ESA Holds Workshop On Lunar Base Design

plasticpixel writes "Space.com is reporting that a workshop is underway in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, to discuss and plan extraterrestrial bases for human settlement of the Moon. Full story is online. Reminds me of the lunar base I designed when I was about 9 years old for a school project. Too bad I didn't have the backing of NASA or the ESA back then. "

Comments

Moonraker

[bravehamster]

My lunar base design calls for gratuitous amounts of scantily-clad nordic women and lasers. Lots of lasers.

Seriously though, this is a great idea. I always remember the poster my teach put up in his Cosmology classroom. It was a 50's era "Moon Base of the Future!" type poster. Occasionally he would look over at it, and sigh softly to himself. Screw Watergate, the worst thing Nixon ever did was cut back the space program.

Re:Um, Hemos...

[L. VeGas]

I don't think that the ESA is going to tackle this project with popsicle sticks, styrofoam cups, cardboard paper towel rolls

No, that would be the Russian Space Agency.

Paul van Susante

[apsmith]

I met one of the lunar base workshop organizers, Paul van Susante, in Denver about a month back - he was contributing to the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference as a speaker in the Moon track, which I'd helped organize. Paul had some really nifty designs for south polar telescopes; one small one that could be deployed robotically, and a larger one (1000 sq meter) that would require human labor to put together.

The South Pole region of the Moon has emerged recently as an ideal base location; temperatures are always moderate, a selection of areas close by can be found with continuous sunlight and also continuous line-of-sight communications with Earth, and there are craters that apparently never see sunlight and are believed to contain cometary ice (water is hard to find on the Moon), and also would be ideal for telescopes.

Lunar base designs can be found going back to Army and Air Force ideas back in the 1950's, so the idea is nothing particularly new; obviously what we'd really like is to have a plan that includes ways to get the funding to actually build the things! Science, tourism, and possibly space-based energy and materials supply seem to be the main candidates... Now if NASA wasn't spending 100 times as much on Mars as on the Moon we might get somewhere...

Re:The moon is a dead end

[Skyshadow]

Yeah, the discovery of massive amounts of water was huge. Given that, I'd say the first step in establishing a successful moon base would be to move it to Mars.

Think about it: The moon is our solar system's version of a wasteland -- all it needs is a sign saying "Why live here?".

Mars, on the other hand, has all the resources you could want. With electricity and some basic engineering, farming and construction skills, you could live happily on Mars pretty much independent of Earth. Well, you might have to import some nitrogen...