HOW TO

DEVELOP
THE
MOON
Ian Long
Copyright © 2024 Ian Long

All rights reserved.

ISBN:9798866079476

Second Edition
Dad, Jennifer, Stephen, Veronica…
-Thanks
 Composition of Lunar and Terrestrial Crust
Element Earth Moon

O (wt%) 46.0 41.6-44.6

Si (wt%) 28.8 19.8-21

Fe (wt%) 4.3 4-12.3

Al (wt%) 8.0 7.3-14.4

Ca (wt%) 3.9 7.5-11.3

Mg (wt%) 2.2 3.5-6

Ti (wt%) 0.4 0.3-4.6

Na (ppm) 23,600 2000-5000

K (ppm) 21,400 1000

P (ppm) 98 800

Mn (ppm) 716 200-2000

Ni (ppm) 56 200

Zr (ppm) 203 100-400

V (ppm) 98 130

C (ppm) 200-1990 <100

F (ppm) 525 70

Cl (ppm) 472 50

Co (ppm) 24 40

Li (ppm) 18 10

Cu (ppm) 25 8
From Apollo 11, 12, and 16. Lunar regolith data is extremely limited and
should be taken with a grain of sodium ions.
 CONTENTS

WHY? 1

A COLD START 8

ADDRESSING THE XLEPHANT 13

STELLAR STEPS 19

STAINLESS STEEL SEEDS 23

I TRISO HARD BUT IN THE END 34

CHROMIUM ANODES 47

BREAK GROUND 56

FOOD & WATER 60

THE ENVELOPE’S BACK 68

PROFIT 74

WALMART 82

INFRASTRUCTURE 93

THE ENTROPIC ABYSS 104

 WHY?
Today detractors argue that “space colonization” is about
greed, ego, and ambition; that it stems from the rotten human
urge to conquer everything in sight. They are wrong. It is not
about conquest. It’s about carrying capacity.
Think of your proudest moment, the times when you felt
a surge of love, or witnessed the miraculous complexities of
nature — all these echoes in the grand symphony of life.
Nuclear war is particularly terrifying because it would mean
your entire life, all those echoes, were pointless. And not just
your life– but all human lives including those who came
before: everything literally everyone did, all the effort,
struggle, and sacrifice to get to this point– ALL OF
HISTORY– every time a mother worried, every time a father
was proud, every achievement, every failure… all would be
rendered meaningless if the Earth is wasted in Armageddon.
In this final act the ultimate question would be answered:
what's the point?

Conclusively, it would appear, there was none.

Thus nuclear annihilation is the ultimate form of nihilism
proving every suicidal thought correct. Every triumph over
pain and suffering was meaningless.

It was going to end painfully anyway.

1
 It gets worse. There are more dangers lurking in the dark.
Nuclear war is just one potential future fail-state. The list of
mass extinction events throughout Earth's history is long but
five stand out as particularly brutal. Five times over the past
3.7 billion years of history where biomass fell so far that all
known life in the universe teetered perilously at the brink of
extinction. To give you a sense, the Permian–Triassic also
known as ‘The Great Dying’ was Earth's largest extinction
event and saw the obliteration of 57% of biological families,
83% of genera, 81% of marine species, and 70% of terrestrial
vertebrate species. It was caused by a relentless period of
massive volcano eruptions, global warming, and asteroid
impacts. It took 30 million years for the terrestrial vertebrate
fauna to fully recover. This is but one of four events that
serve as stark reminders of the thin line that separates Earth's
vibrancy from void, existence from extinction, and
consciousness from cosmic oblivion. Nuclear war might
happen. There's potential. But it has never happened before.
And, fortunately, it is entirely within our control. With
nuclear war, we would be the authors of our own destruction.
Not so with these others…. These, unfortunately, have
happened before. Entirely out of our control. Events like
these will happen again. It’s only a matter of time.
Impacts by comets and asteroids are obvious. Less so is
the likely possibility of a near-Earth supernova– a massive
stellar explosion obliterating everything within a
1000-light-year radius. At present, there are six near-Earth
supernova candidates within this distance.

2
 If that doesn’t get us then in about 250 million years all
continents will converge to form Earth’s next supercontinent,
Pangea Ultima in which only about 8% of Earth's land will be
habitable for complex life.

The majority of this continent will be desert.

This will seriously impact the real estate market.
You hear that Michael Burry
This will arise as a result of two processes:

First, more and more CO2 will be released over time as a

natural consequence of plate tectonics. By 250 million years
the CO2 in the atmosphere will increase to over five times
today’s average due to changes in volcanic rifting and
outgassing. This will increase the temperature of the planet.
Second, over time the luminosity of the Sun will steadily
increase resulting in a rise in the solar radiation reaching
Earth. In 250 million years emissions from the sun will have
increased by 2.5%. This may not sound like much but
combined with the increase in CO2 levels it’s enough to
dramatically shift the conditions on the Earth's surface,
altering the global climate and resulting in unbearable
conditions for complex life.
By this point the Earth’s mean temperature is expected to
be approximately 46.5 C or 116 F. In comparison the mean
temperature on Earth today is only 15 C or 59 F. At these
temperatures, most complex modern life would have a lot of
trouble surviving as the vast majority of proteins would
denature. Temperatures would be more habitable around the
poles and in the ocean, thus leaving only about 8% of Earth’s
landmass habitable to complex life.

3
 In about one billion years, the solar luminosity will be
10% higher, causing the atmosphere to become a "moist
greenhouse" boiling off the oceans. So, best case scenario life
on Earth has about one billion years left. Life has been on
Earth for 3.7 billion years so it’s got about 20% of that time
left before it’s game over, lights out. To put this into
perspective let’s personify all known life into a single person.
A US male. The average life expectancy for a US male is
73.5 years old. If all known life in the universe was a US
male then it’s about 59 years old and I’m a doctor telling you
that if you don't change your diet by developing the Moon
then best case scenario, if everything goes perfectly, you will
live for a maximum of 14 and a half years. Better start
working on that will.
We are not a young planet and intelligent life only evolved
once. Now. It took 3.7 billion years to do so. But life doesn’t
develop the Moon, not even complex life. Humans are the
only animals that can actually leave Earth, but we don’t do it
by ourselves. We built a civilization that makes rockets and
space suits and this took time to grow. It took two million
years of hominin evolution for modern homo sapiens to
emerge, 150 thousand years for the neolithic revolution to
occur giving rise to civilization, and 12 thousand years of
growth and innovation for space flight to occur. Only in the
past 62 years have we been able to leave Earth.

How long can this last?

4
 When people think about the modern world ending they
often think something along the lines of:

“Well it grew once, it can grow again. It’s unlikely all

humans will go extinct in the case of a cataclysm and while it
took 160k years for them to unlock spaceflight, this is
actually only 0.064% of our 250 million-year deadline– so we
actually have lots of time to reinvent civilization over and
over again. That’s many chances to develop the Moon. Maybe
it won’t be humans, but some form of intelligent life that
comes after. We’ll figure it out eventually.”

I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s my contention that even a basic

civilization, and especially one that becomes capable of
reaching orbit, is not guaranteed to emerge just because you
have some intelligent life crawling around. Neanderthals and
Denisovans were basically as intelligent as modern humans
and they went extinct after 350,000 and 400,000 years
respectively without ever building a city. Modern humans
have only been around half as long and 93.75% was spent
doing nothing particularly special. Even if civilization does
rise again it isn’t guaranteed to become spacefaring. When
civilization finally did emerge it spent the first twelve
thousand years just rising and falling, with a highwater mark
generally measured by a pyramid. As far as we know there is
only one planet capable of harboring life, and life only
evolved one time. It took billions of years for complex
intelligent life to emerge and out of all complex intelligent
life only one species ever built a civilization, and out of all
civilization's long history of rising and falling only once did it
rise higher than a pyramid– high enough to reach the Moon.

5
 So no, reaching orbit is not a natural conclusion of the
march of civilization, and civilization isn’t guaranteed to
emerge from intelligent life, thus it’s not obvious we actually
have lots of time to reinvent civilization over and over again.

How long will this weird high water mark last?

How high can this tower of Babel climb?
We truly are at a unique moment.
It’s not guaranteed to last.

The window of opportunity is closing and it may never

open again. Remember it took 30 million years for the
terrestrial vertebrate fauna to fully recover from the
Permian–Triassic extinction event. If we care at all about life
then we need to do everything within our power to pry that
window open.

Life on Earth will be wiped out at some point.

It's guaranteed.

