Cislunar Economy 101 — Part 7: Making a Living on the Moon

ESA 3D-printed lunar habitat concept

New to the series? You might want to start with Part 1!

In the spirit of leaving the best for last, Part 7 of the Cislunar Economy series will discuss the Lunar base vertical. Having a permanent human presence on the Moon is, in my view, the most exciting prospect of the space economy.

As the initial off-Earth settlement, the Moon will mark the first step in the successful expansion into the Solar System. By settlement, I am referring to a self-sustained base, or the closest we might get to that. It is not yet clear whether we’ll get to Mars or the Moon first with current developments in space (we might get to both at more or less the same time), but with the Moon being closer, infrastructure deployment can happen faster.

Second, having humans permanently living off-planet is an essential requisite for having a successful economy. There is always a human need at the end of any value chain, and any space economy will just be focused on serving Earth as long as that’s the only place with humans. Establishing a settlement somewhere outside our planet must be a priority for anyone working towards a self-sustained Cislunar Economy.

Apart from the purely economic and strategic reasons, settling the Moon has plenty of inspirational value. We would finally be following up on the steps of Apollo, and we’ll have people living in a place we can readily see at night. Just imagine looking up at the Moon and seeing the dim lights of the outpost in the shadows, or having someone YouTube from the lunar surface. A Moon colony will trigger a change in how humanity sees itself.

Now that we’ve got the inspirational part out of the way, let’s get down to business. What are the markets in the 7th vertical, and how do we make them happen? And why do I keep talking about a single lunar outpost and not a network of them?

The first extraterrestrial city

The premise I’ve been defending since the Part 1 is that current space activities will lead to a fully develop Cislunar Economy in the near future. With that in mind, let’s look at the current situation regarding a potential lunar base:

• We currently have no commercial capabilities for landing on the Moon. We might see by the end of 2017 some of the Lunar XPrize contestants reach this goal, but for now we are unable to commercially reach the lunar surface. Even outside the private sector, only China currently has a functioning lunar lander.
• With current technology, the cost of landing on the Moon is around $1.2M per kg of payload. A lunar base would require an initial landed mass of 100–200 t, meaning it would require at the very least $12B just for landing everything, and we would need to develop a larger lander for most things. That doesn’t even take into account the cost of developing, manufacturing, integrating, and operating all the elements of the infrastructure. Count at least the same level of spending for these other items plus some margin, and we’re talking of some tens of billions of dollars ($30–40B).
• With current technology, there are a limited number of spots on the Moon where we would prefer to land. I’m talking of course of the peaks of eternal light around the lunar poles, where the Sun shines almost continuously and we could power our lunar outpost. Going anywhere else means dealing with the extremely cold (-153º C) and extremely long (~14 days) lunar night, and maybe using nuclear reactors for power, of which we have none that work in space (we do have some prototypes though).

These three items are enough to justify coordinating lunar surface activities from a common base. A concept similar to the Moon Village proposed by ESA’s Director General Johann-Dietrich Wörner. There are also other motivations, for example avoiding political conflict if one country interprets that another is claiming lunar territory, against the core articles of the Outer Space Treaty.

The most likely development is then to have several partners, private and public, deploying infrastructure in a single common base. This base could host several activities that could be commercialized:

• Resource collection and extraction. As seen in Part 2, resources will be mainly used for propellant and consumables, but also for habitat building (i.e. with regolith) and spare parts.
• Scientific activities. Those related to the lunar geology and astronomy (the far side of the Moon is a great place for a radiotelescope) would likely be carried out mainly by public institutions. The lunar base would be a great place for any research that would require the isolation of the Moon for safety or scientific reasons, such as some biological research.
• Commercial passengers (tourists). Anyone willing to pay the high cost of a lunar trip should be welcome, in order to improve the business case for other activities. This not only includes wealthy individuals, but also astronauts from private companies or countries without a space program.
• Operation of basic infrastructure. The provision of any basic service required for crewed operations could be done commercially. This includes power, water, life support, communications, and any house-keeping (e.g. clothing, washing, system maintenance)

While commercial partners take care of the most basic activities, space agencies could use their resources for lunar exploration and astronomy, and they could be in charge of developing new capabilities such as planetary defense. Private companies provide the offer, and space agencies the demand, creating a neat value chain that can sustain the initial stages of the Cislunar Economy.

