Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Bad Moon Rising

Um, OK...
There's one place you may not have thought to store your valuable computer information. Just look up.

Hollow lava tubes on the Moon could be used as a giant digital library. That's one commercial possibility for the Moon put forth in a white paper by a NASA scientist.

In addition to being able to relay information to Earth like geosynchronous satellites, a lunar-based system could also process and store information, says David McKay.

The lunar computers could be buried in lunar soil, put at the bottom of craters or set into lava tubes, which are subsurface caves in which lava used to flow. Previously, scientists have suggested using lava tubes for human habitation.
They've got a point, I certainly never would have thought of using the Moon as a library. I'm guessing they're probably going to have to be extremely lenient when it comes to late fees.

Actually, I would be in favor of converting the entire Solar System into one big library, organized by planet. All the books on romance can be stored on Venus. All the books on warfare can be stored on Mars. All the books about the sea can be stored on Neptune. All the really big books can be stored on Jupiter. Books about being stiffed by the planetary commission can be stored on Pluto. Fast reads can be stored on Mercury. All the Lord of the Rings books can be stored on Saturn. And, of course, all the books that authors simply pulled out of their asses can be stored on Uranus.

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