But death is not so scary when your life has meaning

derived from knowing that your actions in life will, in some
big or small way, help those who come after you. It's easier to
die when you have happy healthy children because in some
ways you're not really dying, you live on through them as a
memory… a ghost. Your life had meaning– you served as a
seed from which the future grew. Your life kept the music
going in the continuous chaos-reducing, order-producing,
information-propagating chemical ballet. Earth's death is not
so scary when its life had meaning derived from knowing that
its existence allowed life to flourish to the point it was able to
propagate across the heavens. It's easier to die when you have
happy healthy children prospering across vast swaths of space
because in some ways you're not really dying, you live on
through them as a memory… a ghost.

6
 Earth's life had meaning– she served as a seed from which
the future grew. Earth's life kept the music going in the
continuous chaos-reducing, order-producing,
information-propagating chemical ballet.

We must become a spacefaring multi-planetary species.

This is how we avoid nihilistic annihilation.
This is how we author a good evolutionary destiny.

To become a spacefaring multi-planetary species,

propagating life across the sky, illuminating the entropic
abyss with the light of consciousness… creating cloud cities
on Venus, manufacturing methane on Mars, mining asteroids
for ice and metals, germinating seeds on Ganymede then we
must first develop the Moon. Considering humans are the
only thing the Earth has ever grown that can actually reach
orbit. The burden of responsibility falls on us. We cannot
count on aliens or future humans to do it for us, the chances
are too slim. Armageddon is waiting for us tomorrow, we
have to make the leap now. Within our lifetimes.
So why should you care about developing the Moon?
Because every day the Moon is left untouched is a step closer
to the nihilistic abyss. The time has come to seriously
envisage a settlement blueprint that transcends our earthly
boundaries, to plant seeds of life where once there was
barrenness. If we don't get this right then in all likelihood
we'll be confined to Earth forever. What could have been
Humanity's beautiful cradle will become a gilded tomb.
Consciousness smothered in the womb.

It’s time to develop the Moon.

7
 A COLD START
Man harnessed the power of the atom on July 16th, 1945.
World War 2 ended shortly after. When the ash settled former
allies, ideologically opposed, found themselves staring down
the barrel of each other's war machines, but the fear of atomic
heat froze each, so open hostilities remained cold and an iron
curtain rose. Thus the world entered into a new era. Things
weren’t great, but they were better than they had been over
the past three decades which were marked by an economic
depression sandwiched between two world wars. The wars
were over, the economy was recovering, the old colonial
system was unraveling, global literacy rates, life expectancy,
and social mobility were all increasing, and infant mortality
and world hunger were decreasing. In this new era, the future
seemed bright. All one had to fear was fear itself. Oh…and
absolute nuclear annihilation. On the 29th of August, 1949
the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful
nuclear weapon test.
If the Soviets were good at anything it was
ideologically-driven paranoid genocidal purges… and
science. The Soviets believed that anybody, no matter their
race, religion, gender, or social class– all could be made into
good communists, they just had to be educated. And educate
they did. The Soviets excelled in education, as long as that
education agreed with communist ideology, and given that
science is typically apolitical and yields great advancements
that might give the Soviet war machine a technological edge,
science was heavily emphasized. While American kids were
competing on football fields and bullying math nerds, Soviet
children were competing over chess boards and sending math
nerds to Moscow to compete in prestigious state-sponsored
tournaments.

8
 Seven years on since the test of the first Soviet atom
bomb and Russia–not the US–maintained the technological
edge. If there were any who doubted this, the launch of
humanity's first satellite by the soviet union on the 4th of
October, 1957 quickly dispelled all doubt. We often fail to
remember that Sputnik was a satellite purposefully built from
a hollowed-out nuclear warhead. But to those on the ground
in the US scouring the sky on that early October night, the
message was clear.
Terror ensued.
The United States prided itself on being at the forefront of
technology and immediately began developing a response. In
December of the same year, only three months after the
launch of Sputnik, the US attempted to launch a satellite of its
own.
It blew up on the launch pad.
But a month later, on January 31st, 1958, the Americans
succeeded with the successful launch of Explorer I, the first
U.S. satellite to successfully orbit the Earth. In July of that
same year, Congress passed legislation officially establishing
NASA. The race was on.
12 years later the Apollo program proved the US’s ICBM
technology was superior to that of the USSR’s, but the
program was expensive. Like really, really expensive. After
six landings it became apparent there were diminishing
returns for research value with each mission. Only so many
rocks and soil samples were needed and with the costs so
high per mission it became less and less attractive to
Congress which really preferred to spend US taxpayers’
hard-earned dollars prolonging the Vietnam War to fulfill
their terms of employment as fairly-elected representatives of
the military-industrial complex.
To NASA this wasn’t great news– but it was okay as they
already had a lot of rocks and soil samples to examine, and it
was obvious to everyone that the next step was to establish a
permanent lunar outpost. But before that could be done two

9
things needed to happen. First launch costs needed to be
reduced, and second it wasn’t actually obvious humans could
survive in low-gravity high-radiation environments for
extended periods of time. Besides the obvious risk of
developing cancer, there were concerns about brain and organ
deformation, and bone and muscle atrophy, so while some
guys worked on tackling the launch cost problem with the
development of a reusable launch vehicle (the space shuttle),
others worked on the human-body-in-space problem with the
simultaneous development of the Skylab space station,
launched in 1973.
Over the next 40 years, NASA built a bunch of space
shuttles and space stations– all the while being pummeled by
budgetary cuts and politics slowing them down every step of
the way– but by the time the International Space Station was
complete, there was no doubt humans could live in space for
prolonged periods of time with only a slight increase in
cancer risk, eyeball deformation, and muscular atrophy
(given proper exercise). It was time to begin planning a return
to the Moon. While NASA had successfully answered the
‘human-body-in-space problem’ they had been unsuccessful
in lowering launch costs. By 2011 the cost to launch a
kilogram into orbit had not fallen at all since 1969 and the
shuttle program, 40 years later, still cost around the same as
the Saturn V despite being reusable! Oh well, who cares, it’s
just money, right? Why should the US Congress care about
how many pieces of paper it takes to get into orbit?
So on July 8th, 2011 the last space shuttle flew and two
months later the Space Launch System (SLS) project was
initiated to develop a new lunar launch vehicle for a new era
and a new generation (nevermind the fact it’s mostly cobbled
together from old hardware made in an old era by an old
generation). It needed to be political-proof as NASA was
afraid the project might be axed any time Congress reviewed
its annual budget; so NASA went straight to the source and
contracted the SLS to be built by the same industrial entities

10
that gave birth to the horrific monstrosities lurking in the
shadows of Capitol Hill. With their masters making money
from SLS no four-year congressional puppet would terminate
the project on a whim. Unfortunately, these contracts used the
cost-plus contracting funding scheme which works like this:
NASA says "here's how much money we're going to give you
to build this rocket, but we'll also pick up the bill on anything
that goes over that budget." The problem with this scheme is
it offers no incentive to remain within budget or on schedule.
In fact, timeline slips literally mean more money for the
contractors which is why it’s the government's favorite
method of procurement. This is how we got an SLS six years
late and ten billion dollars over budget in 2022. The prime
contractor receiving the most money for SLS?
Boeing.
Although NASA does performance reviews of their
contractors they've been scrutinized for being way too easy
on… well, take a wild guess. Anyway, two years into SLS’s
development the US government and NASA were being
ridiculed publicly for paying the Russians to launch US
astronauts and crew to the ISS which was seen as a national
embarrassment. It was. But it was also supposed to be a
temporary solution during the transition from the shuttle to
SLS. Unfortunately, it was also becoming obvious that the
SLS was years away from reaching the 2016 deadline and
was projected to cost more than both the Saturn V and the
Space Shuttle! Around the same time in 2013, this little space
startup company was beginning to gain the public's attention
by promising reduced launch costs through reusability gained
from controlled vertical landings of the first stage. Eight
years later NASA chose SpaceX’s Starship to be the official
Artemis human landing system.

11
 Until recently, the (literally) astronomical costs associated
with space launches rendered the notion of lunar development
economically unsustainable. Financially unviable. Politically
unadvisable. Practically unthinkable. Activities extending
beyond orbit, with the exception of telecommunications, were
confined to government-led initiatives, characterized by
significant bureaucratic red tape, political uncertainty, and
reliance on public funding. This has changed. This book will
attempt to describe in as much detail as possible how to
develop the Moon profitably.

