What if I told you there’s no reason we couldn’t set up a small base on the moon by 2022 without breaking the bank?
The endeavor would cost about $10 billion, which is cheaper than one U.S.
aircraft carrier.
Some of the greatest scientists and professionals in the space business already have a plan.
NASA’s Chris McKay, an astrobiologist, wrote about it in
a special issue of the New Space journal, published just a few weeks ago.
Before we get into the details, let’s ask ourselves: Why the moon? Although scientists (and NASA) don’t find it all that exciting, the moon is a great starting point for further exploration. Furthermore, building a lunar base would provide us with the real-world experience that may prove invaluable for future projects on other planets like Mars, which NASA plans to reach by 2030. The main reason the moon is not a part of NASA’s plan is simply because of the agency’s crimped budget.
NASA’s leaders say they can afford only one or the other: the moon or Mars. If McKay and his colleagues are correct, though, the U.S. government might be able to pull off both trips. All it takes is a change of perspective and ingenuity.
“The big takeaway,” McKay says in a
Popular Science issue written by
Sarah Fecht, “is that new technologies, some of which have nothing to do with space — such as self-driving cars and waste-recycling toilets — are going to be incredibly useful in space, and are driving down the cost of a moon base to the point where it might be easy to do.”
The document outlines a series of innovations — already existing and in development — that work together toward the common goal of building the first permanent lunar base.
