(Last edited: Wednesday, 27 September 2023, 2:47 PM)
By SpaceMusk - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76817044
Short Definition:
A Moon Base is a type of facility on the surface of the moon, that could help us building up a colony on the moon.It could be the next frontier on our endeavour to become intergalactic and it could be a steppingstone to regions, that are not feasibly reached by spacecraft from earth, or it could become a centre for industry. In this way we could outsource industry or practices, that are not likely to become CO2-neutral soon.
Detailed Definition:
A Moon Base is a type of facility on the surface of the moon, which enables human activity on the moon.
As China and USA chose the same locations for their proposed moon bases, it could lead to the next smaller space race to the moon, only this time the mission would be to stay on it and to leave a small team to colonize the moon.
Ice from the poles could be melted to get Water and this in turn could be split by electrolysis to hydrogen and oxygen, which are the main ingredients for liquid rocket fuel.
The moon base could be used as a steppingstone to far distances because the rocket fuel needed to transport cargo from the moon is much lower than the earth due to the decreased escape velocity. So, a moon base could be used as a stopover to other proposed ideas like asteroid mining or it could help the Mars base.
To justify the high investment costs, the moon base needs to be economically viable sooner rather than later. The mining of important resources like aluminium, titanium, and helium -3, which is used to fuel fusion reactors, could be helpful, if it proves to be economically and ecologically viable.
A few suggestions could make this project much more autonomous by producing living soil from lunar regolith and mixing the moons soil, regolith and a plant-based glue to produce a 3D-printing material, which will prove to be absolutely essential for this kind of project.
Etymology:
Moon from Old Englishmōna
Base from Latin basis and from Ancient Greekβάσις (básis)
Sample Sentence(s):
A Moon base could help with making fusion reactors more efficient, by having a higher abundance percentage of Helium-3, which is used as a fuel in those reactors.
If a Moon base can prove to become autonomous, we could outsource some of our CO2- intensive industries to the moon, if it also proves to be economically viable
French: base lunaire German: Mondbasis Polish: baza księżycowa Swedish: månbas