12
 ADDRESSING THE
XLEPHANT
This is not a book about SpaceX but we can’t talk about
lunar development without discussing the vertically
integrated 394-foot 16.7-million-pound thrust-producing
stainless steel water tower in the room. My bias: I like
SpaceX. You might not. That doesn’t matter, you can’t ignore
their results. SpaceX has breathed much-needed life into a
stagnant industry once heralded as the epitome of innovation
and national prestige. Is SpaceX so good or is NASA so bad
that even a modicum of proficiency in this antiquated
industry looks like genius? The contrast exists and is so
extreme that it has led many space-enthusiast armchair
observers to argue that we have not been back to the Moon
because NASA is now just another bloated government
bureaucracy that exists as a relic from a glorious past now
calcified and crushed under a mountain of paperwork
wrapped in red tape and budgetary reports.
And… they’re kinda right. But what they miss is that
NASA is the biggest investor in SpaceX because the people
who work at NASA are no dummies, and these not-so-dumb
people might work at an agency that literally puts people's
heads in the clouds, but to get some head in the clouds one
(ironically) has to be pretty grounded. And on the ground, the
private sector does things much faster and cheaper than the
public sector because the private sector is more efficient. This
efficiency, however, means the private sector is not a good
incubator for early-stage technologies that are worth
developing but do not yet have a proven track to profitability.
To address this gap, NASA has long maintained a
technology transfer program, which facilitates the transition
of mature technologies from the public to the private sector.
And the extent to which this program has served the US

13
economy is immeasurable. Oh wait, actually, it is measurable:
during the fiscal year 2019, the agency generated more than
$64.3 billion in total economic output. Its federal budget in
2019 was $21.5 billion, by the way, so it literally tripled
every dollar thrown into it in a single year.
NASA doesn't accomplish this impressive return on
investment by just hatching incubated technology into the
private sector– it also levels up the workforce by giving
professionals experience points through contracting. NASA
actually doesn’t have that many employees (relatively).
Instead, NASA largely contracts employees of other
companies to work at NASA for a time on a certain project.
This is by design: when private American companies make
progress in air and space, that isn’t competition for NASA,
it’s success. That’s what the armchair NASA naysayers get
wrong. Both those who say NASA is ineffective and outdated
or that only NASA should develop the Moon fail to
understand its intended function. Love it or hate it NASA is a
publicly funded institution that serves the public by
enhancing the private sector. Ideology aside, on the ground,
this is what works because it plays to the strengths of both.
It’s not flawless but it won the Cold War.
Now SpaceX builds better ships faster and cheaper than
anyone else– ships that are paid for in large part by NASA.
SpaceX has lowered the astronomical costs associated with
space launches that once rendered the notion of lunar
development economically unsustainable. We are now on
track for it to become financially viable. Politically advisable.
Practically thinkable. Activities extending beyond orbit are
no longer confined to government-led initiatives,
characterized by significant bureaucratic red tape, political
uncertainty, and reliance on public funding; and because of
that SpaceX now has competition.

14
 Convergent evolution refers to the phenomenon in which
distantly related organisms independently evolve similar
traits to adapt to similar necessities. In other words, when
faced with a problem, natural selection will often produce
remarkably similar solutions even in animals separated by
millions of years of evolution. Examples: Bats were once rats
and birds were feathered lizards but somewhere along the
way both learned to fly using very similar physiological
structures (wings). Bats fly and dolphins swim but both use
echolocation. Dolphins were once dogs (I’m not kidding,
google ‘pakicetus’) and sharks are fish but both have fins and
flippers. Convergent evolution is also why so many different
species look so similar, king and coral snakes, viceroy and
monarch butterflies, wasps and bees, and lizards in trees.
Bat and bird wings are not the same. Bat’s wings are skin
stretched between a wide scaffolding of bone while bird’s
wings are feathers protruding from an ‘arm’ in which the
bones are not stretched wide. These physiological structures
are different but these differences don’t change the
underlying physical principles that make them work. Same
with dolphin and shark fins. One has bones, the other
cartilage. Different evolutionary design journeys, same
(basic) results. Which is better? That’s not the point– they are
both ‘good enough’ to be competitive. Anything that is not
competitive dies off because natural selection lacks
government subsidies.
Why did you just read two paragraphs on evolutionary
biology in a book about lunar development? The point is we
live in a universe with hard physical limits. There is a right
way and a wrong way to do something. You can try to
compete in the same ecological niche as dolphins but if you
lack fins, flippers, and a streamlined body you’re not gonna
go far. You can try to build a super heavy-lift launch vehicle
for lunar development but if you lack reusability, economic
scale, vertical integration, and full-flow staged combustion
cycle engines you’re not gonna go far.

15
 SpaceX has competition but as of this writing, none are in
the same league. Yet. Right now all of the launch vehicle
providers (rocket companies) that aren’t SpaceX are basically
trying to catch up to where SpaceX was in 2015 and they are
all trying to distinguish themselves with one or two
headline-catching unique advantages: Electric Rockets! 3D
Printed Rockets! Carbon Fiber Rockets! Million Dollar
Lobbyist Backed Government Contract-Funded We Can’t
Fail Because We’re The Elite Legacy Technology Rockets!
(Now invest please!) But over time as the industry progresses
a convergent effect will take hold. We see the same effect
with pop music and car manufacturing. They aren’t the exact
same but… well you get the point. These launch vehicle
providers may have different “design journeys” but in the
end, if they are to survive i.e. be a competitive player in lunar
development their final product will need to have similar
capabilities and cost to current SpaceX technology.
SpaceX’s Starship has already been chosen to be NASA’s
lunar lander, and it currently makes the most sense to be the
first lunar outpost. SpaceX has a lead now but others will
grow into their own. Market competition is productive and
necessary for sustainability. So to be fair to all potential lunar
developers (and to avoid this book being mistaken as SpaceX
fan fiction) I am going to write in more generic terms. We
can’t develop the Moon without Starship… or a Starship-like
launch vehicle; so going forward instead of “Starship” we’ll
say “Lunarship” and understand this implies a Starship-like
rocket that could be made by anyone. The industry term is
super heavy-lift launch vehicle but that’s a mouthful. Now the
golden question: what is the cost to deliver a 200 ton payload
to the lunar surface using one of these
definitely-not-Starships? As of writing nobody knows for
sure but we can guess.

16
 Fortunately we don’t have to guess because the people at
Payload Research have guessed really educatedly for us in a
36 page report which breaks down Starship's costs piece by
piece and explains both how much Starship costs to build and
launch as well as how much SpaceX might charge for it. And
their conclusions are: $90 million falling to $35 million after
several years. This is the base cost and does not include R&D
amortization which will increase the cost of the initial
Starships to hundreds of millions. But those initial Starships,
basically prototypes, will be used by SpaceX to build out
their Starlink constellation thus the costs will mostly be
internal. Additionally the more a ship is used the lower the
cost per flight (a ship that costs $100 million dollars to build
but flies 10 times would reduce its build cost to $10 million
per flight). The report also estimates a $10 million flight cost
for fuel, inspections, amortized costs, refurbishment, and
other miscellaneous items like ground control operations. The
report estimates a 5 use lifespan for each Starship although
this is highly conservative and it is likely to be much higher.
Currently Starship has an internal fairing volume of 1000
cubic meters and can deliver 200 tons to Low Earth Orbit
(LEO) but SpaceX plans to extend the size of the fairing in
future ships to reach 300 tons to LEO. Regardless for the
remainder of this book we will use:

$50 million build cost.

$10 million flight cost to LEO.
5 use lifespan.
200 ton 1000 cubic meters payload capacity.

The issue, however, is we are not talking about developing

low earth orbit, we are talking about developing the Moon
and thus the flight cost will be higher. Currently once such a
large and heavy rocket reaches low Earth orbit it has
exhausted most of its fuel. SpaceX’s solution to this is to set
up an orbital refueling depot, basically a Starship retrofitted

17
to be a tanker that remains in orbit and receives the leftover
fuel from 5-8 launches until its tanks are full. Then any ship
designated to carry people and cargo to the Moon or
elsewhere launches into orbit and rendezvous with the full
tanker which then transfers its fuel into the lunar-bound ship
giving it enough juice to get to its destination and back. So
for each launch to the Moon 5 to 8 fuel-launches and orbital
docking sequences have to be performed. If we take the
higher number (8) and each of those cost $10 million then our
flight cost to the Moon and back is $80 million.

$50 million build cost.

$80 million flight cost to the Moon.
5 use lifespan.
200 ton 1000 cubic meters payload capacity.

Per flight cost: $90 million.

