Humanity's Space Beachhead - Conceptual Ideas for Moon Bases

Moon bases have been a popular topic in both science as well as science fiction for well over a century.

It looked hopeful in the 1960's and 1970's that they would soon become a reality but that dream died a quiet and slow death over the decades.

It was most likely because the Space Race with the Russians kind of died off and also because no one could really figure out what humans would do on the Moon in the first place.

Well now it seems that there may be a new Space Race developing between the West and China and there are also a few things the Moon has that the Earth does not. That would be a shallow gravity well as well as easy to access to a vacuum that could be useful for a lot of industrial manufacturing processes (see my post on that topic here: The Moon's Biggest Advantages).

So it looks like maybe, just maybe a moon base will be built in the next few decades. This post discusses some of the conceptual ideas for what it could look like.

Tins Cans On The Surface

No doubt the very first Moon village will just be what I would call tin cans on the surface. This is, of course, the easiest thing to put in place and the first moon base will simply just be the space craft that land on the surface of the Moon.

The first base will likely be a collection of rag tag space modules that might not even be connected to each other as it will take a while to transport the heavy equipment and materials needed to move around large objects and then hook them up to each other.

Eventually though the several different modules will be connected to one another and the beginnings of a new town on the Moon will start to take form.

The advantages of this type of base is that everything is pre-built on Earth and simply landed on the Moon. No need for difficult and hazardous construction in a harsh vacuum and radiation environment.

The disadvantages are that the colonists will be exposed to radiation as well as the threat of micrometeors puncturing the walls of their habitats.

Another disadvantage is that the moon modules will have very little thermal mass. This means that when the Sun sets they will get cold fast.

Night time lasts for about 2 weeks on the Moon so these modules will be wasting precious energy just to keep the habitat warm. Energy that could be better spent on other activities.

Buried Habitats

The next concept that seems promising is the buried habitat. In this type of Moon base collapsed fabric modules are landed on the Moon's surface and then inflated to their final form.

Then a remote robot will bury the habitat in the regolith (Moon soil). There is a very interesting proposal that the regolith could be sintered using a 3-D house printing technique. This would give the soil structure some additional strength and also could also possibly reduce the weight load on the expandable module.

The advantages of this concept are that the soil will provide more protection against both radiation and micrometeors and the soil will also provide a lot of thermal mass. The thermal mass means that it would take a lot longer for it to cool down during the long 2 week night.

The disadvantages are fairly minor. It will be somewhat more complicated and time consuming to build this type of base. It is also an untested technology and no one knows if regolith can be sintered into a fusible structure.

Lava Tubes and Tunnels

A lava tube is a cave that has been left behind by the flowing magma that erupts from a volcano. The hot, liquid flowing rock cools and solidifies at the surface first but the still liquid rock keeps flowing like a river underneath. The phenomenon is known on Earth to create substantial caves.

So it is obvious that the next concept to consider is to land near an existing lava tube, seal off the cave entrance and then pressurize the cave with an atmosphere.

It is very likely that the rock and soil will be leaky so the colonists might have to spray the inside surface with some type of epoxy to act as a sealant for the atmosphere.

This idea has the advantage of a large, ready made habitat that could potentially house hundreds if not thousands of humans. If the lava tube is small then it could just be the starting point for a boring machine to tunnel new artificial caves to whatever length the colony will need.

Since oxygen is literally the life of the colony one could also imagine the colonists boring special tunnels just to store vast amounts of pressurized oxygen. A colony might want at least a year's worth or more of air on hand at any given time.

The advantages of lava tubes and bored tunnels are great protection against radiation, micrometeors and even macro-meteors and all the thermal mass you could ever need. In fact, the night time cold won't even be a worry for this type of colony.

The disadvantages are simply the large effort needed to prepare a lava tube to make it habitable and also getting large mining equipment to the Moon for tunneling.

Sky Domes

Transparent domes are the least likely, most fragile but also the most popular moon base concept in science fiction.

Now that transparent aluminum is no longer science fiction maybe this concept could actually be feasible.

The advantages to this concept are that it simply looks cool but also the inhabitants would no longer feel like ground hogs living in caves. It would be nice to see the starry sky and the Earth just by looking up.

The disadvantages are that you are exposing the whole colony to sudden death if a disaster occurs and the dome is beached by meteor, malfunction, accident or sabotage.

Mini-Sky Domes

A large sky dome might not be feasible but smaller domes in the shape of long greenhouses could possibly be useful.

It takes light energy to grow plants so why not build smaller, long greenhouse domes to grow your crops as well as to get rid of carbon dioxide and generate oxygen.

The long night might make this only a partially useful idea but I would imagine that they would at the very least try this type of idea out.

Closing Words

It seems that the Moon's shallow gravity well might make Moon cities industrial powerhouses of the future space economy. For them getting ships and products into space will always be a lot less effort and therefore cheaper than it will be for Earth-bound companies.

My favourite moon base concept has to be the tunnel boring machine in which the colony can just dig a new tunnel if they need more living space. I also imagine that they will install artificial sky vistas on the ceilings of their interiors so that they can forget that they are always living underground.

Post Sources

[1] Colonization of the Moon.
[2] The Space Race.
[3] The Moon.
[4] Regolith.
[5] Transparent Aluminum.
[6] Lave Tubes.
[7] Sintered Building Blocks For Moon Construction.