Empty Cities of the Full Moon Empty Cities of the Full Moon Empty Cities of the Full Moon is a science fiction novel by Howard V. Hendrix first published in 2001. The novel revolves around the near extinction of humanity by an artificial prion originally designed to help the mentally ill but which becomes a shamanistic pandemic of madness, shape-shifting and death. There are 2 plots-lines which each follow the same set of characters before and after this near extinction. The title of the novel comes from both the correlation between the pandemic's symptoms and the full moon, and that the pandemic effectively emptied the cities.
Colonization of the Moon serve as a source of construction materials within cis-lunar space. Rockets launched from the Moon would require less locally produced propellant than rockets launched from Earth. Some proposals include using electric acceleration devices (mass drivers) to propel objects off the Moon without building rockets. Others have proposed momentum exchange tethers (see below). Furthermore, the Moon does have some gravity, which experience to date indicates may be vital for fetal development and long-term human health. Whether the Moon's gravity (roughly one sixth of Earth's) is adequate for this purpose, however, is uncertain. In addition, the Moon is the closest large body