Cost per kilogram to lunar surface: $450.
Let’s round up to $100 million and $500 per kilogram.

18
 STELLAR STEPS
For this book, we will define the steps of lunar
development as survey missions, outposts, bases, settlements,
and, eventually, a colony. Survey missions come first. These
are your intrepid explorers venturing into the unknown.
Christopher Columbus, James Cook, Henry Hudson, Lewis
and Clark, Nikolay Przhevalsky, Ernest Shackleton, Neil
Armstrong. Survey missions establish the viability of a
venture and test technology. It’s a misconception that people
believed the world to be flat before Columbus. 15th-century
Europeans knew geometry and had accurate approximations
of how large the world was (the Greeks had worked this out
in 240 B.C.). Remember Columbus was searching for the
Orient, and he was rejected three times over seven years
before getting funded by the Spanish monarchs not because
people were ‘close-minded’ but because they could just do
the math and see that it was actually further to sail westward
to the orient than sailing South and then East around Africa.
This is why nobody had tried it before. It seemed dumb.
Before Columbus, it was generally believed there was a giant
ocean between Europe and Asia (of which there are two).
Columbus didn’t show everyone the world was round, but he
did show there was not a giant ocean between Europe and
Asia. More importantly, his expeditions showed that through
the use of cutting-edge technology, with the Caravels' shallow
draught and lateen sails, one could not just get to the New
World but actually return from it.
Before the Antarctic expeditions, it was generally believed
Antarctica might be a collection of islands rather than a
singular continent, and before the Apollo missions, it was
feared there was real concern that the lunar landers would
sink deep into the surface as the lunar surface material was
thought to be so ‘fluffy’ it might swallow the lander whole.
The Apollo missions were the first survey missions to the

19
Moon and the upcoming Artemis missions will continue the
work. They will show the viability of modern technology in
being able to sustain long-term lunar dwellings.
Outposts come next. Think of the first structures in
Antarctica. The International Space Station (ISS) can be
considered a research outpost. Outposts are typically in very
remote and inhospitable places where research is typically
conducted. This is usually done by a small team of highly
trained experts who will remain in these locations for a
number of weeks, months, or even years to conduct
experiments and explore the environment around them.
Outposts are small, resource-dependent, and economically
unsustainable. What I mean by this is that they depend on
almost all the basic necessities such as water and food to be
imported, and while the discoveries or research conducted
may have a significant economic impact, the outposts
themselves do not have an economy or private sector.
Research outposts are usually state-sponsored and funded,
restricted, and do not have emergent growth like a settlement.
You cannot move to the International Space Station or set up
shop in an Antarctic research outpost.
A base can be considered to be the foundation of what will
become a settlement. It is the ‘base’ of the structure that will
grow and expand into something bigger. Economies are the
engines of expansion. A base can have some light economic
activity, or at least the potential for economic activity. An
Antarctic base may conduct research as well as host tourists.
It is common for old research outposts to be built onto and
converted into bases. A base is still import-reliant for
basically every necessity but may begin sourcing some
necessities from local resources. This is typically
supplemental in nature, not sustainable, but it serves as a
good foundation for sustainability as it shows what is and is
not possible in the given environment.

20
 Bases are less restrictive and may allow tourists or others
to visit, as mentioned before, and because of this, they may
generate private funding such as Antarctic tour companies.
This light economic activity generates revenue which drives
further development slowly growing our base into a
settlement. Economic diversification ensues. Settlements
represent a significant shift from mere bases, transitioning
into more self-sustained entities. They are the precursors to
colonies and are marked by increasing permanence, a
burgeoning population, and more diversified economic
activity. Settlements are no longer just about exploration or
scientific research; they are places where people live and
work for extended periods, even indefinitely. Infrastructure
begins to expand and evolve. Housing, sanitation, and
recreation facilities start to emerge. Transportation routes and
methods get established, catering to both intra-settlement
mobility and connections to other bases or settlements.
Local production is ramped up during the settlement
phase. The reliance on imports starts to reduce as the
inhabitants harness the local resources more extensively.
They might cultivate crops specially bred for the
environment, or develop techniques to extract water and
minerals. Moreover, the introduction of manufacturing
capabilities and technologies means products can now be
produced locally, further reducing the need for imports. The
social structure within settlements also begins to diversify.
There's a clear establishment of governance and
administration. Schools may be introduced, medical facilities
may be enhanced, and local regulatory bodies may be set up.
This creation of social institutions indicates that families, not
just individuals, are expected to live there.
Businesses see opportunities in settlements. From
hospitality to entertainment, a variety of industries can
establish themselves. This encourages more migration from
other areas, creating a cycle of growth and development.
Cultural and social events also start to shape the community.

21
Art, music, and other forms of expression that narrate the
story of the settlers and their experiences in this new land
begin to flourish. The shared experiences of the settlers foster
a strong sense of community, and a unique culture and
identity begin to emerge. From here colonies are the next
natural evolution of settlements. They represent a
full-fledged, self-sustaining community with a distinct
identity and a well-established connection to their home
territory.
A colony has a matured economic system, with
production, trade, and commerce being major drivers.
External trade can be prevalent. There may also be the
establishment of a more formal governance system, often
with representation or a connection to the parent country or
entity. Colonies can often influence or shape the policies of
their home country, especially in areas concerning trade,
defense, and diplomacy. Over time, they may develop a
significant population, with generations born and brought up
in the colony, holding dual identities – one connecting them
to the colony and the other to their ancestral or parent
country.

History shows that eventually, they tend to declare

independence, and the Moon is a harsh mistress.

22
 STAINLESS STEEL SEEDS
In the deep well of the cosmos, the Moon's stark, spectral
face sits in eternal silence. A tapestry of stars surrounds it,
their twinkling light like ethereal whispers against the
backdrop of the universe's profound quiet. Tranquil, devoid
of motion and sound, the lunar plains stretch into the horizon,
bearing the scars of countless celestial collisions from epochs
long past. This is a stillness older than humanity, a peace as
ancient as time itself.
Then, breaking the solitude, a Lunarship pierces the lunar
vista. Its engine, a sapphire flame of technological defiance
against the raw forces of nature, interrupts the lunar
tranquility, roaring in silent testimony of man's tenacity. A
blue-green plume of high-energy exhaust erupts from the
vacuum-optimized rocket engine, violently stirring the lunar
dust from its four-and-a-half billion-year slumber. Then just
as abruptly as it appeared the engine cuts off. Silence ensues
as the towering stainless steel structure gently falls a few
more inches, drifting down onto the now scorched surface.
An astronaut disembarks, his mirrored visor reflecting the
surreal landscape. An emissary of Earth. A boot is planted
firmly into the powdery lunar regolith– an impression that
will last for more than a million years. Around him, ancient
dust swirls– caught in a ballet of cosmic chaos, suspended in
an airless sunbeam– slowly falling back to the surface. It will
not rest for another billion years. Other astronauts follow,
disembarking one by one. Here life from Earth stakes a claim,
here a seed is planted, one that will grow, hopefully, into a
future.
Unseen by human eyes, on the other side of the lander,
large panels open to reveal a deflated habitat, the tightly
folded promise of a future home. The parcel is lowered and
the crew of the Lunarship sets into action, delicately
unfurling the compact habitat into a skeletal dome, bristling

23
with support struts and airlocks. Powerful compressors begin
to breathe life into it, filling the void with air, causing it to
expand like a living organism, its walls stretching tight.
The exterior of the now-inflated habitat is studded with
large pockets. Much like the pioneers of old, these astronauts
make use of local resources. Using rovers, they gather lunar
regolith and start to fill the pockets. This indigenous soil,
once seen as a nuisance for its propensity to cling to
everything, is now a lifeline. Each pocket filled acts as a
shield, buffering the inhabitants from harmful cosmic
radiation and micrometeoroids, and insulating against the
extreme swings of temperature. As the distant sun bathes this
first lunar outpost in a pallid light, the crew of astronauts set
about their work unloading the Lunarship bay with a sense of
quiet urgency. Even in the alien environs of the Moon, there's
an air of familiarity, a choreographed dance borne of
countless hours of practice back on Earth. First, the Life
Support Systems. These compact yet sophisticated devices,
responsible for creating an Earth-like oasis in the barren lunar
desert, are carefully transported into the habitat. Next come
the solar panels and batteries, lifelines to the Sun’s energy.
The astronauts work in pairs, painstakingly extracting the
lightweight, yet cumbersome devices. Once in place, these
panels will unfurl like silicon petals, eager to bask in the
unfiltered sunlight, while the batteries stand by, ready to store
the surplus energy for the lunar night. Communication
Equipment and Computing Devices follow. Antennas are
erected outside the habitat. Inside, servers and laptops are set
up, their soft hum a comforting promise of an ever-present
connection to home.
As the astronaut crew proceeds with the unloading, a
myriad of equipment follows – food and water supplies,
medical equipment, scientific instruments, exercise apparatus,
and more. Each item is carefully transported in the reduced
lunar gravity and meticulously placed in its rightful position
within the habitat. A crew member unfolds a table upon

