Carve a backup of human knowledge into the Moon: a “moon-cyclopedia,” if you will.

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Background:

From the perspective of a person on the Earth’s surface, the Moon is a more-or-less featureless white circle in the sky. Even with a telescope, what information can a layman glean? Perhaps “here are some craters, and some gray splotches, I guess?”

The Issue:

The Moon (Fig. 1) might as well be a blank piece of paper. Zero educational value!

Fig. 1: This moon has a bunch of splotches on it that have no particular significance. “Maybe it kind of looks like a rabbit, from a certain perspective?” is not useful information.

Proposal:

In order to both guard against future post-apocalyptic knowledge loss and to “democratize knowledge” by essentially providing a free encyclopedia to everyone who can build a telescope, let’s carve the entirety of human knowledge into the moon, with miles-long letters carved into deep trenches in the lunar soil (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: An example of what the “Encyclopedia Moon” might look like.

Benefits of this project:

  • Provides employment for astronauts, so they don’t turn to a life of petty crime.
  • May serve as a “backup” of human knowledge in case of a post-apocalyptic event.
  • Even if humans do go extinct, future alien races might find this moon writing and think that we were pretty cool.

Ethically Questionable Supplement:

Because it’s possible that this moon-cyclopedia would outlast the human race, we should consider the possibility of dramatically sanitizing any history we put in it, so that future robots / aliens will have a better impression of our (at that point, long-extinct) species.

For example, the entry for “applications of atomic theory” could either read: “1) We figured out that we could totally obliterate a TON of other dudes with this superweapon!” or “2) Thanks to atomic power, we were able to stop burning trees for warmth, and were able to live in harmony with all of the forest creatures.”

PROS: Provides knowledge to anyone with a telescope and (somehow) no cell phone!

CONS: Would most likely be quite expensive. Arguments over which languages would be used in the moon-writing might cause the apocalyptic event that the moon-cyclopedia was supposed to help with.