Aiming for the Moon

As is the norm in this series, we already have several plans on how to make all this a reality. There are many independent studies on how to develop a lunar base with a reasonable budget and timeframe. The best ones are probably the Evolvable Lunar Architecture, an independent study by NexGen Space LLC, and the International Lunar Research Park, a study by researchers from NASA Ames Space Portal office.

Even though there are many different implementations for the lunar base, all these studies reach the same conclusion: private-public partnerships are a need, and we have a pretty good idea on who should do what. This division of labor between public and private partners is starting to be the predominant vision of how to create a lunar base within an acceptable timeframe (~10 years). The extent of the activities assigned to private partners varies, but as a minimum it is considered that transportation and propellant production will be done commercially, with one or more agencies taking care of the rest.

The predominance of this idea is finally starting to convince space agencies that private-public is the way to go. We see that in the proposal of the Moon Village at ESA, and the more concrete LCOTS program proposal at NASA, which we could see implemented by this administration.

As usual, the private sector isn’t falling behind. There are several companies already working on the initial capabilities required for a lunar base:

• ispace is working on rovers and water mining equipment.
• Astrobotic and the Lunar XPrize participants are developing lunar landers. ULA and Masten Space Systems have lander concepts for larger cargo.
• Bigelow Aerospace has working on an inflatable habitat for the lunar surface.
• There is even a company working on a lunar space elevator: LiftPort.

All these companies would leave the most interesting activities for space agencies: human landers, rovers, and all the science. Basic infrastructure such as communications and power require little adaptation for the Moon, and a private partner could appear as soon as the need appears (i.e. as soon as a space agency announces it will land — and stay — on the Moon).

The future Moon

Taking into account the different studies, companies, and plans from the agencies for the Moon, we can get a pretty good idea of how things will develop, at least at a high level. We’ll see the following phases:

1. Phase I: exploration of the lunar poles for the optimum placement of the outpost.
2. Phase II: deployment of initial propellant production capabilities and missions to prepare the landing site.
3. Phase III: deployment of power, communications, habitats, and permanent human presence.

This leads to a small lunar base from which astronauts can explore the Moon, either with rovers or via teleoperation. The presence of astronauts also reduces the risk of any automated operations, since there can be a human present to repair the equipment in case it breaks. An initial small presence also permits the refinement of the systems, increasing efficiencies, reducing risk, and improving any future equipment.

After the initial human presence has been established, we will see a progressive build-up of infrastructure on site to increase production, capabilities, and the human population, along with an increase in traffic to and from the Moon. Once we reach this stage, we will have successfully planted the seed for a fully self-sustained Cislunar Economy.

This seed needs to be cared for properly though. As we saw before, the value chain we create with this scheme ends in the space agencies, and the tax-payer’s pocket. Space agencies can’t finance the lunar outpost forever. There are two solutions for this:

• The lunar outpost grows until the people living there are not just employees of an agency or company on Earth, but rather actual inhabitants of the Moon. This creates a permanent need for services on the Moon that can serve the other activities.
• We establish a human settlement on Mars, which draws the end of the value chain towards the humans living there. In this case, the lunar outpost provides services for the Mars-bound ships, and the orbital infrastructure to support them in cislunar space.

In any case, we need permanent human presence. The goal of any space exploration effort should be colonization. If you are not doing this, you will end up running out of funding, or simply stuck in doing the occasional science mission (sound familiar?). Once you colonize other moons and planets, you create a human need somewhere outside Earth, and with it a market and a need for space activities. Otherwise, you will always remain on Earth.

The timeline of this development is very fuzzy, as it depends on many different factors: what happens to Moon Village, whether NASA implements LCOTS or not, whether other agencies follow through with their Moon aspirations, and what big space entrepreneurs decide to do (most notably, what Jeff Bezos decides to do). In any case, the lunar base can be established within 10 years of reaching a firm commitment by some of the potential partners. If everything goes well, we could have a lunar outpost up and running by 2030.

The next 15 years will be very exciting.

Enjoyed the article? Then you may like the rest of the articles in the Cislunar Economy Series.