What are the advantages of a Moon Base? What will we be doing there? I can think of at least 14 things

 

On Twitter Exrocketfuelhandler@SpiritofRacerX  asked “yeah, Moon base is important, but not as much as most think it is, imo… main focus is slow build Mars, then it exponentially passes up any Moon, short term advantages, which, I am wondering, what are the advantages of a Moon base? Serious question? What will we be doing there?”

My answer to Exrocketfuelhandler would be a very long Twitter thread so I thought I would give my answer here.

What are the advantages and what would we do on a Moon Base?

The things we can do on a Moon Base will depend on the type of Base. In my book, Tube Town – Frontier I describe a large lunar base inside a pressurized lava tube. With millions of cubic meters of pressurized space under meters of regolith inside a structure that has been standing for hundreds of millions of years – you can do a lot of things.

1.  Work out the in situ processing of oxygen, water, and growing food at scale in space.
2.   Develop methods of shielding from galactic cosmic rays.
3.    Develop artificial gravity technology needed for crewed missions to Mars.
4.    Determine whether humans can safely reproduce in space environments.
5.    Set up and supply propellant depots in lunar orbit.
6.    Develop and test surface robotics for eventual use on Mars.
7.     Develop the Laser Communication Relay system to transmit much larger amounts of data to replace radio communications.
8.    A large, much safer than the surface, lunar base can have a vibrant tourism industry.
9.    Spacecraft can be constructed from in situ resources and launched from the minimal gravity well of the Moon.
10.    Planetary defense spacecraft can be built at the lunar base and stationed at the E/M Lagrange points for swift deployment upon the discovery of Earth endangering asteroids.
11.   Off world seed vaults and data centers can provide backup to Earth disasters.
12.   Lunar mining operations will give some insight into what will be needed for Mars.
13.  Mobile nuclear reactors and Liquid Floride Thorium reactors can be developed more safely on the Moon without the political and regulatory roadblocks on Earth. These types of power generators will be necessary for Mars where solar collectors are much less effective.
14. Scientific exploration and experimentation. Moon and Mars are certainly different worlds but the processes and especially human geological exploration tools, instruments, processes and techniques (which was only scratched during Apollo) will transfer to the exploration of Mars.