It’s never been a question in my mind that the world in Total Recall will eventually be a reality. I don’t mean the weird memory implant service. Perhaps not even the psychic conjoined twin thing. I see us living on different planets, before we eventually lasso an asteroid and hop aboard, drill in and live inside an asteroid, constantly looking for another planet to call home. I can’t pretend to have come up with that on my own. The more eagle eyed of you will recognize that as Isaac Asimov’s prediction for the post-Earth human race.
The type of Martian settlement seen in the Arnie version of Total Recall (let’s pretend the other one doesn’t exist) is likely a good few decades away, at the very least. However, new proposals by scientists at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia may move this forward a little, as they have put forward two different ways to produce electricity on the moon.
Primarily to compensate for the 14 day long lunar “nights” during which massive batteries or nuclear power needs to be used to keep lunar rovers operational, the proposals to produce electricity on the moon are pretty damn exciting. Both proposals incorporate using aluminium in the lunar soil and pointing a series of mirrors in order to create a thermal mass. The proposals differ in complex ways that I’m not able to understand well enough to recall to you without quoting verbatim. In light of this, I’d suggest you have a look at the press release.
