The development, design, and construction of a lunar base will be an extremely complex technical task. It will be even more challenging to set up the funding scheme and the international cooperative structures that will be required to establish humankind's first outpost on another planetary body. This paper provides a summary of development issues, technology requirements, and research needs of a lunar base program. Non-technical aspects covered include the rationale for installing a lunar base, financing, cost, management, and legal issues, as well as general development aspects. Technical aspects discussed include the impact of the lunar environment on base design and development, Earth-Moon transportation, and site selection. The specific requirements of habitat design, thermal control, power supply, life support, communications, lunar surface transportation, extra-vehicular activities, and in-situ resources utilization are discussed, as well as logistics, cost, and modeling aspects. Also, it is outlined that a lunar base may very well serve as a testbed for technologies required for human Mars missions. The contents of this paper are based on countless lunar base-related studies that have been conducted in the past four decades and The Lunar Base Handbook that has been published recently and is also introduced here.
Lunar Base Development Issues, Technology Requirements, and Research Needs
Seventh International Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Business in Space ; 2000 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Space 2000 ; 760-767
2000-02-18
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Lunar Base Development Issues, Technology Requirements, and Research Needs
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