it is an ambitious goal build a village on the moon within the next 14 years and
the European Space Agency has its sights set on doing just that
we spoke to director general of the ESA about what it would take to complete
such a project and how a moon village could help astronauts make it to Mars
it's clear for me that journey to Mars means not to fly to Mars in the next 5
or 10 years but it is a long way not only from the distance but also from
what we have to do on on the technology side to use the moon as a stepping stone
or as you said as a pit stop that's crucial because we have to test for
instance how to build structures on a planet on a moon instead of bringing all
the stuff there I mean to the moon all the missions to moon Apollo et cetera
they were bringing all the stuff to the tools to the site and did not use
regulates the moon soil for something what they wanted to do over there and in
moon village of course we would use the moon material for instance to build a
big observatory to look in deep into space from the moon which is especially
from the far side of the moon very interesting because you don't have all
the radiation from the earth how many inhabitants do you envision and
when you talk about construction I understand that 3d printers might become
of good use yes so this is a good question the next
question is usually who is the mayor of that emails asking me whether they can
apply already so it's not a question of inhabitants yes
I'm sure there will be also permanently astronauts cosmonauts are taken out
meaning from different nations but the main idea of the village is not to build
some houses a church and the community hall and something like that but the
basic idea is to put together the different
abilities that maybe one country is bringing in a good robot producing 3d
printing another country is bringing in for instance a very nice Rover and the
third country might bring in some astronauts so this is the idea of the
village bringing together different competencies from different nations and
so it's not a question of number of inhabitants but the number of
spacefaring nations nations participating and of course as big as
its number is the better it is we have more than 50 spacefaring nations around
the globe and my dream is as much as possible we should include it also could
save a lot of money I mean there was something about they could launch from
Earth a lot lighter once stuff is up there and it could save 10 billion
dollars a year by lightening the load from earth to the moon is that is that
right yeah but you see the money which is spent for for space is always a
discussion and what I tell in in Europe is if you go with the Metro in Paris and
you buy a ticket for one only one trip this is more money for one year which
you use which we are using for human spaceflight in Europe so it's not that
expensive as it always said because the number looks so big but if you look to
the world and all the inhabitants of the world the citizens of the world and if
you take a fraction of the money available then it's it doesn't count the
the humans need the spirit of inspiration and I'm not so ready to
calculate the benefit only in dollars or in Euros because I think inspiration is
what we need for the future and if we can try for inspiration this is much
more much higher value than any other by the way Apollo did that perfectly
fascinating stuff it's really been great talking to you I'm really bummed out
about the fact that you won't have a mayor of you're not me I was gonna send
you out when you misbehave you come back do you want to go do you want to go I
would go I mean my birthday is the same birthday as John Glenn the 18th of July
he was the first American orbiting the the earth and the oldest one orbiting
again so I'm still younger than he was when he had a second trip to the to the
orbit so I'm ready to go right tomorrow's fine Friday it's okay please
keep in touch thank you so much John Dietrich Valda the director-general of
the European Space Agency appreciate your time thank you thank you
I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of
the food got the flag up now
at all
on time please