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Comment by chewbacha | Hacker News Reader

My first reaction to this wondering how long before the face of the moon is deformed to an extent visible from earth. Did anyone else feel that way too?

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As civilization spreads to space, it will be visible.

Let's hope we don't treat the Moon like San Francisco, where you (sometimes) can only construct buildings that don't cast a shadow.

Even with the largest optical telescope being planned, the man made object on the moon would have to be pretty big to see. It would probably have to be a few hundred feet in size.

Probably not for a long time. We can't even see human made structure on the earth from orbit let alone the moon. Except lights at night.

You can't see single buildings from low Earth orbit with the naked eye, but human influence can cover huge areas. There are artficially constructed lakes. For example:

> On completion, the reservoir flooded a total area of 632 km2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Floods,_agric...

Oh yeah that's true. Probably hard to do that on the moon though :)

We totally can. But the moon is a lot further away.

What structures?

https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall....

That's about seeing things in photographs taken from space, not things seen with the naked eye. Like, we've all seen satellite reconnaissance photos, so we know those can see lots of important stuff.

Astronauts can reportedly see highways, airports, dams with a naked eye from orbit.

Do you have a link to those reports? Highways strike me as improbable. Visibility requires thickness in 2 directions, so if they could see highways I'd expect them to see tons of stuff, like wharehouses.

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