunder storms. Rain and snow falls mainly during the night.
- Since there is only a 6th of earth gravity rain falls slower and in thicker drops. Hail is a common threat, balls get bigger, but the impact is a 6th softer. It almost always freezes during night.
- Soil is made from 1/8 th compost or manure, 1/8th biochar and 6/8th gravel (trust me, this works on earth, too). Biochar can be produced on place as soon as there is vegetation. Not the entire surface will be soiled (ha!), only about 3-5%, with an average depth of 30 cm (trees get 80cm, but most plants need less). The manure and compost comes mainly from people and livestock on the moon.
- Moon-outdoor-plants are modified to have a 13 times faster cycle: daytime is their "summer", night time is their "winter". And just as on earth there are stronger and milder winters; as long as they withstand the hardest temperatures they survive. = My list of outdoor-plants will mainly be inspired by Scandinavian flora, adapted to survive long and strong summers and winters.
- A lot of annual crops mature within 10-30 days, their seeds are cultivated inside during night and then planted out in sunlight, some might even withstand a few frosty nights (like kale).
- Greenhouses exist, too. [Will look into how these might look like]
- I don't go into depth with the description of fauna on this list because it seems not as relevant, but lets say it exists, it's integrated into the system and of use, but also has and causes problems. Like there are bees but they don't adapt well to short seasons, there are birds but they don't adapt well to the magnetic field, and something rabbit-like populates as freely as on earth.
My question is not if it is humanly possible, we assume there was motivation and money. But I wonder if these parameters are plausible or condradictory in any way? Are there "necessities" or consequences from these conditions that I did not see?
