Greetings, future
um, moonling?
Yeah, that’s right.
You are among the first generation
of children born on the Moon.
If you were born on the Moon,
you’d begin your life
384,400 km (238,855 mi) away from
where every other human being
has ever been born.
At least, as far as we know.
The surface of your birthplace
would have an extremely thin atmosphere
without liquid water.
The radiation levels could be up to 1,000 times higher
than on Earth’s surface.
And the scorching daytime temperatures at the equator
get as high as 120 °C (250° F)
and as frigid as -130 °C (-202 °F) at night.
Of course, your mother
wouldn’t give birth to you out on the Moon’s surface.
Your life would begin
in a state-of-the-art base
surrounded by a handful of astronauts.
But with six times less gravity than on Earth,
would being born on the Moon be extremely dangerous?
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If you're not using Grammarly, you might as well stay on the Moon.
Right now, a Moon base is only theoretical.
Your first home on the Moon
might be a habitat based on Project Horizon.
It was a concept proposed by the U.S. military in 1959.
Whether the base got built into caves
using pressurized airbags
or a high-tech cylindrical air-lock
dug into the surface,
you’d be born into an incredible self-sustaining habitat.
You'd harvest the oxygen you'd breathe
and the water you'd drink from the Moon's natural environment.
Your birth wouldn’t have been a walk in the park for your parents either.
Since you’d be the first space baby,
there wouldn’t be any research on
the challenges of conceiving a child in space.
But your folks were successful.
And you probably wouldn't want to hear much about that anyway.
The Moon’s lower gravity
would have made your birth
especially challenging.
As a fetus, you’d have developed slower.
So the length of time your pregnant mother carried you
could’ve been longer than on Earth.
Imagine being pregnant in space
for up to one full year.
Your birth would likely have taken longer than back on Earth too.
For every month your mother has spent in space,
she could have lost about 1-2% of her bone density.
That would have made pushing you out
a lot more difficult.
And dangerous.
With the risk that giving birth
could fracture your mother’s pelvic bone,
the doctors in your space habitat
would have brought you into the world
using a C-section operation.
And every baby born on the Moon
after you would likely be born this way too.
This could lead to one of the first
big differences between
Earth and Moon babies.
Our heads evolved to be small enough
to fit through the birth canal.
So with no traditional childbirths on the Moon,
future moonlings
could evolve to have bigger heads
than their Earth counterparts.
Moon-born children could even evolve
to have different skin color than the folks back on Earth.
The melanin in our skin protects us from the Sun's radiation.
And the darker your skin,
the more natural protection you have.
But there’s no atmosphere on the Moon,
so you’d live with significantly less protection from radiation.
So the skin color of future moonlings
could evolve to be extremely dark
to provide the protection they’d need.
But since a lot of your life would be spent
inside a habitat or wearing a spacesuit,
well, the opposite could be true.
Humans on the Moon
could evolve to be
even paler than some people on Earth.
The increased radiation could cause other changes too.
If earthlings and moonlings didn't produce
enough offspring together,
you could even see a new species of humans emerge.
OK, well, that could take a few hundred
or even thousands of generations.
But you’d have been the starting point
in this incredible evolution of humanity.
How much you interact with people from Earth
would be a tricky question for you.
Not enough mingling
and your immune system could weaken.
You could lose your ability to fight off infections
brought to your base by visitors.
To be safe,
you might minimize your contacts
with new astronauts or settlers.
The last thing you’d want is
to start the first pandemic on the Moon.
And if you ever made the trip to Earth,
you’d find it pretty hard to adapt.
First of all, you’d need a week or two just to adjust to the gravity.
And you’d be plagued by light-headedness
each time you stood up
since the reflexes that regulate your blood pressure
would be accustomed to lunar gravity,
not Earth's.
Be careful when jumping into any bodies of water too.
You're from a place
where you have to live inside
and conserve water.
So diving could be hard for you.
You could get disoriented
and accidentally dive deeper
instead of returning to the surface.
Now, you could find that having a good view of the Earth
makes up for the challenges of visiting it.
If you live on the near side of the Moon,
you’d be able to see Earth all the time.
Earth would even cast extra light onto you.
Yeah, the Earth reflects approximately
37% of the sunlight it receives.
So on the Moon,
your view of the planet could be 43 times brighter
than the view
an earthling has looking up at you.
Hopefully you wouldn’t grow up to be
a light sleeper who needs total darkness.
"Are you awake?"
"Yeah."
You'd be constantly bathed in both sunlight and Earthshine.
Well, if that happens,
maybe you could move over to the far side of the Moon
and enjoy its constant darkness.
And with such a thin atmosphere,
you’d see stars
even during the brightest parts of the day.
Being born on the Moon would come with its pluses and minuses.
But would it be even cooler
if you were born somewhere else?
Like on Mars?
Well, that’s a story for another WHAT IF.