Mining on the Moon

No one worries to much about a big rock pile in space. It already looks like a gravel pit.

It is a concern though. Not from a ecological or asthetic perspective (I think it will be quite cool to see twinkling lights from human activity on the moon), but from a pollution one. Once humans and their robotic minions start grubbing around on the lunar surface, will we kick up a haze of dust and even rocks that will fly around and become a hazard? Also it would be rather uncool for that dust to start trailing behind the moon like smog if Earth's gravity can start pulling it away...

Yeah I never thought too much about the potential pollution issues.

It's an interesting point. I was in the Sahara once, and some bits of that looked like a gravel-pit, or maybe like a big, big gravel-strewn carpark. Even those bits were still awesome though, because of their sheer size and barrenness, and had a weird sort of beauty. I suppose the same would be true of the Moon.

But presumably we could mess some bits of it up with mining, colonies etc and still keep most of it as a 'lunar park' if we wanted to? Or does this suggestions show that I have no soul?

Its kind of like freshly fallen snow. Just walking into it ruins it. Its the fact that the regolith has lain there for billions of years undisturbed. And then those pesky humans are going to show up and trample all over it taking pictures of their footprints.