“The question is what to do after the space station,’ says Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck, University of London. “The moon is the next logical stepping stone.” But so far I can tell you that the moon village is my favourite solution for the future,” he told the Guardian. “It’s an inspiring concept, and if others have a better idea, I am ready to change my mind. Woerner has kicked the idea around for a while, but will raise it formally with ESA’s ministerial council for the first time later this year. In time, Woerner says, it would build up the vital infrastructure and practical know-how that humans will need to head more safely into the farther reaches of the solar system. Unlike a single, all-consuming and costly mission, the moon village is intended to grow incrementally as an open, international effort. This is not what I’m thinking about.’ Photograph: ESA/Foster + Partners Another might break into lunar tourism.ĮSA’s Jan Woerner is quick to point out that his moon village vision is not ‘single houses, a school, a church, a swimming pool, a bakery, an undertakers. A tech firm could extract water from polar ice and turn some into hydrogen, oxygen and rocket fuel. A single agency could test whether robots can make radiation-proof habitats from lunar regolith. A band of nations might build a telescope on the far side of the moon, where observations are shielded from Earth’s electromagnetic din. The “village” he has in mind is a diverse community of public and private organisations that work on the moon together. While Nasa remains fixated on sending people to Mars - a challenge of daunting technical difficulty - ESA under Woerner sees the moon as the obvious next venture for a long time to come. If humans want to maintain a presence in space, they need a new plan, and soon. The $150bn outpost will plunge back to Earth in a fireball above the Pacific Ocean leaving astronauts with nowhere to go. In a decade or so, the International Space Station will be done with. And so will be its achievements.What he does have in mind is the future of human space exploration. The symposium hosted last month by ESA is definitely a milestone. Until then, there are still a number of studies to conduct, but this new perspective has brought a positive energy not only in Europe, but all over the world due to the confidence that it brings and to the potential that it holds. Moreover, having a refueling station on the Moon will, once more, help reduce the costs involved in sending astronauts to Mars. As calculations and studies conducted by scientists have shown that astronauts could launch from Earth with 68 percent less heavy liquid fuel if they collect the rest of it from a Moon base, the idea of a Moon village becoming reality is imminent. The aim of this international endeavor is the path that it will open to the space exploration objectives, namely the Solar System and the manned missions on Mars. No need to transport such resources from Earth and this way, the costs can significantly diminish. A brilliant idea, as it will prove itself to be. Though it may come as a surprise for some, the results have revealed that the most suitable would be to use lunar soil. As a result, a huge 3D printer supplied by the UK manufacturing company Monolite is supposed to construct the first village on the Moon.Ī series of tests conducted in 2013 has determined the solution in terms of the best materials to use when constructing the structures on the Moon. The potential of the 3D printing will help scientists make the best of it when creating the lunar base. Accordingly, robots sent on the Moon will start building a lunar village which later on will be inhabited by astronauts. During the International Symposium on Moon which took place in the Netherlands last month, ESA announced that the construction of a manned lunar base should begin in the 2020s.
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