NASA, as it prepares to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years, is thinking about building a place for them to live. The Apollo astronauts only needed the lunar module to rest between moon walks. The Artemis astronauts, who will eventually stay on the moon for months at a time, will need more roomy facilities.
NASA has just signed a contract with a company called ICON, based in Austin, to develop technology using 3D printing to build the key components of a lunar base, including habitats, landing pads for rockets and roads. The process would use lunar regolith as material to build structures layer by layer. The more components of a lunar base that can be built with materials on hand, the less that has to be brought to the moon’s surface from Earth at great expense.
Landing pads will be of particular importance. When a rocket lands or takes off from the lunar surface, it kicks up dust and soil at a speed of 10,000 miles an hour, sandblasting surrounding infrastructure. The landing pad, according to the University of Central Florida, can be made by microwaving the lunar soil, melting the spot where rockets would land and takeoff.
Other facilities that a lunar base would need include greenhouses for growing food, rovers to take astronauts to various parts of the lunar surface, mining equipment to extract oxygen and water, as well as a power source, such as nuclear power plants NASA is developing with private contractors.
The SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) will be a tremendous asset for building up a lunar base. The HLS can take 100 metric tons of equipment and other material to the lunar surface.
However, the current factor limiting the size and scope of a future lunar base is NASA’s reliance on the Orion/Space Launch System to take astronauts to lunar orbit. The Orion will have a crew of four astronauts. Once it docks with the Lunar Gateway — which will be first space station planned to orbit the moon — two astronauts will stay behind and two will ride the Human Landing System to the lunar surface.
Even with robots supplementing the humans, an Artemis mission would not have much more capability than NASA had during Apollo. The only advantage is that the Artemis astronauts will be able to stay on the lunar surface for weeks or even months instead of days, as was the case during Apollo.
Two people on the moon at a time are insufficient to take full advantage of living on the lunar surface. Indeed, that number of people may be hard pressed to maintain the lunar base, much less explore the moon to expand scientific knowledge and prospect for resources.
Clearly, NASA and its international and commercial partners must develop an alternative to the Orion/SLS system to get more people from the Earth to the moon more frequently than once a year. Such an alternative might be based on the SpaceX Starship HLS. It might be something else.
Eventually, hundreds, even thousands, of people could live and work on the moon. Scientists, lunar miners, tour operators and others will likely be busy bring Earth’s nearest neighbor into humankind’s economic and social sphere.
Will a lunar base ever turn into a lunar colony, with families living there, children being conceived and born? The U.S. Sun interviewed NASA astronaut Stan Love, who suggested that no one will actually live their lives on the moon. He made the analogy of Antarctica, which has a number of science bases where people serve tours of duty before going home. The moon will be like Antarctica, in Love’s view, because conditions are too stark and harsh.
The larger problem with lunar colonies is that science has yet to discover the long-term effects of one-sixth gravity on the human body. For example, Children born on the moon may never be able to leave it. Earth gravity would be six times the amount that their bodies would have developed under.
On the other hand, perhaps one day science will develop a combination of medications and physical conditioning that may allow people born on the moon, or Mars for that matter, to visit Earth without being crushed by gravity.
But first, NASA and its partners must return people to the moon and bring them home alive. They must do it again and again until the matter becomes routine. Only then will both Earth and moon become the realm of human civilization.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.