Will an outpost on the moon be the next logical step towards acquiring the technology and infrastructure for further exploration of the solar system?
The danger in presenting a village on the moon as their vision of the future is that people misunderstand it. Immediately, the imagination draws about a scene from the film: a huge dome that shelters the houses, many generators, a modest store that also serves as a post office. And a forgotten space farmer with a Ph. D. in botany is fighting for life and growing potatoes in human excrement.
This view is completely wrong, so European Space Agency (ESA) CEO Jan Woerner starts by explaining what a village on the moon is not. “Let me tell you what I don't mean,” he says. -Houses, school, church, swimming pool, bakery and funeral home. I'm not talking about that at all."
He talks about future human exploration of space. The resource of the International Space Station will be developed within about ten years. The $ 150 billion project will fall back to Earth and turn into a fireball over the Pacific Ocean, after which the astronauts will have nowhere to fly. If humans want to maintain a presence in space, they need a plan, and soon.
While NASA is still focused on trying to send humans to Mars (a task of incredible technical complexity) ESA, under the leadership of Werner, considers the Moon as the next long-term milestone. By "village" he means a community of diverse public and private organizations working together on the moon. Several countries could build a telescope on the far side of the moon, where it will be shielded from interference from Earth's electromagnetic field. One agency could test whether robots are able to build a radiation-proof shelter out of regolith, the lunar surface material. A tech company can extract water from polar ice caps and produce oxygen, hydrogen, and rocket fuel. Another company could do moon tourism.
Unlike single-player missions with comprehensive tasks and high costs, the lunar village should develop as an international project. Werner says that over time, it will bring the necessary knowledge and infrastructure for safer human exploration of remote parts of the solar system.
Werner has been discussing this idea for a long time, but intends to formally propose it only at the upcoming ESA ministerial meeting this year. “This is an interesting concept. If others have better offers, I am ready to change my mind. But at the moment, I think the lunar village is the best way to solve future problems. The moon is the next logical milestone,”he says.
Werner enjoys widespread support. “The question is what to do next after the space station,” says Ian Crawford, professor of planetology at the University of London at Birkbeck. According to him, “either do nothing and complete human space exploration, or build a new space station (it’s hard to say why), or go further, and I believe that the moon is exactly the place to go.”
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It's more of a necessity than a desire, Crawford says. Before flying to Mars and any other distant object, people should learn to survive in a dusty environment with high radiation. “When you send people to Mars, you need to be confident in all technological aspects,” he says. “Going to the moon is also risky, but the advantage of training and testing on the moon is that if something goes wrong, people can be saved. Only three days to fly to the moon. The possibility of canceling the mission in the process remains."
The moon is a laboratory. Archives of the history of the solar system, traces of meteorites, comets and solar wind are recorded in its dust. The Lunar Village will give scientists the opportunity to study a cosmic body, a fragment of the ancient Earth, how Antarctic bases opened the southern continent to people.
Lunar Village is a lot like polar outposts. The American McMurdo Research Center on Ross Island began with a few buildings in the 1950s. Now it includes a hundred buildings, and in the summer months the population numbers a thousand people. The settlement has an airport, a desalination plant, a sewerage system and a waste treatment center, everything that is needed to support living quarters, clubs and research facilities. Scientists at this base monitor the weather, study microorganisms living under the ice, drill ice to obtain data on the state of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere a hundred thousand years ago, and send automatic submarines to map the bottom under the sea ice.
Next year, the American company Moon Express plans to land the first commercial spacecraft on the moon. The polar regions must contain a lot of ice from which water can be extracted, separated into oxygen and hydrogen, and rocket fuel can be obtained. One of the founders of the company, Bob Richards (Bob Richards) called the moon "a heavenly filling station." Company chairman Naveen Jain told The Guardian that it is time for entrepreneurs to show what they can do there: "If ESA is ready to allow private entrepreneurs to do what they do best, then I fully support them."
The likely transformation of the moon into a mine will not be to everyone's liking, so Crawford said international legislation should be developed regarding resource exploitation. But he has no moral objection to the development of the resources of the moon. “On Earth, objections to resource extraction are related to the destruction of the habitat of living beings with whom we share the planet. But the Moon is a dead piece of rock. It is preferable to explore cosmic bodies that do not have their own life forms,”he said.
Under President George W. Bush, NASA planned to return to the moon and build a permanent base there. But Barack Obama sent this plan on the back burner, saying: "We were already there." Even after the Apollo missions, the idea that NASA went to the moon and ended up with it is little more than a superficial geopolitical judgment, Crawford said.
Former NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman believes that humans should return to the moon as soon as possible. “It has been almost 50 years since we explored its surface, and we need new experience. The problem with the lunar village is that if the infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain, it will drain the funds for a mission to Mars, he said. "Plans for lunar exploration should be made so that they are carried out with the exploration of Mars, and not instead of it."
Katherine Joy, a Moon specialist at the University of Manchester, says that while an international consensus on research order should exist in the form of a Global Research Roadmap, a clearer roadmap is needed. “There will be a route to be chosen soon,” she says. “And this is the strength of the lunar village project. She offers an ambitious idea that can bring people together."
“The lunar base does not distract us from our desire to visit and explore Mars,” she added. "The Apollo missions have shown us that time-bound expeditions are interesting and provide scientific evidence, but they cannot lead to a permanent human presence in outer space."
Exploring and exploring ways to survive in an alien world is only part of the space game. For decades, missions in Earth orbit and in the solar system have united different countries. The International Space Station only exists because Russians, Americans, Europeans and others work side by side and trust each other. As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, the Moon Village may do something that politicians can't do, Werner believes. “Space can unite forces in Europe, and not only in Europe,” he says. "We must use this for the sake of all humanity."