Why preserve the current landscape of the moon? It harbors no life, and its surface is scarred by billions years of space collisions.
Why preserve the current landscape of the moon? It harbors no life, and its surface is scarred by billions years of space collisions.
IMO we've ruined the sky already. We can't see all the stars we used to, and new ones (starlink) are visible to the unaided eye. Changing the face of the moon such that it, too, is no longer the same symbol every human has ever seen, feels like a monumental step we maybe shouldn't take. I don't want to see the twinkle of a refinery, any more than I'd want to see a giant McDonald's logo carved into it.
Because it is a historical record that we are able to read better and better and I think that the moon's usefulness as a historical record is unique and as a resource for basic building materials it is far less so.
With this framing, is there ever a situation in which it would be okay to utilize the moon's material? It's not like the moon has feelings, and exploiting a bunch of lifeless rock seems better than doing it on Earth, no?