24
which maintenance tools are arranged in neat order, their
metallic surfaces catching the artificial light inside the
habitat. Critical radiation detectors are placed strategically,
their silent vigilance a shield against an invisible but
ever-present danger. Nearby, EVA suits are stowed, a
reminder of the harsh world just beyond the habitat's walls.
Personal items, tokens of Earth, are brought in last.
Photographs, books, trinkets, odds and ends, each a poignant
link to home, adding touches of warmth and humanity to the
otherwise functionally optimized yet bleak lunar outpost.
In this symphony of activity, the lunar base transforms from
an inflated shell to a fully equipped, habitable abode, a
testament to human ingenuity and ambition. Under the
unblinking gaze of a billion stars, humanity becomes a
permanent resident of the cosmos. The crew returns to the
ship to find it empty, hollowed out. Every amenity removed,
transferred to the inflated base. The metallic vessel, now a
husk. They look around in quiet reflection until one of them
finally says:

“Damn… why didn’t we just stay on the ship?”

Everything a lunar outpost would need Lunarship already

has. Instead of spending billions of dollars and years
researching and designing a transportable lunar habitat just
send a Lunarship to the Moon ahead of the astronaut's arrival
and voila: you have a structure cheaper, bigger, and stronger
than any expanding prefab you might carry with you.
Whatever structure you use has to be buried under three
meters (~10 feet) of lunar regolith to protect its inhabitants
from cosmic rays. This is a lot of material, heavy even in the
low-gravity environment of the Moon. To support this
amount of weight any structure will need to be made of
aluminum or steel. Lunar temperature fluctuations warp
aluminum. Steel it is. We’ll expand on these topics later but
for now, just understand that a retrofitted Lunarship will be

25
the structure from which our outpost is made. A stainless
steel stellar seed.
The colonization of the Americas is not a great historical
reference for lunar development because Europeans could
hop off their ships and immediately start using in-situ
resources, chopping trees to build palisades and beds, tables,
walls, and roofs. They did not need to carry their home with
them on a ship to the new world as they could create
amenities right there. Not to mention all the other things like
the relatively stable temperatures, the relative abundance of
food and fresh water, the lack of radiation, and the somewhat
important ability to breathe. A better historical analog to
lunar development is Antarctic development, but even
Antarctica has a breathable atmosphere, abundant water, and
tasty penguins. It is after all on Earth. The Moon is not. You
have to carry your house with you and you can’t make
anything without advanced technology. Imagine if the settlers
needed special ‘new world’ saws just to cut the logs from
which they built their cabins, not to mention all the other
“special stuff” astronauts need.
Despite being an inaccurate model full of historical
baggage (to put it lightly) there still are some useful lessons
and parallels that can be drawn from this unique period such
as the importance of ships serving as early shelters during the
construction of settlements. Jamestown, established in 1607,
was the first permanent English settlement in America and
used ships both for transportation and as temporary shelters.
When the settlers first arrived, they moored their ships and
lived aboard them until more permanent structures could be
built on land. In only one case, however, was a ship turned
directly into a structure which just so happens to be the first
European structure in the Americas. After Christopher
Columbus's flagship, the Santa María, ran aground on the
coast of present-day Haiti on Christmas Day in 1492, the
decision was made to use its timbers to construct a fort and
settlement named La Navidad. Columbus left behind 39 men

26
at this fort while he returned to Spain on the Niña. When he
returned on his second voyage, he found the fort had been
destroyed and none of his men were left alive after fighting
with the local Taíno tribe.
Anyway, the point is that Lunarship will be used for the
first two steps of development, both the survey missions and
as the first outpost. For the outpost, however, it’s not as
simple as just dropping a ship on the Moon and calling it an
outpost like beaching a ship and calling it a fort. We have to
turn it sideways and bury it under at least three meters (about
ten feet) of lunar regolith if we want to stay in it longer than
three weeks. Why? Radiation. Earth's magnetic field and
atmosphere shield it from dangerous radiation and safeguard
life on the planet. Galactic cosmic rays from distant
exploding stars are a significant concern, coupled with
particles created in the lunar soil due to interactions between
these cosmic rays and solar energetic particles.
Even more concerning are coronal mass ejections, also
known as solar flares. A notable instance in human space
exploration occurred in August 1972 when a series of potent
solar flares burst for over a week. One such flare, an X-class
from sunspot MR 11976, was so powerful it disrupted Earth's
energy and communication systems in parts of North
America. Thankfully, Apollo 16 had already returned, and
Apollo 17 hadn't departed yet, preventing potential astronaut
fatalities from this intense radiation. But it was a close call
and is now referenced as a worst-case scenario as even an
hour of exposure without adequate protection during an event
like this could be lethal. According to NASA, the standard
radiation dose for a person on Earth is about 0.36 rad a year.
The Apollo astronauts received (an average) radiation dose
on the skin of 0.38 rads (equivalent to two head CT scans)
over the course of just 12 days.
In 2020 Chinese lunar lander Chang’E 4 recorded the
first-ever detailed measurements of radiation levels on the
Moon and found that astronauts in a spacesuit would be

27
exposed to around 60 microsieverts of radiation every hour,
roughly 200 times what is experienced on Earth. Thus the
Lunarship hull itself is not enough to shield a permanent base
against the harsh cosmic rays and temperature fluctuations of
the lunar environment. Solution: bury your house under dirt
to keep it cool and safe; specifically three meters of regolith
as this amount has been shown to have an acceptable
radiation reduction factor. This also protects against potential
micrometeoroid impacts, although these would be very rare
(10−6).
To do this would require moving roughly 5000 cubic
meters of regolith around the Lunarship. It takes about five
minutes to shovel one cubic meter of Earth in stable soil, thus
shield construction would take twelve astronauts about 35
hours to complete. Not terrible, not great. Practically though
we need to go all-in and send up a remote-controlled
excavating rover fleet as it’s going to be hard to develop the
Moon by hand, and we’re just getting started. This is the first
big step after developing a Lunarship and performing a few
survey missions.
Further radiation protection can be increased by storing
all water in the base around the inside of the hull and adding
an additional few centimeters thick layer of Polyethylene
(plastic) which has been shown to be an efficient radiation
shield.
As far as landing a Lunarship on its side is concerned, the
fact that Starship is designed to perform a belly flop
maneuver during Earth re-entry does mean it has the
capability to handle aerodynamic loads in that orientation.
The structures and tanks are designed to accommodate the
stresses and strains associated with this maneuver. Also, the
Moon’s gravity is only about 1/6th of Earth's, which means
the forces acting upon the ship during descent are
substantially reduced. And of course, there's no atmosphere
on the Moon, which means there aren’t aerodynamic forces to
contend with during landing. This makes controlling the

28
spacecraft's descent much simpler in some ways, but it also
means no aerobraking or aerodynamic control surfaces can be
used. Shock-absorbing legs or bumpers would need to be
added for horizontal landing. These will have to extend far
enough to protect the spacecraft's body and be strong enough
to absorb the landing forces without causing damage. A
single-use crush canister shock absorption system is probably
best as hydraulic systems are more prone to failure. Also, the
interior will need to be renovated for horizontal dwelling
while still keeping the mass balanced during vertical takeoff.
Since the ship will be taking a one-way trip it won’t need as
much fuel and its engines can be retrieved and taken back to
Earth later for even further reduced cost.
Finally, our outpost is going to need radiators. In 2023,
the Indian Moon Mission's ChaSTE (Chandra's Surface
Thermophysical Experiment) probe revealed an astonishing
discovery about the Moon's temperature gradient. While
investigating the thermal profile of the lunar topsoil around
the pole, the probe discovered a rapid and dramatic
temperature drop just beneath the surface. In particular, the
surface temperature dropped from +50°C to a chilly -10°C
within just ten centimeters of depth. Even more astonishingly,
a decline from +20°C to -10°C was observed in a mere 60
millimeters. This discovery suggests that the lunar regolith is
an incredibly strong insulator, effectively containing heat
within an extremely thin surface layer, meaning it does not
conduct heat well at all.
Such an unexpected finding holds significant implications
for potential lunar outposts and structures. The efficient
insulation of the Moon's surface layer implies that any heat
generated inside a lunar outpost, base, or any structure–
whether from human activity or equipment operation, may
not be sufficiently dissipated away from the structure via
conduction. This necessitates the need for thermoregulation
strategies, particularly the use of radiators.
Heat dissipation in space is extremely important and often

