Moon-Based Optical Backup of Civilization Critical Data

Civilization has begun, blossomed and fallen many times in human history. It is also likely that many civilizations have fallen with no record, because no one else was around to write it down.

We know little of what happened on Easter island, we just have the remaining Moai, with no idea how they were installed or what they were really for. Speculation is still rife with regard to the building of the pyramids*, and interestingly there's good evidence that they were covered in writing in multiple languages, Rosetta stone-style until the Rashidun Caliphate arrived and barbarically looted all the stone to build Cairo. Anyhow, the pyramids did quite well, but ultimately failed at storing information, what is needed is something somewhat resistant to the lower levels of civilization that like running about with pointy things and destroying stuff.

A good example is something like the Nazca lines. You won't destroy them, because you can't really see them, that is until you get above them in an aircraft. They've lasted a long time and seem fairly destruction-resistant. What they don't do however, is convey much in the way of useful information. What they seem to be is a series of animal doodles, which is actually quite funny. Ultimately they will just erode away, so we need a better system.

So, we need a big surface, well lit & easily visible and an erosion-free environment where people won't just steal parts or do some farming over it. It's the moon. The moon doesn't do much most of the time. I mean, it's lovely, it lights up the sky at night** and it makes the tides go, but it could do more. Perhaps it's best feature is that it's illuminated really quite brightly by the Sun, but the angle means it's set against a black background, it's really just a great billboard. Even a reasonable telescope will get staggering detail of the surface, add in a good camera and you can obtain a HUGE amount of optical information.

Except there isn't any information, just a lot of craters, so let's change that with a fleet of Lunar rovers. The idea would be to encode information at various scales. The first scale, visible with the naked eye, would have some simple info an early civilization might make use of: A diagram of the Solar system, number of days/year & perhaps some basic geometry. Then, a diagram of a telescope.

Once your civilization is building telescopes, they will find the much smaller, detailed information: there's plenty of space for significant mathematics and physics concepts***.

Before you know it, the nascent civilization will be filtering light for IR&UV for additional layers of info, ultimately, there will be an arrow pointing to a buried selection of resources needed for the very pinnacle of civilization, such as instructions on how to make a really nice cup of tea.

*Although, thinking about it... IS there much of a mystery, or do some people really WANT there to be a mystery? "How did ancient people with no iron tools cut and move such massive stone blocks?" "Dunno, but the Greeks did it, the Romans did it, even the Welsh managed at Stonehenge and it was probably raining the whole time. Could it be that people who built absolutely loads of stuff out of stone got good at it? I mean, look at the wood construction & carving in some Renaissance-era Churches, then try and get a quote from your local joiner."

**Sometimes

***Although these formulae are really neat and useful, we also know them to be wrong and incompatible with the observed universe, this is as annoying to us as it is likely to be to you.