Abstract
Abstract
The subject of a lunar landing site/outpost/base implementation has been explored extensively over the past several decades. Due to the cost and complexity involved in the development of off-world facilities, serious efforts have been almost the exclusive domain of government. However, as technology continues to advance and a “NewSpace” industry has grown in recent years, discussions have turned to exploring something fundamentally different—a commercial lunar development. This article uses a set of input parameters put forth for a privately financed development by a group of thought leaders and venture capitalists that met in August 2014 at a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm. These inputs are used here as the driver for primary site selection criterion to identify a location so that further design and cost estimation efforts can proceed. Such a development would be privately financed in the $5–10 billion range and be operational by the early 2020s. It would be a permanently inhabited installation housing with at least 10 people on extended tours. This commercial lunar development's underlying unifying premise, requirements, and purpose is predicated upon economic development, industrialization, and settlement. Though there have been treatments in the past, none besides Ruzic realistically postulated a dedicated commercial development. A primary candidate site is identified and some further thoughts on its potential and the next steps for validation/verification are explored. It is stressed that this report only covers how factors associated with site selection lower the overall cost of a lunar development. A treatment of the full economic and systems engineering for site development would require a book-level exposition. The intent here is to provide the foundation for further treatment and to pick a single best site, based on our current knowledge, that covers the four most fundamental parameters for an off-world development. These are (1) power availability, (2) low-cost communications over wide areas, (3) availability of possible water (or hydrogen-based molecules) and other resources, and (4) surface mobility. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been transformational in this regard, building on earlier missions, and with its multispectral remote sensing instruments and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, we have dramatically improved abilities to make detailed site selection analyses. Online resources such as the ACT-REACT map from Dr. Mark Robinson's team at Arizona State University and the Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal at NASA Ames are tremendous resources aiding such investigations.
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