Experts prepare for lunar 'Doomsday Ark'

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From The Sunday Times
March 9, 2008
Mankind's secrets kept in lunar ark
Maurice Chittenden

IF civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a “Doomsday ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.

Construction of a lunar information bank, discussed at a conference in Strasbourg last month, would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.

A basic version of the ark would contain hard discs holding information such as DNA sequences and instructions for metal smelting or planting crops. It would be buried in a vault just under the lunar surface and transmitters would send the data to heavily protected receivers on earth. If no receivers survived, the ark would continue transmitting the information until new ones could be built.

The vault could later be extended to include natural material including microbes, animal embryos and plant seeds and even cultural relics such as surplus items from museum stores.

As a first step to discovering whether living organisms could survive, European Space Agency scientists are hoping to experiment with growing tulips on the moon within the next decade.

According to Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the agency’s research department, the first flowers - tulips or arabidopsis, a plant widely used in research - could be grown in 2012 or 2015.

“Eventually, it will be necessary to have a kind of Noah’s ark there, a diversity of species from the biosphere,” said Foing.

Tulips are ideal because they can be frozen, transported long distances and grown with little nourishment. Combined with algae, an enclosed artificial atmosphere and chemically enhanced lunar soil, they could form the basis of an ecosystem.

The first experiments would be carried out in transparent biospheres containing a mix of gases to mimic the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide given off by the decomposing plants would be mopped up by the algae, which would generate oxygen through photosynthesis.

The databank would initially be run by robots and linked to earth by radio transmissions. Scientists hope to put a manned station on the moon before the end of the century.

The databank would need to be buried under rock to protect it from the extreme temperatures, radiation and vacuum on the moon. It would be run partly on solar power. The scientists envisage placing the first experimental databank on the moon no later than 2020 and it could have a lifespan of 30 years. The full archive would be launched by 2035.

The information would be held in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish and would be linked by transmitter to 4,000 “Earth repositories” that would provide shelter, food, a water supply for survivors.

Nasa sees light

A Nasa satellite has detected radiation emitted trillionths of a second after the big bang, the closest humans have got to directly observing the explosion that created the universe, writes Jonathan Leake.

The pattern of radiation - at 13.7 billion years, the oldest light detected - shows how the universe expanded. The results give scientists the most detailed timeline on the evolution of the universe.
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It not be really the same, but it sounds like something we could get from a Turn A Gundam stuff...
 
Sounds like a good idea.

But here's a better one: Use the money/resources/research to STOP events like nuclear holocaust from destroying the Earth in the first place.
 
Sasori said:
But here's a better one: Use the money/resources/research to STOP events like nuclear holocaust from destroying the Earth in the first place.
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Yeah, but what are you gonna do if you put most of your efforts into stopping the events, but they happen anyway? Clearly, the people making this Ark are skeptical of humanity's ability to preserve peace.
 
If they fully flesh it out and have a definite plan, it will be the smartest thing anyone has done in the past hundred years.
 
If they do this, it would most definetely intelligent but, why blow all this money on that? Why not say, use it to stop the war in Iraq or maybe use it to up the protection on soldiers in Iraq. And P.S.: What happens if Uchiha Madara decides he want's to test his Permanent Mangekyou Sharingan? (PMS)? :swtf :dupe :sasufire :sasuseal
 
Duality Ninja said:
If they do this, it would most definetely intelligent but, why blow all this money on that? Why not say, use it to stop the war in Iraq or maybe use it to up the protection on soldiers in Iraq.
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Sorry, but even if you could afford to stop the war, the people with money who have been funding the war wouldn't listen to you.

Up the protection? They would've done that already by now if they really wanted to. And it's not going to help by much especially when our enemy has a continuous cycle of recruitment that they're WILLING to sign up for, for Allah, etc...

Don't forget rogue officials from allied countries selling military secrets or people the CIA directly trained, all the information going about on the internet. We've also been there a lot longer than we were supposed to be so they have so much information on how we're operating.
 
I thought they meant we were all escaping to the moon! :laugh
The plan sounds good though. Hope they don't expect "survivors" to know how to build magic receivers though. Or even understand them!
 
How is this Doomsday Ark sustainable? Anyways, there must be some kind of consipiracy or evil plan behind it. Master Chief is gonna blow it into smithereens. :bang
 
wow i'm glad people are at least considering these contingencies seriously, thats good news since the whole nuke war/global warming/bio terrorism stuff really should have a back up just in case
 
Cool article. Once against, science fiction appears to be paving the way for science fact.

Sakuragi said:
I doubt the moon would be spared by an asteroid that devastates the earth..
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Depends on the moon's point in it's orbit around the Earth, relative to what part of the planet it struck. If an asteroid struck the opposite side of the planet from where the moon was orbiting, there should be little physical damage, though the magnitude of the impact might potentially affect both Earth's and the moon's orbits.
 
IF civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a ?Doomsday ark? on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.
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Thank god, people who know of the most noble cause for mankind. Now, if we can only avoid nuclear war until its built...
 
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