How Do We Pay for Tube Town?

 Although much cheaper than a comparably sized surface base, outfitting a lava tube for human habitation will not be cheap. Much of the materials can be made in situ, such as aluminum sheeting for the floors, airlocks, centrifuge. Steel can be manufactured for the waste recycler, tanks, factory gantry, etc. but much will need to come from Earth such as machinery, computers, electronics, medical equipment, etc.

In Tube Town, this cost is spread among the 27 countries of the International Space Program (NASA, ESA plus countries that signed the Artemis Accords).

US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and the 17 member countries of the European Space Agency (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). Notable holdouts were China (CNSA) and Russia (Roscosmos).

The ISP is a cost and opportunity sharing umbrella organization for building and maintaining a large Moon base and robotic creation of a Mars base and the first crewed mission to Mars.

NASA would be the lead partner of the ISP, but project decisions were approved and administered by the ISP Board of Directors consisting of the member countries of the organization with weighted voting rights proportionate to their contribution. Many countries wanted to get in on the ground floor of a new space economy but couldn’t afford to duplicate the resources and infrastructure that already existed at NASA. With their combined buying power, the ISP could source rockets, landers, robotics, space suits, etc. from the most efficient and innovative private suppliers. In return, ISP countries received habitation services (shelter, atmosphere, food, water) and discounted rates for:

•         leasing habitation space in the Tube for scientific or commercial enterprise,
•         buying propellant and other in situ resources, and        
•       payload return to Earth

Construction costs of the Tube are initially off set by lunar tourism. Tourism licenses are issued by the ISP to private companies. The contracts include revenue sharing, ISP Code of Conduct compliance and Space Heritage sites preservation requirements. In exchange, the licensees get transportation, medical emergency and habitation services on the Moon.

In Tube Town, the first ISP tourism licensee is with Lunar Experience, LLC. LE licensed 50 seats for a seven Earth day stay. They ran two tours per Earth month to take advantage of the Nearside lunar day (in early days, most of the popular attractions were on the Nearside). LE agreed to give away 25% of the seats to people who could not afford the price. So, of the 50 seats per trip, 12 were free and 38 were paying customers. Assuming a ticket price of $5m for a trip to the Moon for a week, a flight made $190m. The revenue-sharing agreement with the ISP was 60/40 (LE 60%, ISP 40%) so for that $190m flight, LE earned $114m and ISP $76m. If only two trips were completed per month, the yearly income would be LE $1.3B and ISP $912m. The ticket price would double to watch the uncrewed launches to Mars and the price would triple to witness the crewed launch to Mars.

In addition, the ISP or commercial customers could take advantage of very reasonable freight rates to backhaul refined payload on the returning tourist rockets to Earth.

When would the price become affordable for regular people? Probably after the third tube is discovered. I could see an ISP member like UAE opening a large lava tube exclusively as a vacation resort. By this point, the price could get almost reasonable.