China is going to the Moon.

SpaceNews: China interested in lava tubes.

China, and anyone interested in a Moon base, should be interested in lava tubes.  If NASA does wake up, it’s likely to roll over and go back to sleep.  Fortunately, Elon Musk needs a Moon base to get to Mars.

The movie, 2001:  A Space Odyssey, got a lot right.  The surface of the Moon is an obnoxious place to live.  The surface temperature goes from about  -200^o F to 200^o F.   Gamma rays bombard the surface, but cosmic rays are a bigger problem.  Cosmic rays hitting the Earth produce the Northern Lights as their energy dissipates in the atmosphere and are deflected by our magnetic field.  Those subatomic particles moving at nearly the speed of light, are not easily screened

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