It’s like something straight out of a pulp novelist’s wildest dreams. Colonies on the moon, roofed over by nacre. But it’s got a slim possiblity of becoming a reality, if you read this paper on the generation of mother-of-pearl by bacteria.
I have to shake my head a little over the concept of a spacesuited human with a vial of bacteria generating such a thing. However, with enough nutrients, water, and most important, time, it’s a thing to dream of. But you’d need to start small and scale up. Process is rarely a pretty thing. Those pulp cities of wondrous imagination were built on foundations of bleached bones of slave labor – because slavery, unlike the current narrative pushes, has been present in almost every cultural nascence throughout history. Science gives us the ability to cut those bloody bonds, though, and to build the soaring spires of opalescent beauty on little more than automation and harnessing the spheres of nature too small for the human eye to envision.
Blowing bubbles in space, what a marvelous and frivolous concept. The environment is suited to it, though, with lessened pressures of atmosphere and gravity to hold the architecture back. What could we construct high overhead, with the right materials? It’s worth dreaming about, and writing about to nurture the dreams of others. Like the grain of sand irritating the tender oyster, until he spins the pearl around it to encase it, and births beauty from his pain.
Comments
3 responses to “The Pearly Cities of Luna”
Some intriguing ideas there! If, for example, they were constructing a moon base, would sections of buildings be constructed in orbit somewhere, or would they be synthesized on the moon itself? Here’s another thought: If we somehow locate a habitable planet and decide to colonize it, how do we control the environmental impact of introducing earth bacteria to another world? Or do we somehow try to find an analogous native bacteria that would accomplish the same thing?
c4c
A seductively beautiful idea! What, I can have science fiction and mother-of-pearl both? Thanks for finding this pearl of information!