29
overlooked. On Earth, our atmosphere conducts and convects
heat away from everything. In a vacuum, a system can only
lose energy through radiation. Even one lightbulb, given
enough time, can generate enough heat to significantly raise
the temperature in a small, enclosed space. Without proper
thermal dissipation, the heat generated by an astronaut's body
can continuously accumulate to the point where the astronaut
can literally be cooked alive by their own body heat.
To solve this during the Apollo missions astronauts
donned Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garments (LCVGs),
which were integral to their spacesuits. These garments
contained a network of tubes filled with water, which
circulated around the body, absorbing excess heat. The
collected heat was then expelled into space using a
sublimator—a device that took advantage of the vacuum of
space to turn the heat-carrying water into vapor, effectively
cooling the circulating fluid. The International Space Station
(ISS) employs extensive radiator systems to control its
internal temperatures. Large radiators that might be mistaken
as solar panels expel the unwanted heat, generated by both
the sun's rays and onboard equipment. These radiators are
filled with liquid ammonia that circulates, picking up excess
heat and radiating it back into space. This also means this
technology is well established and understood so it’s not
really a challenge to our outpost aspirations, just an additional
step that must be taken.
Alright, outpost establishment preliminaries out of the
way, without further ado, dear reader I present: More
preliminaries. In order to establish an outpost according to the
method soon to be laid out, six things need to happen. First,
as mentioned before Starship, or a Starship-like launch
vehicle, must exist as a mature technology. Lunarships.
Second, generation IV Triso-fueled micro nuclear reactors
must also exist as mature tech able to fit into a standard 40
foot shipping container. Through the efforts of Xenergy,
BWXT, Westinghouse nuclear, and others, especially those

30
awarded funding under the US Department of Defense’s
‘Project Pele,’ this tech is also on track for 2030 (more on
this in the next chapter). Third, research, design, and testing
of a lunar environment excavating vehicle, such as a remote
controlled backhoe loader. Fourth, also mentioned before,
survey missions need to happen, something like Artemis.
Man has not stepped foot on the Moon in over 51 years. We
should not immediately jump to base creation. Walk before
Running. Fifth, the belly flop sideways landing maneuver
needs to be successfully demonstrated on the Lunar surface
before being attempted with precious cargo. Again, the fact
that Starship is designed to belly flop during its Earth descent
stage, where the gravity and turbulent forces of the
atmosphere are much stronger than on the Moon bodes well
for the viability of this maneuver. And, finally, the outpost
itself needs to be designed from a Lunarship capable of
performing one of these belly flop landing maneuvers.
Unmanned, one arrives ahead of any astronauts. It is
retrofitted with side thrusters and extending landing legs (or
you can just use a crane if retrofitting proves to be
impractical). Here it will stay. It is no longer a vehicle, but a
vessel, a ship turned structure. This will be the outpost. Once
the dust has settled another unmanned ship arrives. Its
payload is so large it must also land sideways. Inside is a
lunar excavation vehicle and a lunar lorry, but most
importantly it carries a 2-megawatt micro nuclear reactor
housed in a 40 foot shipping container. Like the outpost
before it, this ship too will never leave.
Of course it would be cheaper if this ship were reusable,
able to unload its cargo and then return to Earth, however due
to the geometry of its payloads it must land sideways and
open like a cargo plane. Even though launching from this
position then orienting vertically is technically possible it
would increase risk, complexity, and require an increased fuel
allowance, decreasing the payload weight capacity such that a
second cargo ship launch and return would be necessary,

31
greatly reducing the costs saved through reusability. As if that
were not enough, the nuclear reactor- despite being housed in
a 40ft shipping container, does still need to be housed in an
exterior shelter to protect it from the harsh lunar environment
and allow for maintenance access. So, like the ship-turned
outpost, this ship is not wasted in a one way trip, as it
maintains reusability through its use as a now shelter for the
nuclear reactor that will power not only this initial outpost but
all future expansions as well.
Both the lunar lorry and the excavator are primarily
remote controlled, but the lorry also has a cabin allowing it to
function as a transport vehicle for humans. A third ship
arrives, landing normally. Vertically. This one is a human
lander, carrying the lunar engineers tasked to construct this
outpost. Most of their work can be accomplished from the
comfort of their ship, controlling the vehicles remotely. This
ship effectively acts as a construction headquarters. But here
they are not safe. The ship's steel hull is not thick enough to
protect them from the ambient radiation. It is safe for no more
than 14 days, therefore their mission will last only two weeks.
Two weeks to turn these ships into a permanent outpost. The
engineers get to work.
The first task is to remove the nose cone, revealing an
airlock. Inside, the now empty fuel tanks have to be
off-gassed and cut open to make room for habitation. Panels
stowed in the fairing are laid out like floorboards, creating a
flat surface to stand on. Outside, the ship's engines needed to
be removed and transported into the human lander which will
return them to Earth for reuse, greatly reducing costs. A
radiator array is erected and integrated. To shield the outpost
from radiation, making it habitable for more than two weeks,
it will need to be buried under roughly 14,700 cubic meters of
regolith. This is by far the largest task. A small backhoe can
excavate and transport 50 cubic meters of regolith every hour.
It needs to move 14,700 cubic meters. This will take 12 days,
the majority of the two week mission duration.

32
 Once this is accomplished, final inspections are
undertaken. The engineers then depart. The outpost will
remain unoccupied for more than two months where it will be
constantly monitored during multiple lunar day/night cycles
to see how the structural integrity holds up to the drastically
fluctuating temperatures between the freezing cold night and
scorching hot day. If there is a failure or breach in the hull it
is best that it happens before humans are present. It may not
look like much now, but it’s a start. A life-bearing stainless
steel stellar seed, planted in barren lunar soil. Slowly over
time it will grow… into a bright future.

When at last the sun breaks over the tranquil lunar horizon,
man will return. This time to stay.

33
I TRISO HARD BUT IN THE
END
It doesn’t even matter that space is the next logical frontier
and the Moon is perfectly positioned to be a stepping stone
for humanity to make life multi-planetary, mine the asteroid
belt, and spread across the solar system if we can’t generate
electricity once we’re there. On the Moon, there is no wood.
No coal. No oil. No natural gas. No wind. No rivers. Nothing.
But there is an abundance, an excess, a plethora, an
absolutely overwhelming amount of raw unfiltered sunlight–
free energy blasted across the lunar surface cooking anything
and everything during the 14.75 earth-days-long lunar day;
immediately followed by 14.75 earth-days of freezing cold
energy-sucking darkness during the lunar night. Thus we
need a way to keep the lights on during the night so our
people don’t freeze and suffocate to death resulting in more
than a few negative Google reviews.
But the constant light beaming across the slim tops of
crater ridges offers a solution, constant energy 24/7- or uh, I
guess 708/29.5 on the Moon. Since this electricity is intended
to power life support systems and stuff, a better way to think
about this is in terms of how much habitable space we get per
watt. The International Space Station has an internal
pressurized volume of 916 cubic meters (equal to that of a
Boeing 747) hosts 7 astronauts continuously and uses 80 kw
of power to cool the station and power all the life support and
communication systems. In other words it costs 87 watts to
keep a single cubic meter habitable, and each human requires
about 100 cubic meters. Let’s just round up to 100 watts per
cubic meter. So for a 1,000 cubic meter habitat- a little larger
than the international space station, as large as starships
fairing, we’d require 100 kilowatts of power continuously.

