Despite the robot Moon lander Odysseus breaking one of its legs on touch-down in February, America’s plans to establish a long-term lunar human settlement are moving ahead. More than 50 years since the last time humans walked on the Moon and the Apollo 17 mission returned to earth, NASA’s Artemis programme is taking shape. It involves funding private companies such as Elon Musk’s Space X and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build the rockets, and Intuitive Machines to design and make the landers that, between them, would make a return possible. Despite pushing back the tentative date for the first human to return to the Moon to 2026, NASA is still planning to build a lunar base within a decade.
America is not the only country planning for the trip. There have been recent Japanese, Indian, Chinese and Russian unmanned missions. The European Space Agency (ESA) has its own programme, which involves collaborating with NASA.
The ideal of lunar settlements has preoccupied filmmakers and science fiction writers with increasing levels of technical plausibility ever since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey correctly predicted the idea of a space station in earth orbit acting as a gateway to a lunar base. Since then, films such as Moon, Gravity and The Martian have depicted sterile, utilitarian base camps and remote research stations in which isolated individuals are trapped in the most unforgiving conditions.
Xavier De Kestelier, an architect based at the international practice Hassell, began thinking about space flight as a child, and has worked on concepts for lunar, Martian and low-earth orbit living in his professional life. Having lead Norman Foster’s submission for NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge in 2019, he acknowledges that the modular bubble-shaped structures shown in Ridley Scott’s film The Martian, in which Matt Damon’s character struggles to survive after being marooned on the Red Planet, are likely to resemble what might actually be built with a fair degree of accuracy. Most recently, he led the design of the Lunar Habitat Masterplan, conceived in collaboration with ESA and Cranfield University.
The ambition of the project represents a significant step forward compared to previous plans for settlements in space, which have been designed to accommodate a maximum of 12 astronauts – the capacity of the International Space Station (ISS). De Kestelier envisages a community that could grow in self-contained stages to reach a maximum capacity of 144 people. This reflects the evolving nature of the idea of space travel and its fundamental purpose. SpaceX has launched some extremely wealthy tourists into space, and flights have gone up to the ISS, meaning that space tourism is well and truly underway. The Lunar Habitat Masterplan has been designed to cater for a wider range of people hoping to travel to the Moon. “The type of astronaut is changing; the astral community is becoming much more inclusive. Tourism will be a thing,” says De Kestelier. “In our masterplan, we’ve set it up so that it can be developed in different ways, whether that’s tourism, science, research, exploration or manufacturing. It’s a bit like having a masterplan for a city; you don’t always know how it will be filled in.”
It’s no secret that the Moon is a vastly inhospitable place. It has little atmosphere, and while scientists have identified limited concentrations of water molecules at the Moon’s poles, the Artemis mission will have to find usable amounts of water to make permanent settlement possible. Bringing it from earth in sufficient quantities would make no economic sense in the medium and long term, it would demand too many rockets to be feasible. Another equally difficult problem to overcome is the absence of a magnetosphere to protect the Moon from solar wind and radiation. “The big difference between the Moon and the earth is that our planet is electromagnetically charged. We have an invisible shield protecting us from radiation from the sun and the cosmos,” De Kestelier explains.
Living in a rock cave with walls thick enough to screen out harmful radiation would be the ideal solution, but since none have yet been identified, the ESA plan envisages that the astronauts would need to build their own protection. Cargo rockets would bring teams of lightweight solar-powered robotic printers, capable of operating in swarms to scoop up lunar dust and form it into thousands of solid hexapod forms, something like the concrete barriers used to guard against coastal erosion on earth. Also in the cargo bay would be a large lightweight plastic balloon packed flat, that once inflated would provide the form on which the robots would build the protective shell and ensure that it took the planned shape. A subsequent rocket would bring the living quarters themselves, also inflatable, that would be inserted under the shell in groups of three or four, each one equipped with a prefabricated airlock.
ESA’s masterplan suggests a basic inflatable unit that could house four astronauts, with its own solar power supply, and with enough space for them to live, work and socialise. The settlement would grow by adding more and more of these units, connected by airlocks, and inflatable external corridors to allow for communication and privacy.
The units would be pressurised and allow for an assortment of uses and layouts, such as kitchens, living rooms, labs, greenhouses and gyms. Each basic unit is 10m by 23m and is structured on three levels. Astronauts would sleep at the lowest level, and be able to move between one unit and another. Above that level there would be an elevated walkway in an inflated tube that De Kestelier calls a lunar street. There would also be an external route for astronauts to enter the lunar environment using rovers, vehicles that can operate in low gravity which were called Moon buggies in the Apollo era, three of which were left behind in the 1970s.
Life on the Moon is not all about having a place to rest your head during the extended night (which lasts 14 earth days), or a porch to put your Moon boots on. It’s also about making the place as welcoming a place as possible to live for the long-term. “We need to start planning for how larger communities can not only just survive, but also thrive and live on the Moon,” says De Kestelier. If you look at the ISS (and most of the film depictions), you’re met with a cliché assortment of cold, sterile materials and tiny spaces for the astronauts to manoeuvre in – there’s enough room to house a city of mechanical equipment, but nowhere to relax and unwind. The ISS doesn’t even have a living space – it was apparently cost-engineered out of the design. The Lunar Habitat Masterplan has designed a more comfortable settlement with both recreational spaces and bedrooms, cushioned by the aesthetics of a “nice little boutique hotel”, says De Kestelier. In the bedroom renders, for example, the floor has carpets and bamboo finishes. “We imagine growing bamboo on the Moon,” he adds. “It grows quickly in greenhouses and can be used to create more tactile environments.”
The location of the habitat also plays a vital role in the survival of its residents. If you’re on the Moon’s equator, you’d have 14 days of day and 14 days of night. A case of SAD would kick in every two weeks, the temperature would drop and you’d be unable to harvest enough solar energy. “Which is terrible and bad for your mental health,” says De Kestelier. The Lunar South Pole, where he has sited the settlement, is on a slightly higher level and the sun will turn 360-degrees around it over 28 days, providing a constant source of energy. “The sun is always there,” De Kestelier adds. It’s also near the Shackleton Crater, close to India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft landing base from last year, where ice can likely provide sufficient drinking water and suitable options for mining.
Having worked with anthropologists, psychologists, roboticists and astronauts, the Lunar Habitat Masterplan shows that space settlements don’t have to be as sterile as those that came before. The concept is yet to physically land on the Moon, but when astronauts return to space via the Artemis programme, and people start staying more permanently in the 2030s, these designs will be put through their paces. After thorough research and testing based on existing science, Xavier and the team are certain of their concept. “The way we approach design is, for us, never sci-fi. It’s always sci-fact.”
This feature appeared in Issue 2 of Anima, head here to purchase a copy or subscribe