• Based on President Bush’s plan in 2004 to establish a base on the moon, the cost projected to be about 100 billion dollars
• NASA said it would cost about 104 billion dollars for the first moon base by 2020 and 230 billion dollars by 2025
• Have businesses invest their products and technology into the project which will cut a lot of cost that the government would otherwise have to pay for
• It would be possible to get technology billionaires to invest private money into the project.
• Another option would be to have state voting on having a portion of tax dollars go into funding the project
• Our current technology for traveling to the moon isn’t capable of transporting the amount of supplies we would need to settle there but….
• NASA was developing new rockets called Ares 1 and Ares 5 to launch the rocket Orion which could potentially transport people and supplies
• The cost of a round trip to the moon is estimated to be about 3 billion dollars, but we would likely need multiple trips to transport supplies
• To transport supplies, the U.S government has proposed putting 6 billion dollars towards developing commercial spaceflights to the moon
• This craft would be able to transport travelers as well as supplies we would need
• Since the moon’s gravitational pull is 1/6th of earth’s, engineers would be able to build less gravity-restricted structures
• Local materials can also be used to build to cut the cost of bringing supplies from earth
• Lunar regolith (which is pulverized Moon rock) can be used to cover parts of habitats to protect settlers from cancer-causing cosmic rays and provide insulation
• One idea for a structure is an inflatable habitat. This is a good option because it optimizes living space but it also lightweight to transport from earth
• another option is to transport each part of the habitat separately and assemble it on the moon
• another alternative is to use existing moon rock to produce a new type of concrete to build a dome like structure. This would lower transportation costs by not having to transport materials from earth
• the time it would take to build the first small moon colony would be about 10 years
• the cost to transport 100 people is about 15 billion dollars – this includes their basic equipment and initial food
• The most important resources we would need to bring are food and water
• To lower the cost of transporting food, dehydrated food is one option
• This would be more efficient because it comes in minimal packaging and stores for years but…
• since most people living there wouldn’t be satisfied with freeze-dried food, hydroponic farming is an alternative
• Hydroponic farming is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions without soil
• This would also benefit because it would eliminate transportation cost and produce fresh food
• In terms of providing water, scientists have recently discovered about 1 billion gallons of water ice in a moon crater, so if we build colonies near ice deposits we would have a natural supply of water
• In addition, we would have to use purifying systems for removing toxins from the water and when melted and broken down into its components, ice water could also be used as fuel for rockets when converted to hydrogen and oxygen
• As far as providing power, solar panels could provide the energy needed to power the colony
• Scott Anders director of the Energy Policy Initiatives Center at University of San Diego School of Law estimated that the city of San Diego could be powered with 50 square miles of solar panels
• Therefore, since the moon colony would likely start small, it would require less space to build solar power structures
• In order to provide breathable air, oxygen can be extracted from the soil on the moon using heat and electricity
• Many private businesses are looking into transporting people on private trips that would cost about 200,000 dollars, these flights might be an option for a means of transporting people to the moon
• In a previous proposition to transport people to the moon, NASA’s Orion spacecraft would have taken 4 people at a time costing about 840 million dollars per unit
• If we were to use similar technology, it would cost about 4.2 billion dollars to transport the first 50 people
• Based on past manned missions, it takes about 3 days for a one way trip to the moon. Therefore it would probably take about a month to bring the first 50 people
• If the first 50 people were to rely only on the ice water found on the moon, it would last about 2 years, given that each person uses about 33,000 gallon of water a year
• Therefore, after the first 2 years we would have to transport at least 330,000 gallons of water to last the next 10 years, considering population growth
• Since shipping 1 gallon of water would cost about $400,000, an alternative to provide water would be shipping liquid hydrogen and mixing it with oxygen to create water
