Last year, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a desire to build a permanent lunar base, Lunar Village. The project could mark the next step in deep space exploration after the end of support for the International Space Station in 2024.
Lunar Village, in turn, is part of the "Space 4.0" concept by Johann-Dietrich Werner, the acting director of the European Space Agency, who has managed to push the project forward with "one small exception", as he himself says.
The concept itself heralds a new era in which space exploration will no longer be the exclusive prerogative of state-owned companies, becoming open to private organizations as well. Speaking at the recent meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Switzerland, he said that the idea of a lunar base fits perfectly into the overall vision for the future development of the space sector.
The Cosmos 4.0 concept has received worldwide support. It was supported not only by all 22 ESA members, but also by other countries outside the European Union. After numerous sessions of live discussions (including on very tedious financing issues), the project of the concept of "European Unification of Cosmos 4.0" was able to raise about 10.3 billion euros of reserved funds.
As for the "small exception", it means the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) project, which was not able to assure financial support within the framework of the last meeting. In short, the project offers one of the options for protecting our Earth from external space threats using the Dart spacecraft built by the NASA aerospace agency, which would hunt for asteroids dangerous to our planet.
“This is the best that ESA has to offer at the moment, but apparently the time has not yet come: the project is too daring, innovative and ambitious,” Werner said.
The European Space Agency is not the only organization with an eye on the moon. For example, the British architecture firm Foster + Partners has developed its own version of an inflatable lunar dwelling with a durable one-piece dome, capable of protecting lunar colonists from space radiation and small space debris. Google, with its XPRIZE competition, has created a real biathlon among candidates for a flight to the moon. Countries such as India, Japan and China are taking part in the race. It's nice to note that Russia is also on the list.
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If we consider the projects of extraterrestrial settlements in general, then the main competitor of the Moon in this matter is, of course, Mars, which in earnest attracted the attention of NASA and Elon Musk. But despite the same plans by Musk to send people to Mars in the very near future, the construction of a colony there, obviously, will require much more resources and time than the construction of the same "Moon Village". Think for yourself: a one-way flight to Mars can take as long as three years (excluding preparation time), so with a real weighing of the facts, colonization of the Red Planet will begin no earlier than in the next 40-100 years. The flight to the moon, in turn, takes only three days. And since ESA is going to use 3D printing technology and materials collected from lunar regolith to build the colony,then the delivery of the necessary equipment in this case will be much easier and cheaper.
Some, of course, believe that all these projects and attempts to colonize near-earth space are a simple waste of resources, especially against the backdrop of "starving children in Africa who could be fed." However, despite the validity of these statements, scientists say that if we do not worry about the possibility of building alternative places of settlement for people outside the Earth, then it is likely that at some point not only the starving children of Africa will suffer, but the entire human species. There can be many reasons for this: general world hunger, external space threats (comets, asteroids, meteorites), as well as wars. The off-Earth colony can play a very important role in the survival of the human race, and will become a kind of "golden parachute" if you will.
World renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking once said:
“You are very short-sighted if you think that the Earth will be able to avoid a catastrophe on a global scale within the next hundreds, not to mention thousands and millions of years. Humanity should not keep all of its eggs in just one basket, or on one planet. I would very much like to hope that we will have time to transfer these eggs somewhere before the basket with them falls."
Even if we look far ahead (hundreds, thousands and millions of years), it is very difficult to assess how incredible the amount of work still needs to be done. Scientists and futurists alike will have to look at the broader picture, beyond religion, politics and other social issues, to understand humanity's place in the context of a colossal universe in which we are mere specks of dust trying to overcome our differences over ideas about space exploration.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
