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Self-Sufficient Lunar Habitat Designed
An anonymous reader writes "Cosmos Magazine reports on a design for a lunar habitat that is 90 to 95 percent self-sufficient. The proposed habitat uses a closed-loop life support system that recycles and regenerates air, water, and food, reducing the need for costly supply trips. The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources. About 11 astronauts could live and work in the habitat for 2 to 3 years. The project would also help the environment on Earth with recycling and other sustainable practices." The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon.
...when the planet is so overpopulated, that the one and only resource the moon has, space, will actually become valuable enough to justify the expense and trouble of living there.
For Science! No, but really. The moon is a great place for a few things - like a telescope. You can make a huge one that is always hidden from earth's interference. Also, if you have a place to stay anyway, long-term low gravity experiments. We know you get screwed up in microgravity, we know you do fine in full gravity. But what about a little gravity? We don't really know.
Also, geology. Study the moon itself. In preparation, perhaps, for later mining.
Also, so that you/your country wins.
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To get away from Earth. Some say humanity, in its current form, is doomed to destroy itself. Being on another astronomical body would afford some protection from that, should we Earth-bound folks finally kick the bucket.
Some folks also crave being on the frontier, where everything is new. It's risky, but our species has made quite a living off of that particular trait.
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It's a cool idea, but I still remember being all excited about Biosphere 2 when I was a kid, and it turned out to be a colossal failure.
I'm glad they've got a design, but are they planning on actually testing it? This is not the sort of thing you just build and hope it works. I mean, at least a working model would be something.
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Settling in a gravity well is just stupid. I understand the romance of "living on another world", but just the health difficulties are incredibly hard to solve, along with Lunar nights (I know they want the north pole). The practical difficulties are insane. Will plants grow well in 1/6th gravity? Who knows?
If you want settle off-planet, the reasonable course is to build a big spinning space station. Yes, the engineering is difficult, but nowhere near the problems of building on the moon, and you can build it closer to earth. You get perpetual, consistent sunlight for power, artificial gravity. You can do zero gravity experiments by setting up labs at the hub, which you can't do on the moon. And doing an emergency escape capsule would be way easier than having to launch off the moon.
Why NASA is still talking about going to the moon is beyond me. We should be doing missions to near-earth asteroids to see if the materials would be useful for building large space stations, and experimenting with robotically producing I-Beams.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
hopefully they are getting rid of the mini ocean, the coral reef, and the desert to concentrate on plants that produce O2, and food.
Biosphere to me was a waste of space. they tried to do too much in to little space. If they concetrated on say just the rainforest r just a group of plant bearing trees, they would have been a lot better off.
It was less about surviving out in space than it was a giant global warming experiment.
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Yeah, all those astronauts who stayed on the moon for a year or more, where are they now? Dead, I tell you!
Muscle and bones can be trained much more easily than on ISS for example, since there is some gravity. Good old weight lifting and running (possibly with weights) will be possible on the moon. Walking and such might need retraining since astronauts might get used to skipping and jumping or whatever, but that's no big deal. So what is it that you think will happen?
Ah, but we don't know that for certain.
We know that coming down to Earth after a year in freefall sucks a big one. But we know nothing about how coming back from the Moon after more than a few days will work.
Also, having a reasonable sized colony of a few hundred that doesn't need too much more care other than being swapped out every few months so that nobody wastes away too much but doesn't require too much other logistical support is a useful thing.
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Because its there. Because we have to look at it every night, and because there are people out there saying that we can't.
so fuck off.
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Isn't "90 to 95 percent self-sufficient" another way of saying "Not self-sufficient"?
... is pretty worthless; in 30 years our tech will have, hopefully, seriously evolved. In 30 years the earths political systems and power balance could be totally different. If you cant do it in ten years change your focus to something else. I think this is a great idea but giving something this much time is the ultimate form of procrastination. There is *no* reason they cant have this well in the works in a decade. If the money is not there well then put it on the shelve and come up with something people will pay to research.
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You limited your scope to manned space exploration/environments for advancement, but used the whole range of past advancements as your example of past progress.
In fact, you are quite mistaken. In the past 30 years, we have not had any major human engineering feats (for example: Shuttles, satellites, ISS, etc.) compared to the previous decades leading up to the lunar landings. Instead, we have integrated technology and scientific advancements into new space age. Products of this are ever present in our everyday lives. From GPS and weather forecasts to discoveries of black holes, dark matter, the processes which power our Sun and every other star. While you do not translate these to significant advancements, I certainly do. Only in recent decades have we been able to see, gather data, and learn about objects in deep space. I would like to see Spirit and Opportunity as major successes as well as the current progress being made in our search for life in our own solar system.
There perspective we have gained through these advancements has splintered funding into numerous different fields. Where back in the 60's we knew much less about our universe which limited the amount of things we would want to spend money on doing, like landing on the moon. Today though, you find people wanting to spend money on proving super massive black holes exist, monitoring our own Suns magnetic fields, and searching for life on other planets.
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And just when did the Russians allegedly experiment with this? We've seen what happens with microgravity by having people in orbit for long periods of time. To know what happens in 1/6 G, you have to expose somebody to it for an extended period. We can simulate increased gravity with centrifuges, but the only ways we currently know to simulate decreased gravity are to 1) go where it exists or 2) go to a lesser gravity field and use a centrifuge. Nobody has been exposed to 1/6 G for more than a few days, and until it happens this entire sub-thread is pure conjecture.
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You missed a whole bunch of details that make the difference between fantasy and something worth pursuing in the near future. Perhaps the most important is that Lunar regolith is hard-packed and difficult to drill into, and also perhaps the most abrasive naturally occurring substance found. It's been pulverized to fine particles by repeated micrometeor strikes, packed firm by shock waves from strikes nearby, and had no erosion to smooth the edges. Oh, it's also statically charged. Have fun maintaining your machinery.
I agree that we should have our sights on Mars as it can theoretically be more "naturally" sustainable, but the moon is an important staging ground.