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[The Architect]

Need I point out that nuclear power is somewhat resource-intensive?

It does require an input of materials, which are outputted as waste. This means that those materials must be imported to the moon. They'll be easier to get rid of, of course, than they are here.

For clarification, just research nuclear power plants. Fuel rods, etc.

[zchris13]

I don't have a large enough lab for that. Or enough scientists.

[x2yzh9]

Unless...

We have nuclear magma plants.

[mainiac]

The night time surface temperature of the moon drops down towards super-conductor levels of coldness and there is no pesky convection heating what with the lack of atmosphere, so I'd bet that it wouldn't be too tricky to design an insulated and reflective system to keep your powerlines cold enough to superconduct.  Manufacturing said superconductors on the moon would be considerably more challenging however.

[qwertyuiopas]

What is the temperature under the surface? If it isn't much warmer that the dark surface, it would be the optimal place, as it would retain it's low temperature better during the lunar day.

[Frelock]

What is the temperature under the surface? If it isn't much warmer that the dark surface, it would be the optimal place, as it would retain it's low temperature better during the lunar day.

I happen to be doing a little bit of research on that very topic.  If you go down something like 1m under the lunar regolith, you'll be immune to nearly all temperature fluctuations on the surface above (heck, 30cm is enough with some basic shielding on your equipment).  You're also decently shielded from cosmic radiation and micrometerorites, though to be completely safe from solar flares you need about 3-5m of simple regolith shielding.  The actual temperature under the surface I'm not entirely sure about, but my guess would be middling between the day and night, leaning more towards the night side.

Lunar lava tubes would probably be the best place to colonize for the simple reason that they're pre-build shelters.

[zchris13]

And lunar regolith is compressed so tightly you don't even know.

▼WHat this man says.

[webkilla]

1) moon colonist jobs would NOT be for the rich only
 - being a moon/space colonist would be a suck job, since if you run out of air/food/power you're screwed. no wealthy person would do that... they'll just buy space turism spots
 - a space colonist would be an engineer, or other person to man the machinery that would be sent to make the colonies first around
 - second wave would be ppl to work the machinery to mine/extract whatever makes the colony profitably (mine helium3 from the moon... that sort)
 - when its profitable lunar hotels might be set up... then rich ppl would come and go "ohhh"

2) look at the european colonization of america
 - space colonization will be similar.
 - when they get around to it, terran nations will probably fight over 'land rights' on other moons/planets in the solar system

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

2) look at the european colonization of america
 

Err, replace the Native Americans with Lunar Rabbits?

[mainiac]

What is the temperature under the surface? If it isn't much warmer that the dark surface, it would be the optimal place, as it would retain it's low temperature better during the lunar day.

The surface of the moon gets way too hot for superconducting if thats what you are asking about.  Superconducting hasn't been observed above 100 Kelvin IIRC and conduction from the moon would quickly raise your superconductor above that temperature.  A suspended line on the other hand would be feasible if reflective.

[Timst]

I read somewhere (Wikipedia probably) that it's about 20°C underground. Yep, that's right, no heating or cooling needed.

Edit : Huh, what the hell. I wrote "20 €".

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Why stick to the moon?
Colonizing Jupiter is much more fun to talk about, mostly because it's even more theoretical.

[Il Palazzo]

I prefer Venus. It's more extreme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_colonization

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Fuck it, let's go for the Sun.

[Il Palazzo]

The Sun as a colonization target is not such a bad idea. For one, it'd be very profitable - the copious amounts of He³ could be harvested literally by the bucket. Or even better, since Sun is one giant fussion plant, we could transfer the cheap energy, by cables, directly to Earth. And let's not forget the crazy efficient solar plants! Of course, one has to remember about all that heat the Sun produces, so as to protect first colonists from suffering sunburns, the colonization effort would have to be focused on work during solar nights. As we all know, the Sun equatorial rotation speed is one revolution/11 terran days. By simple calculation one can find out the lenght of night on the Sun - 11 terran days divided by two gives 5 and a half days, times 24 hours, gives 132 hours of solar night during which work can be done.