[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]
People get paid to write research articles with supposedly climate-friendly ideas, however bizarre they may sound. Here they want, in their own words, to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon.
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Abstract
We revisit dust placed near the Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point as a possible climate-change mitigation measure. Our calculations include variations in grain properties and orbit solutions with lunar and planetary perturbations. To achieve sunlight attenuation of 1.8%, equivalent to about 6 days per year of an obscured Sun, the mass of dust in the scenarios we consider must exceed 1010 kg. The more promising approaches include using high-porosity, fluffy grains to increase the extinction efficiency per unit mass, and launching this material in directed jets from a platform orbiting at L1. A simpler approach is to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon’s surface on a free trajectory toward L1, providing sun shade for several days or more. Advantages compared to an Earth launch include a ready reservoir of dust on the lunar surface and less kinetic energy required to achieve a sun-shielding orbit.
Source: Dust as a solar shield (research article)
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EurekAlert science site calls it astro-engineering
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
February 9, 2023 at 09:32AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 