If you start from the premise of domed cities, then the expansion pattern pretty obviously says glassing in the entire moon is the natural end result of that. The lower-gravity drastically reduces your requirements, and the regolith can be fused into glass and moved a 100m up to form the roof.
It also reduces your energy requirements long term because you can use mirrors at the roof-level to reflect sunlight around the entire surface to avoid a 2-week night-time cycle, and adding an atmosphere means you "naturally" can keep it warm.
Since the pressure would be exerted outwards, the entire structure would be mostly self-supporting - requirements would lean towards figuring out how to repair it in the event of meteorite impacts, but self-sealing plastic layers could be developed.
Well, impacts. I suppose that a vertical hit at interplanetary speeds (or earth-orbit speeds, that high up) will leave a nicely clean hole, but think of the enormous cut made by something coming in on a trajectory that would slingshot close to the moon surface if the bubble wasn't there.
Sure, with technology indistinguishable from magic you could still do it, but i don't known if there would still be much incentive for building the bubble left in that case.
If you start from the premise of domed cities, then the expansion pattern pretty obviously says glassing in the entire moon is the natural end result of that. The lower-gravity drastically reduces your requirements, and the regolith can be fused into glass and moved a 100m up to form the roof.
It also reduces your energy requirements long term because you can use mirrors at the roof-level to reflect sunlight around the entire surface to avoid a 2-week night-time cycle, and adding an atmosphere means you "naturally" can keep it warm.
Since the pressure would be exerted outwards, the entire structure would be mostly self-supporting - requirements would lean towards figuring out how to repair it in the event of meteorite impacts, but self-sealing plastic layers could be developed.