We’ve all seen the meme: “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore”.
Well, did you know the US military apparently feels the same way, because they are putting
some big plans in motion for the Moon.
That’s right, besides being the reason why the tides change and, according to your astrologically-inclined
friends, the reason why you’ve been so irritated this week, the Moon is also the next big frontier
for the US army.
So what exactly is this high-level operational plan the US military has for the big orb in
the night sky?
We sent our investigators into the secret files of the Pentagon - something we probably
shouldn’t admit online - to find out.
When you hear about people colonizing the Moon, you might be imagining domed, high-tech
cities with jets whizzing around and holograms everywhere.
These visions of space colonization have been around for decades, if not centuries.
After all, plans to get people on the Moon are nothing new.
Before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin even landed on the Moon in 1969, when the US’
obsession with space was at its peak, the government was already proposing military
bases on the crater-filled rock that orbits us.
Project Horizon, a study done in 1959, looked into how feasible a military base on the Moon
might be, with twelve soldiers stationed there by 1966 to safeguard it.
We’re not quite sure what they thought the Moon needed safeguarding from, but based on
the year and the object of US paranoia at the time, we’re going to assume it was communists.
Either way, the idea was scrapped by Eisenhower, who, although being a fan of space and the
founder of NASA, decided to focus on more earthly projects like economic growth and
building an Interstate Highway System.
In the present day, now that we have either a) apparently solved all our Earth issues
or b) are starting to suspect Earth doesn’t want us around for that much longer, the US
military is once again seriously setting its sights on these other corners of our galaxy,
starting with what NASA calls “the gateway to our solar system” - the Moon.
However, the first thing the US military aims to build is something that might sound a little
mundane to those of us envisioning the new Star Wars-like future: factories.
It does make sense in some ways.
If the US military is going to set up permanent dwellings and habitats on the Moon, those
structures all need to be manufactured, assembled, and built somewhere.
And as we’ve previously discussed on this channel, carrying large loads into space is
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.
So what’s the solution?
Build it all in space instead!
More specifically, in orbit or on the lunar surface - for now, anyway.
DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and definitely not the supervillain
conglomerate it sounds like - has started a new program to build manufacturing technologies
that can be implemented off-Earth.
The program is called NOM4D - Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient
Design.
In addition to research projects, DARPA also apparently specializes in tongue twisters.
As Bill Carter, the program manager of the Defense Sciences Office stated, the point
of the program is to, “develop foundational materials, processes, and designs needed to
realize in-space manufacturing of large, precise, and resilient Defense Department Systems”.
In other words, this means we as a species have to completely reconceptualize how we
go about designing, manufacturing, and creating structures, as they have to adapt to a - quite
literally - alien atmosphere.
One idea is to use lunar regolith from the Moon - similar to volcanic sand on Earth - to
build such structures.
Professor Matthias Sperl, who has worked with the German Space Agency, says these materials
would allow engineers to build igloo-like structures on the Moon’s surface.
While theoretically, lunar regolith can be made as strong as concrete, we do not yet
have the technology to do so.
So far, only one-fifth of concrete’s strength has been achieved with regolith.
But this is why DARPA wants private proposals for Moon manufacturing - there has to be a
solution people haven’t thought of, or, invented yet.
More advanced systems like antennas and solar panels will be made from materials transported
from Earth, but assembled on the Moon, which will make them more precise and weight efficient
in the lunar atmosphere.
Besides the fact that it makes more logistical sense to build space structures in space using
local materials, instead of having to transport everything from Earth, the idea behind NOM4D
is also that technologies and structures made in space to begin with will be better able
to withstand the extreme conditions of life on the Moon.
The structures can also be more reliably tested in the atmosphere and conditions which they
will end up occupying.
If they were being built on Earth, an exact recreation of lunar conditions to test structures
in would be almost impossible to do.
Why?
Though it might look pretty and romantic to us down here on Earth - or like a big pizza
pie according to one Mr. Dean Martin - the Moon is shockingly inhospitable to human life,
and therefore, also to most of what humans have built.
Temperatures hover between 127 and -173 degrees Celsius, or approximately 260 and -343 degrees
Fahrenheit, much of it depending on if you’re on the shade; aka the dark side of the Moon.
Think of this temperature fluctuation like having to put on a jacket after the sun goes
down, except a thousand times more extreme and the weather immediately kills you.
So actually, nothing like that.
To give you an idea of how insane these temperature jumps are, the lowest temperature ever recorded
on Earth was -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica, compared
to the Moon’s low of -343 degrees.
Meanwhile, the Moon’s high of 260 degrees is about 50 degrees higher than the temperature
for boiling water.
To add to the hindrances of life and industry on the Moon, one lunar day is about 29 Earth
days.
The means there are two weeks of sunshine, and then two weeks of darkness.
So using solar power, which might otherwise be a great idea for a celestial body that
spends a good amount of time getting pelted by the sun, will also pose challenges.
There’s no wind for wind power, and the lunar atmosphere means we can’t exactly
recreate a lot of the energy generating sources we use here on Earth.
However, DARPA is dead set on overcoming these challenges.
The agency has already publicly stated that in its plans it assumes an “established
space ecosphere by 2030 comprising reliable logistics and facilities.”
So human inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs need to get the ball rolling on Moon manufacturing,
and fast.
The point is to create “designs so mass efficient that they can only be built off-Earth”.
But what does that mean?
Well, first of all, because the Moon’s gravity is approximately six times weaker than ours,
a structure on the Moon only needs to have one-sixth of the load bearing strength than
it would here - [pause] - in this video we’re assuming everyone reading this is currently
on planet Earth.
