I don’t think space or lunar tourism is going to be the big draw that transforms the moon into something unrecognizable.
Instead, I think it’s going to more about large-scale mining and industrialization that scars the lunar surface.
So when it comes to possible industrial hellscapes that the moon might turn into, think less Las Vegas and more…Gary, Indiana. No offense, Gary, but you’re kind of an industrial hellscape.
Plans for the expansion of humanity in the solar system often call for a large lunar base. This is for several reasons.
For one, the Moon is the most easily accessible alien world, so if we want to officially become a multi-planet species, the Moon is only a few days’ ride away, compared to the multi-month journey it takes to get to Mars.
Second, because of that proximity, the moon makes a perfect testbed for technologies and techniques that we can deploy to other dead, airless rocks across the solar system.
Lastly, we can use the moon as a sort of staging post, where we have fuel and water depots that we can use to refill missions into deeper space.
All of this requires an intense amount of industry. Mining, processing, manufacturing, the works. Some lunar resources will never leave the surface, as we’ll use them for construction projects and manufactured goods.
Others, like specialized refined materials that we can only make in low-gravity environments, might become valuable goods for return to Earth. And the remainder will be sent to other colonies and research stations across the solar system.
But…what resources? We know that the moon is full of elements like oxygen, silicon, magnesium, and iron. All of these have a variety of uses, from water and fuel to computer chips and…walls, I guess.
But the trouble with the Moon is that there hasn’t been tectonic activity to concentrate rich deposits of minerals in key spots. As far as we know, which, admittedly, is very little, the elements and minerals of the moon are just kinda sprinkled around.
For example, take water ice. Water is perhaps the single most valuable commodity in the near term for space exploration.
We need water to live, and we can also use it to make fuel. But except for potential rich deposits in polar craters, the water on the moon varies in concentration from a low of 0.0001% to a high of..0.02%.
You’d have to dredge metric tons of regolith just to squeeze a few glasses of water out. The same is likely true of the other elements, especially heavier elements like iron and aluminum.
For quite a long time, lunar bases are going to require a steady supply of materials from the Earth, and even with the cheapest launches possible, that’s going to severely limit how much we can accomplish on the lunar surface.
In other words, the moon doesn’t make a very good jumping-off point for further explorations of the solar system, and it doesn’t have a lot going for it to make it attractive for investment itself.
Instead, the real money is in the asteroids. Even lower gravity than the moon, which makes it that much easier to land and take off. And much more concentrated in water and heavy elements, depending on the asteroid type.
I could much more easily imagine a captured asteroid serving as a watery waystation for wandering explorers than the lunar surface. And if you want heavy industry, you’re much more likely to want to target something like, I don’t know, 16 Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid that has something like a quadrillion dollars worth of heavy elements.
Since the moon isn’t like to be that great of an industrial hub, and isn’t likely to be a useful jumping-off point for further exploration, that leaves creating bases on the moon just for the sake of creating them on the moon.
So why don’t we just leave it alone? Consider a desolate place on our own planet, the Atacama Desert. Aside from some limited mining operations, there isn’t much there anyway that’s worth the time and cost it takes to get to it.
The same goes for Antarctica, which has an abundance of…ice…and….penguins, neither of which are in high demand in the global market. It’s easy to make those places nature reserves because they don’t have much attention from commercial interests anyway.
Instead, the mountain peaks of the Atacama are home to some of the world’s most advanced observatories, like the ALMA array and the upcoming Giant Magellan Telescope.
And Antarctica is home to many research stations and bases, including at the South Pole itself, which serves as an excellent astronomical Observatory.
These places are desolate, barren, and beautiful in their own ways. And we intentionally keep them that way, so that we can enjoy them as they are, not as they used to be.
Written by Paul Sutter/Universe Today.
