Last time I talked about the idea of going back to the Moon, or out to Mars, as goals for the world’s space programs. It’s not going to be easy. Going to space isn’t a quick jaunt.
Take the idea of populating the Moon with bases. It’s one thing to send autonomous spacecraft there, as China and others have done. They are operated remotely or robotically and aren’t “hardened” for human habitation. And, if they eventually “wind down” and stop working, they have at least served their original purpose and no living beings are harmed.
Living on the Moon
Making habitable spots for human researchers on the Moon is a different story from the robotic probes we’ve sent already. I’m sure most everybody can think of the most obvious challenges. There’s the very low gravity, the extremes of temperatures, and the lack of atmosphere. Unlike Earth, there’s a dearth of flowing water, and so on. When you look at it from the idea of how “alien” the environment is, people ask, “Well, then, why go there?” And, it’s a valid question. Why risk people’s lives for a beautiful desolation, as Buzz Aldrin once called the lunar surface?
The Moon has a lot of clues about conditions in the early solar system. It also has resources. And, it offers a relatively pristine place to do astronomy and other sciences that could benefit from its extreme conditions. For example, the side that we never see — the Far Side — is a lunar wilderness that is free of radio frequency interference all the time and light pollution for 14 nights at a time. That makes it a good place to put an astronomy “reserve”, particularly for radio astronomy and high-energy (cosmic-ray, neutrino) detectors.
How It Gets Done, If It Does
Of course, those places cannot get built using robotics. Eventually, people will have to go to the Moon to live and work for weeks or months at a time. One of the biggest jobs will be to construct those observing posts. That will require solutions to the problems inherent in building new things in radically different places than they’re used to for work. And, they’ll be finding ways to live there while they do it. So, before the first telescope goes up, there will need to be living quarters for the workers, which will eventually be used for living spaces for the scientists and technical staffs who follow up.
Those quarters will need electricity, shielding, water, and other life support systems. Most likely, they’d be underground to shield from the intense radiation that blasts the lunar surface. Not to mention meteor strikes and other impacts. There will have to be ways to get at the lunar water deposits, which DO exist, but not in standard places like they do here on Earth. Water “reclamation” projects could be the most complex jobs to be done before anything else is planned and begun.
Will It Happen?
That’s just one scenario. But, science “colonies” like this have long been on the drawing boards at space agencies, and of course, in science fiction and in advanced planning groups. Whether the Moon gets used solely (or primarily) for a science reserve is really subject to financial and political considerations. It’s also very possible that, even though there is a lunar treaty in place (although the U.S. and other countries with space agencies have NOT ratified it), it wouldn’t stop one state or another from simply establishing a beachhead on the Moon. They could claim it (or parts of it) for economic or political purposes. I think the “blue sky” hope is that we’ll all cooperate to put humans on the Moon for peaceful purposes. But, that’s a dream, not a reality.
What Works?
I am a fan of the “use the Moon as a launching base for other ships to other places” approach. As I mentioned in my last piece, it makes sense to mine the raw materials for shipbuilding, etc. on the Moon. Then, do the building in space. Just as you don’t build a boat away from water, you don’t construct spacecraft in a gravity well and then hoist them out to space at great expense. But, that’s just me. And, I know that it’s not an easy thing to actually DO the mining and the building. A lot of other things have to happen before those activities can get underway.
It will happen, of course. Who does it, who pays for it, how it gets done — that’s all up in the air, literally. It is going to take international cooperation unless one country is so sure that it can afford the massive costs such undertakings will require. If that’s the case, then the picture I’ve just discussed in broad terms could look very different. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out over the next decade. In my next discussion, I’ll focus on the good and bad aspects to a lunar base.