In addition to this efficiency though, other factors need to be taken into consideration.
One of the most important is shielding.
The surface of the Moon is pelted with continuous solar and cosmic radiation, as well as meteorite
impacts.
In order to have any kind of longevity, structures have to be able to withstand these dramatic
environmental pressures.
Even worse, if you’ve ever been in a dust storm or in the general direction of Nevada,
you know how annoying dry dust clinging to the air all around you can be.
The Moon’s surface is covered with fine particles which frequently and easily get
shot up into the atmosphere and hang around, especially because there is less gravity to
bring them down fast.
That means building surfaces, air-locks, and any other exposed areas have to take this
constant dust exposure into consideration as well.
Lastly, the Moon is surrounded by a vacuum.
Certain construction materials will not be chemically or molecularly stable under vacuum
conditions.
Creating such lunar-resilient structures may sound like an impossible achievement at this
point; however, you might also be thinking, how much is all this going to cost?!
After all, even the best, most ingenious design will need money, and most likely lots of it,
to be implemented.
Well, in 2016 MarketWatch had estimated that reaching the Moon costs between $7 and $13
billion, and constructing structures and bases would cost between $28 and $57 billion.
These might sound like astronomical sums, but keep in mind that this is a US military
project.
An average aircraft carrier costs around $13 billion.
The US Defense Department had a budget of $705 billion in 2020, but total US military
spending came out closer to $934 billion.
So while getting to the Moon and building on it may be costly, it’s not an unreasonable
amount of money for something the US military deems a priority.
As for why the US might be moving a Moon base higher up on its priority list, the answer
is simple: competition.
The China National Space Administration - CNSA for short - and European Space Agency - ESA
- have already unveiled plans to build Moon bases, with the ESA first announcing its plan
as early as 2016.
In fact, even private enterprises have become involved in this new “Moon race”.
Elon Musk - you didn’t think we’d have a discussion about space exploration and somehow
leave out SpaceX’s quirky founder did you?
- revealed plans for a lunar colony in August 2017.
Musk is a big believer in making humanity “interplanetary”, and is already offering
advance booking for humans to go up into space on one of SpaceX’s many rockets.
DARPA seeks to draw on private sector innovators like Musk, and commercial space companies
in general to come up with their next big breakthrough, and most importantly, pull ahead
of China in the new race to the Moon.
The US government is concerned that if China establishes a base prior to the US, it will
be able to claim the best location and resources as well as establish the general rules of
conduct for governments on the Moon going forward.
The good news is, the US space agency’s Artemis program - Artemis being the goddess
of the hunt and the Moon in Greek mythology - aims to have astronauts on the Moon by 2024
to start setting up a permanent human presence.
And surprisingly, there are some natural resources on the Moon that could be used to aid the
construction of a human habitat.
Some scientists hope to tap into the water and material deposits beneath the Moon’s
surface to help set up a permanent human colony.
While a more permanent human settlement is being set up, DARPA hopes these manufacturing
facilities will operate mostly with the aid of highly advanced robots, which may be better
adapted to Moon living.
It’s a great inconvenience for us that humans need things like water, food, and, oh yeah,
a breathable atmosphere to survive.
However, we seem to be OK with destroying those resources on our planet as well, so
perhaps there’s another way to live we don’t yet know of.
Currently, the NOM4D program has already officially started.
On February 26, 2021, DARPA held a Proposers’ Day event for companies interested in pitching
their mass-efficient lunar designs.
The rest of the program will then be divided into three 18-month phases to create “sub-scale
exemplar structures” - a fancy way of saying smaller samples - so DARPA can adequately
evaluate each proposal’s material, manufacturing and design capabilities in order to pick the
proposal best suited to lunar manufacturing.
Phase I is proof of concept for the proposed materials and designs.
They must prove that they can meet the structural efficiency targets of the military using DARPA’s
exemplar problem of a 1-megawatt solar array.
In Phase II, based on the example of a 100 meter diameter radio frequency reflector,
companies’ designs must focus on risk reduction and surviving the technical maturation of
their technology to continue meeting structural targets while maintaining the precision such
advanced technology requires.
Finally, in Phase III, the proposals must pass through the most stringent test yet,
enabling infrared reflective structures suitable for use in a long-wave infrared telescope.
All these phases are programmed to test technologies and designs for the majority of the hardships
they will face on the lunar surface.
Now for the final, and perhaps most important, question: what exactly will these structures
and manufacturing facilities do on the Moon?
Well...we’re not exactly sure.
Since the testing phases have to do with solar arrays, infrared telescopes and radio frequency
antennas, it’s probable that DARPA hopes to establish some scientific and military
activity on their lunar base.
However, the US military has not fully disclosed their plans.
The European Space Agency’s director-general, Jan Woerner, has a vision for a “Moon village”
that would include scientists, tourism, and artists.
And China, quite naturally, refuses to say much at all.
So far, their National Space Administration has just shared plans to build a lunar base
that will be shared by multiple countries.
Their exploration efforts have focused on the Moon’s South Pole, an area many scientists
consider amenable to human habitation - as amenable as any area on the Moon can be - due
to the presence of water ice.
No matter what the outcome of the NOM4D program is, one thing is clear.
After a long pause, we are once again in a new Space Race; or, more accurately, Moon
Race.
When do you think the US Military will build bases on the Moon?
And what do you think they will do there?
Comment and share your thoughts below!
In the meantime, while you wait for your new Moon home to be built to see if life is any
better there, check out this video right here or another one to pass the time!