Moonshard

I've gone on record before to explain how much I detest the Shard - the huge skyscraper currently being built at London Bridge.  It will apparently be Europe's largest, and I still think it ugly, uneecessary and horribly wrong.

However, I read the other week that it will actually be an arcology.  That's right, a huge mega-structure, just like in Oath of Fealty and all those other skiffy novels.  So I had a look to see if it could be so, and eventually I found this on Wikipedia:-

The completed Shard will contain premium office space, a hotel, luxury residences, retail space, restaurants, a 15-storey public viewing gallery, and a spa.^[26] A public viewing gallery will be located at the top of the tower, and is expected to draw over two million visitors a year.

So there you go.  Not an arcology, not even close.  No sense of independence from surrounding urban infrastucture, no self-sufficiency, no sense of heightened population dansity. It would have to be much bigger to qualify.  I'm not sure, but if the Shard was that much bigger I might just prefer it.  At least it would be more interesting.

However, I said I 'eventually' found that Wikipedia quote.  Because when I searched for 'shard' and 'arcology' the first hit I got said:- Arcologies on the Moon.  How could I not spend some time there?

So, this can be found on the relevant pages at forbiddenknowledge.com:-

If an ancient alien civilization built a city on Mars, Hoagland reasoned, why not on the moon and on Earth itself! Looking at photos taken during the lunar missions, including those taken during the Apollo lunar manned landings, he discovered several anomalies. Upon further investigation, he has found that there are immense "crystalline" cities on the moon that are even more advanced than the Cydonia buildings and a small, select group of people within NASA have probably known about them from the beginning of the space program! ...

In September, 1992, a few days after lift-off of Mars Observer, Richard Hoagland acquired a lunar atlas compiled by the Space Science Laboratory of North American Aviation, Inc. At first glance, each photo resembled the next - distance and close-up, craters and maria. Then his eye fell to the south-east corner of page 241, where the crater Triesnecker first appeared in the collection. One xerox enlargement later, and Richard knew he had taken his first step on what was to become the first stage of a new research project bridging the gap between the Earth, Mars and now the Moon...

This extraordinary photo revealed an unmistakable image of an equilateral triangle - the foundation of tetrahedral geometry, the hallmark of hyperdimensional physics & fluid dynamics - immortalized in a crater in the centre of the Moon...

The Ukert crater, with a perfect 16 mile equilateral triangle within it! This crater is located near the centre of the moon as viewed from Earth. At full moon, the triangle can be made out even with a small telescope. Note also the three brighter areas on the rim of the crater. If they are connected together with straight lines, another equilateral triangle is formed, resulting in two perfectly interlocking triangles! ...

Sticking up from an otherwise, flat, rounded, eroded lunar landscape, the "Shard" as it has been named is one and a half miles tall. Note the shadow to the left of the Shard....

To the left of the shard, a faint anomaly was photographed. After printing the negative over and over again at different exposure levels, and analyzing the results with various computer imaging processes, the anomaly was found to be a massive "tower/cube" hanging more than seven miles above the Moon! ...

I'm sorry, I spent a long time reading this stuff.  It gave rise to all sorts of thoughts and poor jokes about making sure castles in the air are built on firm foundations, and so forth.  The part I loved best was not "the foundation of tetrahedral geometry, the hallmark of hyperdimensional physics & fluid dynamics" -good as that was - it was "If an ancient alien civilization built a city on Mars, Hoagland reasoned, why not on the moon and on Earth itself!"

Indeed.