34
 But the problem with the crater rim approach is this
solution is limited to a certain predefined geographic area.
First we need to understand the scale and scope of what we’re
actually talking about. Let’s use Shackleton crater as our case
study. The entire crater isn’t constantly lit, the sun creeps
along the horizon and the light essentially crawls around the
crater lighting up a little less than half at a time. Of course
you might think “well, just put solar panels all around it” but
Shackleton crater is huge, it’s 21 kilometers across, about the
size of a city, and deeper than the grand canyon so it’s not an
easy task to just cover the entire thing in solar panels, and
even if you did only about half of them would be receiving
light at any given moment. But there are a few unique special
spots around the crater that do receive an abnormally high
amount of sunlight year round. Not quite endless sunshine,
but almost. These spots represent the best case scenarios, in
which a solar panel array elevated 10 meters (32 feet) above
ground would receive only about 3 days or 72 hours of
continuous darkness. This is much better than the typical
lunar night but it’s still much longer than our typical nights
here on Earth.
The total solar irradiance is 1,360 watts per square meter,
so a 30% efficient panel would generate about 400 watts per
square meter. How much energy could be generated in these
spots really depends on how large you can make your solar
panel array suspended 10 meters high, but no matter how
much you can generate your need to store that amount of
energy for 72 hours at a time- remains the same. In other
words storage scales with production- well technically with
consumption but consumption increase is implied with
generation. A 1,000 cubic meter habitat would be large
enough for 7 to 10 people and referring to our 100 watts per
cubic meter figure from before, would require 100 kilowatts
to keep habitable. 100 kilowatts would be generated by 250
square meters of solar panels and this configuration would
require 7.2 megawatt hours of storage to make it through that

35
pesky 72 hours of darkness. For 10,000 cubic meters capable
of hosting 100 humans we would need a whopping 72
megawatt hours of grid storage. For 1000 people we’d need
an insane 720 megawatt hours of storage to last the shortest
lunar night possible. If we import batteries the cost will be
very high. While not necessarily optimized for space, just to
get an idea the Tesla Megapack uses very high quality lithium
ion batteries and has a storage capacity of 3.9 MWh’s so we’d
need about 2 of them to keep 10 people alive for 72 hours.
Two batteries would cost about $2 million, but this cost pales
in comparison to the ultimate cost of transporting them from
Earth to the Moon. The Megapack weighs 38,100 Kg’s giving
us an energy density of about 105w/kilogram, and we need 2
units for a total of 76,200 kilograms. Once again referencing
our $500 cost per kilogram to the lunar surface we would
have a battery transport cost of $38.1 million. So about $40
million to keep 10 people alive, or $400/watt. The largest cost
here comes from the fact that batteries are heavy piles of
materials. But maybe we can produce batteries on the Moon
domestically, to save some of that launch cost. The Moon
has basically no carbon or lithium, but it does have sodium,
so let’s see what it would take to make sodium batteries on
the Moon and if that’s something we can do.
The carbon anode makes up about 20% of the battery by
weight,so a 200 ton ship importing graphite would allow for
the creation of 1 million kilograms of batteries, which at
100wh/kilogram would be 100 megawatts, or about
0.1gigawatts per ship import. Sodium is present on the Moon
at 3,000 ppm on average, and I couldn’t find an exact
component breakdown by mass for sodium batteries likely
because they are less popular than lithium ion but given that
they function roughly similar to lithium ion, of which lithium
makes up 7% of the entire battery by weight it’s relatively
safe to say sodium would be roughly proportional.

36
We can also calculate the mass percentage of sodium in the
anode of a particular sodium battery chemistry. Let’s go with
Na0.67​Fe0.5Mn0.5O2 because this sodium-ion battery chemistry
is made of relatively abundant lunar resources and can be
doped with aluminum and titanium to improve stability, rate
capability, and cycling performance (ACS Energy Lett.
2023), both of which are also abundant on the Moon.

First we need to calculate the molar mass of the compound:

Molar mass of Na: 22.99 g/mol

Molar mass of Fe: 55.85 g/mol
Molar mass of Mn: 54.94 g/mol
Molar mass of O: 16.00 g/mol

Na: 22.99 g/mol x 0.67 = 15.40

Fe: 55.85 g/mol x 0.5 = 27.925
Mn: 54.94 g/mol x0.5 = 27.47
O: 16.00 g/mol x2 = 32

Molar Mass of Na0.67​Fe0.5Mn0.5O2 = 102.795

Mass percentage of Na = (mass of Na/102.795) x 100

15.40/102.795 = 0.1498 = ~14.9%

Given that the anode likely makes up about 50% of the

battery, half of 14 is 7 so that’s in line with the lithium
estimate, but let’s say our sodium batteries would have 10%
sodium just to be generous. Sodium ion batteries have power
densities of about 100 watt-h/kilogram; so to make enough
sodium batteries to achieve 7.2MWh’s of storage we’d need
7.2 tons of sodium. At 3,000 ppm we’d need to excavate
2,400 tons of regolith to gather enough sodium for a small 10
person base. For this extraction you’ll need to spend energy
to excavate and melt the material to separate it and while we
don’t know how much energy would be involved in
excavating we do know melting regolith requires about

37
0.5MWh/t so 2,400 tons would require about 1,200 MWhs to
get capacity to store 7.2 MWHs. So the difference between
how much energy you need to store and how much energy it
would cost to make the ability to store that energy is 3 orders
of magnitude. Don’t get me wrong the whole point is to get to
the point where we are excavating square km’s worth of lunar
regolith and making sodium batteries to power things, and we
would use the other stuff that isn’t sodium, all the iron and
oxygen and silicon and everything else, it’s not just wasted;
but spending 1.2 GWhs for 10 humans is much worse than
just importing lithium ion batteries so domestic battery
production is a non-starter until we’ve already got a massive
kilometer-consuming industry underway.
But what about fuel cells? Fuel cells work like batteries
but use electrolysis to store energy in the form of hydrogen
and oxygen gas making them much lighter than batteries.
During the day excess solar power would be used to
electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen gas which would
need to be liquified and stored in a pressurized tank. During
the night the hydrogen gas and oxygen would be recombined
to create water giving off heat and generating electricity. On
Earth fuel cells are more complicated and expensive to
manufacture than batteries as which is why they are not used
more commonly, but those that are are usually air-breathing,
only storing hydrogen gas and combining it with oxygen
from the air to generate electricity, heat, and water which is
then expelled as waste. Additionally the hydrogen gas itself is
recharged using a dewar pressure vessel, not made by the fuel
cell itself, the gas is made in a facility and shipped to the cell
so it’s more like a fuel consuming generator, an
environmentally friendly replacement for diesel generators,
than a battery. But if all the hydrogen and oxygen is
recaptured and fed back into the same system, so there is no
loss and the golden rule of chemistry applies, then it is a
regenerative fuel cell (RFC). Regenerative fuel cells are self
contained systems that only consume electricity, and only

38
release heat and electricity, just like a battery. But these kinds
of systems are even more complicated to produce, more
expensive to manufacture and so they haven’t really seen
many uses here on Earth outside of the laboratory. But they
have higher specific energy densities than batteries, more
watts per kilogram, and because transport costs rather than
manufacturing costs make up the bulk of our expense in
space the equation flips and all of a sudden RFCs look much
more appealing than batteries for space applications which is
why NASA has been researching and developing them
extensively. A 10 kilowatt RFC would weigh about 1.3 tons
for a 3 day’s dark situation, meaning for our 10 person 100kw
base we’d need a 13 ton RFC which would result in a launch
cost of just $6.5 million. While there’s no unit production
price we can guesstimate by looking at non-regenerating
hydrogen fuel cells to get a ballpark range. A 5kw fuel cell
costs $20k, $4k per kilowatt, so we can guess our 100kw
RFC would cost at least $400,000 and to cover the cost of
those extra components we can just round up to half a million
giving us a total cost of about $7 million for 10 people, or
$70 per watt, 82% cheaper than lithium ion batteries! So
RFCs are better than batteries, but how do they stack up to
nuclear energy?
Current space-based nuclear reactors include the
MM-RTG used to power the Mars rovers Curiosity and
Perseverance, the GPHS-RTG used in the Cassini, New
Horizons, Galileo, and Ulysses space probes, the MHW-RTG
used in LES-8&9 and Voyager 1&2, SNAP-3B, SNAP-9A,
SNAP-19, and SNAP-27 used in everything from the Pioneer
and Viking probes to the Apollo 12-17 mission Lunar Surface
Experiment Packages and a few others designed but not
launched. RTG stands for Radioisotope Thermoelectric
Generators. Wasn’t that a fun list to read?

