The Moon As A Base

There have been suggestions, some coming from the White House, that we send another manned mission to the Moon (in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing in 1969) and subsequently make Earth’s satellite the launching pad for a manned mission to Mars. There may be other ways to go to the Red Planet, including a direct Earth-to-Mars option. Notwithstanding missions to Mars and other planets, there certainly are compelling reasons to make the Moon our base in space.

Answering Scientific Questions

One reason is that we know so little about our satellite. Less than half (about 40 percent) of the Moon’s surface has been mapped in high resolution. Scientists have had very little opportunity to study the lunar surface with multi-spectral instruments that could provide detailed insights into the Moon’s structure and composition. More scientific exploration could possibly help resolve such unanswered questions as:

Did the Moon form from the impact of a giant body colliding with Earth, or directly from accretion out of the primordial material that also resulted in the formation of the Earth?
What are the Moon’s internal structure and its thermal evolution?
What can the composition and other properties of the lunar craters tells us about the bombardment history of the Earth, the evolution of Earth’s climate, and the evolution of life?
How did the Moon’s craters form and evolve?
What can studies of the regolith — the blanket of broken rock and soil that covers the surface of the Moon — tell us about the evolution of the Sun?
How can regolith be used for building structures on the Moon?
What is the nature of the extremely unstable lunar atmosphere?

These are extremely interesting, if not vital, questions, and only intensive lunar surveys would make it possible to obtain the answers. The effort may be better managed if there were a human base of operations on the Moon. Our astronomers are certainly interested, because of the enormous environmental advantages to be gained in making astronomical observations from the Moon.

On the other hand, there are many environmental challenges to operating on the Moon’s surface — for instance, the steady bombardment of cosmic rays and micrometeoroids, and the effects of clinging lunar dust. The costs of building and operating observatories will have to be studied and compared with alternatives, like having observatories in geostationary orbit or on Earth.

Most of the material needed for the Moon base could come from minerals and other materials to be extracted from the lunar surface. These materials could also be utilized for building infrastructure in near-lunar space.

Jumping Off Point to Mars

A lunar base could assist human crews in evaluating and adapting to the risks of long space voyages and exploration. As the experiments in the International Space Station have shown, human crews exposed for long periods to the space environment must contend with many physiological and psychological risks to health. In order to provide adequate margins of safety for human crews, scientists need to find ways to avoid cosmic rays and excessive radiation from the Sun and to offset the physiological effects of prolonged weightlessness or extended exposure to fractional gravity outside of Earth.

Human crews also face psychological risks from long-term confinement in small quarters in an extremely hostile exterior environment. Extended stays on the lunar surface could generate useful information about these effects, which would help reduce risks for human crews sent to explore Mars.

Exploring the Moon with a robotic roving vehicle and other robotic devices would generate valuable scientific and engineering data, which could be used in designing exploration vehicles for use on Mars. The Moon could be a laboratory for a robotics base. Admittedly, lunar activity is only half that of Mars and the lunar surface has vastly different properties, but testing robotic devices will provide data of considerable scientific interest and engineering information to help reduce risks of failure for similar devices on the Martian surface.

Has the Moon Been A Base?

All the data so far gathered about the Moon have not been easy to weave together into a comprehensive explanation. There are a number of lunar anomalies that until now defy the efforts of scientists to explain them. The scientists who have been investigating these anomalies have been disturbed enough to raise the possibility that certain areas of the Moon appear to show the ruins of artificial structures. Some of these speculations are summarized below:

In an area called Mare Crisium (on the Moon, the craters that you see are called “mares”), photographs have been taken of a particular spot which seems to show a higher albedo (light reflection) factor that the surrounding area. It cannot be explained why the spot would appear so much brighter, unless the assumption is made that this portion is made of crystalline substances. On a section near the sides of an ascent, there are figures that a member of the study team describes are unmistakable indicators of architectural constructs or archaeological remains. There are indications of angular supports that you would find on engineering structures along the sides of a mountain slope. Between these angular supports, there appear vertical and horizontal structures very similar to trusses and beams. It seems that the whole area along that part of the crater is peppered with many rectilinear, concentric complexes that exhibit structural integrity. In short, they appear to be constructed artificial structures and not just the random result of natural geologic patterns that occur randomly elsewhere.

The region surrounding, and including, the crater Kepler is also riddled with geometric structures that appear artificial and constructed. These are set within areas that are of traditional geologic structuring. There is a particular section in the wide network of angularities along the Kepler crater that appears as a concentric walled structure, somewhat similar to a ziggurat or a fortress. Once again there is a spot near these geometric structures that contains crystalline material.

There have been studies that propose using local materials on the Moon for future lunar bases. The lunar soil is thought to be appropriate for making glass or ceramic which, under lunar conditions, would have the structural integrity of steel. There are other craters on the Moon that also exhibit geometric structures and crystalline qualities. In effect, the study team scientists are saying there are indications that someone has already been to the Moon, ahead of humans, and constructed structures.

The Moon has been a base before … or so it would seem.