If you could, would you live on the Moon?
Not as one of the courageous early settlers,
but as a citizen of a
fully-functioning Moon city.
In 2005, a design called the Shackleton Dome
caused a thrill in the aerospace industry.
This 40 km (25 mi) in diameter
and 1,524 m (5,000 ft) high glass dome
would arch over the Shackleton Crater
on the Moon,
housing the first Moon city.
Domes are the strongest structural object
and the most efficient shape to hold air pressure,
so building domes to protect people
from the hazards of space is a good idea.
But smaller interconnected domes,
based off the Shackleton Dome,
would be quicker and cheaper to build.
They would be made of glass and titanium
and anchored to bedrock,
allowing Moon cities to thrive inside.
The cities themselves would look ultra modern.
And not because of any stylistic taste,
but because aluminum and silicon,
the main component of glass,
are the elements found in anorthite.
Anorthite is a mineral found on the Moon
and would be an important local resource for construction.
With so much of it in
the surrounding landscape,
it would be foolish not to use it liberally.
Another popular construction material
used in this futuristic city
would be a concrete-like geopolymer
created from two additional, readily available materials.
Moon dirt and your pee.
Yes, your Moon house would be made from urine.
Well, you wouldn’t experience normal days
and nights anymore.
which means there are two weeks
of darkness and two weeks of light.
But because cities would be built
around the Moon’s poles,
you would only have to experience
four consecutive Earth days of darkness at a time.
Your diet would also change.
Due to finite resources and limited space,
Moon cities wouldn’t
raise animals for food production,
so your diet would be mainly plant-based.
You might have the option of eating fish,
but any other meat would have to come
frozen from Earth,
so that wouldn't be very practical.
The Moon’s major industry would be
mining and exporting helium-3,
a renewable source of energy,
and other materials.
You’d probably have a career as a scientist,
engineer, or miner.
As the Earth continues to use up
its precious resources,
the demand for helium-3 would grow.
Helium-3 is an efficient fuel source
in fusion reactors and sells for
roughly $40,000 U.S. per ounce.
Just 22,700 km (25 tons) of it
would power the entire United States for one year.
While rare on Earth,
it’s found in abundance on the Moon.
This export,
combined with space exploration
and Moon tourism,
would bring a lot of wealth to Moon cities
and help repay the expensive price tag
of initial settlement and construction.
with an extra $2 billion per year
in ongoing costs.
Building cities on the Moon would have
to be an international combination of
corporate and government partnerships.
Currently, treaties prevent any one country
from owning the Moon.
If a single country built a metropolis on the Moon,
it could be seen as a
violation of those treaties.
With no single country or nation,
the citizens of Moon cities
would probably try and form their own self-governing nation
once they became self-sufficient.
While domed Moon centers sound like science fiction,
they are realistically in our distant future.
Settling the Moon would open up
opportunities for science,
engineering, new ways of thinking,
and further space exploration.
It would be a necessity to create a viable
space base to branch out to other
parts of our Universe.
But before we could construct
immense cities on our Moon,
we would first have to build initial,
smaller colonies,
which involve their own galactic hurdles.
But that’s a story for another What IF.