Enlarge / Permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles are an area of interest because they may hold resources.
For the first time ever, the United States is seriously considering fostering an economy on the moon.
NASA, of course, is in the process of developing the Artemis program to return humans to the moon. Through this initiative, NASA wants to promote a lunar economy in which the space agency is not the only customer.
This is easier said than done. For a lunar economy to thrive, a number of conditions must be met. There must be something there to sell, be it resources, a unique environment for scientific research, low-gravity production, tourism, or some other source of value. Reliable transport to the moon must be possible. And there must be a variety of services such as energy and communications for machines and people on the lunar surface. So yeah, it's a lot.
In recent months, a U.S. defense organization, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has come to the rescue. This is important because DARPA is a major supporter of new technologies with a track record of success. (DARPA, for example, purchased the first-ever launch of the Falcon 1 rocket from SpaceX.) Last year, the defense agency announced that it would initiate a study called LunA-10 to determine how best to promote a thriving lunar economy by 2035.
In December, DARPA announced that it was working with 14 different companies on LunA-10, including major space companies like Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, as well as non-space companies like Nokia. These companies are studying how services such as energy and communications could be established on the moon and are expected to submit a final report by June.
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However, things are moving faster. The DARPA program manager overseeing these activities, Major Michael “Orbit” Nayak, published a paper earlier this month based on findings from these studies, which began just a few months ago.
“Based on the technical work and development conducted as part of the LunA-10 study, I have identified six hypotheses that I estimate are likely to directly accelerate the construction of a lunar economy if revolutionary improvements are implemented the technology can be achieved,” Nayak said in the newspaper.
Looking for industrial innovation
Last Thursday, DARPA issued a “request for information” on technological capabilities that could expand lunar exploration and commerce based on the ideas laid out in Nayak's paper. This federal request makes for interesting reading and suggests that Nayak and DARPA have thought things through.
Here is a brief summary of each of the six areas of interest:
Centralized heating and cooling: The lunar day-night cycle means that much of the moon's surface is dark for 14 days and light for 14 days. This creates thermal challenges as the surface becomes very cold on the lunar night and rather warm on the lunar day. Much like an HVAC system provides heating and cooling services to various offices in a skyscraper, a thermal hub on the Moon could provide similar services to a variety of users, eliminating the need for them to bring them with them. “In this new paradigm, users would bring only the minimal thermal equipment to the Moon, connect it to a thermal hub, and pay for the heat generated/expelled on a dollar-per-kilowatt basis – analogous to Earth's utilities and a basic one “Pastor to the lunar economy,” the newspaper said.
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