A Moon Base Made From Lunar Dust

Zothecula writes "The race to build a manned research station on the moon has been slowly picking up steam in recent years, with several developed nations actively studying a variety of construction methods. In just the past few months, the European Space Agency revealed a design involving 3D-printed structures and the Russian Federal Space Agency announced plans for a moon base by 2037. Now international design agency, Architecture Et Cetera (A-ETC), has thrown its hat into the ring with a proposal for SinterHab, a moon base consisting of bubble-like compartments coated in a protective layer of melted lunar dust."

Pay attention!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sintered != melted.

Re:Cart Before The Horse

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why worry about the moonbase construction material when you can't even land on the moon?

First things first.

Unless you have a plan for what you are going to do when you land, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to sink a bunch of money into developing the ability to land. Especially since the moon is so hostile, and not at the top of the list in terms of pure scientific interest, you really need a viable plan for your ground game before it becomes remotely worth the hassle.

This is 'first things first'.

The only plan that makes sense...

[Covalent]

...for a moon base is to use native materials. The cost of launching all of the base's construction materials to the moon would render the project prohibitively expensive. The notion of digging into the moon and building sub-surface bases runs into a similar problem: digging equipment is big and heavy. To my mind, this is one of only two economically feasible ways to build a lunar base (the other being to use existing lava tubes or caves).

Now, that's not to say this method would be cheap, but it would certainly be cheaper than building a base from materials brought entirely from Earth.

Re:Cart Before The Horse

[delt0r]

And yet this still does not give us a real why? What is the point of sending radiation intolerant, oxygen consuming meat bags on the moon? Its not science. For the same budget we can get much more done with even robotic probes. Its not 3He, for one there almost nothing there (1-50ppb) and we can't even burn DT let alone 3He which is ~60x harder to do. So we can learn how to go to mars? For what? To do what? Again science is best done by machines that handle the environment.

And no this is *nothing* like going to the new world. This is not even comparable to colonising the outback of Australia or Antarctica.

Re:Cart Before The Horse

[TangoMargarine]

So *when* (not if) some extinction-level (or mass-destruction-and-suffering-level, anyway) event happens to Earth, humans don't go extinct? How's that a reason for ya?