Machines
516 January/February 2022
ILLUSTRATION BY ALYSE MARKELcan directly capture energy from a nearby star
(see sideba r).
STEP 4: Build the collider and the infrastruc-
ture to “work from home” on the moon. Most people
who study the Large Hadron Collider aren’t on site,
because they receive huge quantities of data that
they can study from anywhere. Beacham believes
that the moon collider would be no different. But
we do need to figure out the best way to beam large
amounts of data from the moon to Earth. More
importantly, besides a skeleton crew for main-
tenance, people on Earth will need to be able to
operate the collider. That means something like
your remote virtual desktop for your job, except
your job is on the moon.
Naturally, there are plenty of roadblocks that
could crop up while planning a mega infrastruc-
ture project so far into the future. But for now,
Beacham is pleased that the collider could at least
bring together some of the greatest minds in sci-
ence. “Let’s harness the power of these people who
are really set on going back to the moon, let’s get
them to [focus on lunar collider] projects that are
for the good of humanity,” he says. “Everybody
could win with such a project.”not there are enough naturally occurring materi-
als on the moon to make the higher-temperature
magnets. If there are, that could save a lot on trans-
portation costs and infrastructure, because cooling
to near 0°Kelvin requires so much energy.
Transporting tools and building materials
through space is also incredibly expensive. Tunnel-
boring machines, alone, can weigh over 1,200 tons
(about 240,000 pounds), and NASA estimates
that each pound of payload costs $700 to send into
Earth’s orbit, let alone the moon’s orbit. For con-
text, the Apollo program cost an inf lation-adjusted
$280 billion.
STEP 2: Consider how the collider will wrap
around the moon. You can take the circumference
of a spheroid at any point or location, so the collider
doesn’t have to wrap around the widest part of the
moon. Scientists say there are great circle routes
around the moon that avoid changing elevation,
for example.
STEP 3: Set up manufacturing infrastructure.
Initially, mining for materials will be the highest
priority. “The best option for a moon-based col-
lider would be to use iron-based, high-temperature
superconductors, because it looks like the moon is
full of accessible iron,” Beacham says.
STEP 4: Bore out tunnels for the collider. Bea-
cham says the moon’s surface temperature
variations are an immediate problem. An array of
superconducting magnets will partly power the
particle collider, so the entire structure must be
temperature-controlled. “The day-night temp varia-
tions on the moon are so large that at least for half of
the time, it would be too hot for the magnets to even
operate,” Beacham says. Beacham notes the best
bet is to bury the tunnel at least 100 meters under-
ground, where it will still require some cooling, but
not nearly as much. At that depth, the collider is also
exempt from the moon’s day-night cycle; that helps
to maintain its temperature equilibrium.
STEP 5: Determine a power source. The collider
will require so much energy that even all of the
existing nuclear fission power on Earth—which
supplies about 10 percent of our total energy pro-
duction—wouldn’t suffice. It’s estimated that the
moon collider will use tens of terawatts of energ y,
which is closer to what all of humanity uses each
day (that number is about 15 terawatts). Here, the
scientists suggest using a solar-powered Dyson
Sphere, an imagined space “superstructure” that
WHAT IS A
DYSON SPHERE?
Freeman Dyson, a
prolific British-
American physicist,
first introduced his
eponymous Dyson
Sphere concept in a
landmark 1960 paper.
In it, he describes the
futuristic energy-
capturing structure
as a “hollow ball built around the sun.” The theoretical device, covered in
solar panels and mirrors, could wrap around a solar system’s largest star
to harvest its energy. But because the contraption would cover the sun, it
could have dramatic consequences for Earth’s ecosystem. A better alter-
native, then, is a Dyson Swarm—a take on the Dyson Sphere that features a
collection of smaller, individual harvesters that orbit the sun like satellites,
wirelessly transferring solar energy to the moon.—Courtney Linder