🖖 The Lunar economy

And so it begins.

I wanna share quickly what they’ll be up to on the Moon.

Now you’ve probably never heard of DARPA. 

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

They’re an American government research and development agency focused on emerging technologies for the military.

DARPA has laid out plans for the LunA-10. The Lunar Architecture 10 year plan will be a 7 month long study. It aims to unite isolated efforts within the scientific community and facilitate activities in space around and on the surface of the moon.

Say what?

When I say activities I mean commerce.

They want to discover and create commercially viable services by the year 2035.

An infrastructure for a permanent human presence on the Moon.

I guess we’ll be updating our maps to include more than one globe soon.

In the proposed model, NASA, international governments, and commercial industries would work together to scale up lunar exploration and commerce.

Put the pedal to the metal so to speak.

The study will also prioritise power transference and data communication technologies, like using lasers capable of beaming electricity and data.

Selected companies will have the opportunity to receive up to $1 million in funding and present their progress at the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium meeting in April 2024.

Grounded in the UN’s Outer Space Treaty, all developments and involvement are intended for peaceful purposes.

The long game

It’s an important step to help us get to Mars at scale. Being able to build and fuel spacecraft from the Moon would be much cheaper than launching from Earth.

1. The distance will be that much shorter at the right times.

2. The Moon’s gravity is weaker so rockets can launch with much less fuel- making each launch cheaper.

It’s one thing for countries to send crews of six to set-up temporary habitation modules and conduct their research. But it’s another for a community of different crews to be up there at the same time.

Each with their specialties working together.

• Astrobiologists

• Metallurgists

• Chemists

• Structural engineers

A reminder

I’m not sharing this in favour of or against this project. It’ll happen regardless of what I write here today.

I just wanted to keep you informed about space developments. And to show how close we’re getting to living beyond Earth.

I feel that neutral scientists should be the first to test and assess a new environment. From there we can decide how much of our presence and intervention should be allowed at any given location.

There will be beneficial resources for both our terrestrial needs and those required to venture farther away.

But it needs to be done in a responsible way that allows us to cherish our celestial bodies.

How many generations of humans have looked up at the Moon and Mars with eyes and hearts filled with awe and inspiration?

Have you?

So crazy how we can have conversations like this- it’s no longer the stuff of movies and dreams.

I love it.

Here is the abstract from the DARPA website.