39
 Despite all the acronyms (and the fact they do use nuclear
fuel), RTGs can be thought of more as nuclear batteries rather
than nuclear generators. To generate electricity they use
simple Seebeck generators, a type of solid-state device that
converts heat flux (temperature differences) directly into
electrical energy through a phenomenon called the Seebeck
effect using semiconductors. So the Seebeck generators just
convert the heat produced by the natural decay of the
radioisotope plutonium-238 to electricity. Basically, it’s just
hot rock (plutonium) in a box. Box get hot. Put magic device
on hot box and voila: electricity. Don’t get me wrong these
are interesting but they are super inefficient, with a typical
maximum efficiency of around 8%. For reference, a typical
modern car engine has an efficiency between 20-40%. The
advantage of these Seebeck reactors is that they last a very
very long time, with basically no moving mechanical parts so
they are extremely simple and impressively reliable.
Unfortunately they only produce about 100 watts of
electricity and weigh about 40 kgs, or 2.5 watts per kg, worse
than batteries. However they don’t need any energy storage-
they run even in the dark so for a 100kw 10 person base you
would need to import about 1000 of them, weighing about
40,000 kgs which would cost about $20 million. The
MMRTGs used in the Mars rovers cost an estimated $109
million to manufacture, but if we manufactured 1,000 of them
we could likely reduce the unit cost to $100,000 or less, but
this would still cost $120 million for both procurement and
transportation, or $1,200 dollars per watt, 3x as much as
batteries! Fortunately since 2015 NASA has been developing
the Kilopower reactor which is way better than RTGs and
future designs planned for Mars are projected to produce 10
kw each and weigh 1,500kgs, yielding about 6 watts per kg.
For a 10 person base you’d only need 10 of these, 15,000 kgs,
or $7.5 million in transport cost, and the one produced by
NASA only cost $20 million to manufacture, so producing 10
of them for a 10 person base might cost something like $2

40
million each, although we’d likely produce much more,
lowering the cost, but just to get an idea let’s say $2 million
to manufacture which is a high end estimate, resulting in a
total cost of about $27.5 million, or only $275 dollar per watt,
31% cheaper than batteries. And remember we didn’t count
the cost of solar panels needed with the battery configuration.
But it’s unlikely these designs will ever be picked up and
mass produced by private companies because the private
sector is already working on even more promising
micro-reactors. TRi-structural ISOtropic particle fuel
(TRISO) fuel modular micro reactors are currently in
development and making rapid progress from companies
such as Xenergy, Radiant Nuclear, BWXT, Rolls-Royce and
more. These are not your daddy's giant nuclear plants but are
small and modular… and yes, they’re safe. In fact, they’re
much safer than traditional power plants because of the
TRISO fuel they use and their overall design. But even if they
weren’t safe the Moon is already radiated and lacks an
atmosphere so a meltdown would be largely self-contained to
the structure the reactor is in. So here’s a quick analogy
which I will use to describe- in very oversimplified and
unscientific terms- why TRISO fuel is safe and cool. But not
too cool, nor too hot. Just right, as preferred by Goldilocks
and the Three Structures Of ISOtropic Particle Fuel.
In your daddy's traditional reactors we have this stuff, our
fissile material, that cannot be too hot nor too cold. It needs to
be kept just right to work. Let’s call this material:
“Goldilocks.” If Goldilocks gets too cold she dies and isn’t
useful to us; and if she gets too hot she has a meltdown and
goes on an arson-fueled killing spree, giving everyone cancer
and salting the Earth wherever she be. So we need to keep her
temperature just right using modulators– think of these as a
blanket, not a thick comforter or a thin sheet, just a perfectly
sized blanket keeping her temperature just right. When she’s
just right we can extract value from her– her life source, and
we do this using a heat exchanger that conducts warmth from

41
Goldilocks into some medium like water. When this water
gets hot enough it phase changes into steam, expanding and
creating pressure which blows it out. We take a turbine and
put it in front of this high-pressure steam blowout, turning the
turbine super fast. The fast-spinning turbine is attached to a
drive shaft. On the other end of this drive shaft are many coils
of copper wire surrounded by magnets. This is a generator.
And this is how we juice electricity from a happy Goldie.
Nuclear reactors are all about maintaining this delicate
Goldilocks balance– not too hot, not too cold, just right. But
just in case something does go wrong and Goldie gets too hot
we surround her with a very strong structure meant to confine
her violent rage, entombing her in an expensive and
multi-layered coffin of hardened steel and concrete. This is
known as a containment building.
Now imagine if Goldilocks underwent anger management
therapy or, I don’t know, maybe she went on an ayahuasca
retreat and faced her demons, undergoing a spiritual
awakening in which she decides that when things didn’t go
her way instead of having a meltdown she simply takes a few
deep breaths, finds her zen and calms down. That’s TRISO
fuel. It has a negative temperature reactivity coefficient which
means if it gets too hot it stops fissioning and cools down.
TRISO-Goldie counts to ten and doesn’t react violently to
conditional changes.
The fuel is designed to act as its own containment
structure– being encapsulated by three layers of carbon and
ceramic-based materials that prevent the release of
radioactive fission products. Additionally, each of the fuel
pellets, about the size of a grain of sand, is bundled together
into another sphere of redundant encapsulation allowing for
even more safety. These pellets effectively act as not only the
containment building but also the nuclear waste disposal
container when the fuel is all used up. Finally, the pebble bed
design allows operators to just drop these fuel pellets into the
top where they will react for a long time, get completely used

42
up, and then just fall out the bottom. This means you can fuel
it continuously– you don't have to shut it down for a month
and change out fuel rods like in traditional reactors.
So what does this mean? Well it means our reactors can
(1.) be safer while (2.) operating at higher temperatures
which means they can (3.) be made smaller which means (4.)
they can be made in a factory according to a standardized
design which will (5.) give nuclear energy the potential to
have much needed economies of scale which will (6.) reduce
costs. Both the reactor designs and fuel pellets themselves
can be mass produced like this leveraging economies of scale
to reduce cost and this means rigorous and redundant quality
control measures can be implemented further increasing
safety. Safer. Dynamic. More effective. Smaller. Cheaper.
There are two sizes of these reactors: Small Modular
Reactors (SMRs) which are 70 feet long and 16 feet in
diameter and generate a whopping 80 MWe of electricity and
Micro Modular Reactors (MMRs) which at the most are 40
feet long and can generate an impressive 2-7 Megawatts of
electricity (let’s go with 2 MWe to be safe). Both designs are
modular and use standardized designs which means they can
be mass-produced at a factory with quality control and their
size means they can be put in a box and trucked to any site.
Including the Moon. This also means that here on Earth they
can be easily integrated into the existing power grid to start
generating carbon-free energy as they can easily be placed at
every site where a coal power plant has been shut down and
directly integrated into the existing infrastructure. In other
words, you don’t need to build new buildings, rezone any
areas, manufacture and ship new turbines and generators, or
erect new power transmission infrastructure– power lines and
transformer stations. It’s all already there waiting to go.
So we need to answer three questions: How much do they
cost, can we get them to the Moon, and when? At the time of
writing there is no ‘unit price' and predicting future costs of
technologies not yet developed is a complex exercise that

43
includes many uncertain parameters and functional forms.
However, if someone did want to try to come up with a
predictive model that accurately estimates a range of potential
construction costs for SMR projects (an overly enthusiastic
grad student perhaps?) then they might start by gathering as
much data as exists and then apply different production
theory approaches to estimate a range of potential
construction costs. They might then apply a Monte Carlo
method to benchmark the cost projections assumed by the
manufacturers– varying the investment costs, the weighted
average cost of capital, the capacity factor, and the wholesale
electricity price in simulations of the net present value and
the levelized cost of electricity. Once all this is done and the
results are in they should sit down and realize how much time
they just wasted by failing to do a simple literature review as
the first step, for if they had they would’ve found all that
work had already been done by Steigerwald et al., 2023
Among the 19 reactors analyzed by Steigerwald und
freunden, two are high-temperature gas-cooled SMRs that
utilize TRISO fuel in a pebble-bed configuration, while
another is a TRISO fuel block microreactor. Their cost
estimates for these reactors are $5,400,000, $1,550,000, and
$5,771,429 respectively. Although a small sample, the
average price comes out to $4,240,476. However, considering
the uncertainties and the unique challenges of lunar
deployment, it's prudent to err on the side of caution,
therefore let’s do something crazy like double the estimated
cost, leading to a price tag of $10 million for our reactor.
Currently, the only potential Lunarship we have at the time
of writing in 2023 (that Xlephant in the room) has a 59-foot
long and 29.5-foot wide fairing which is just barely too small
to fit an SMR but offers more than enough volume for an
MMR which cannot be bigger than 40 feet to fit into a
40-foot shipping container (per Project Pele). As mentioned
in the previous chapter the optimal way to deliver this is
aboard the ship that landed sideways to unload the vehicles.

44
Since it landed sideways the ship is basically stuck there so
we might as well use it as our nuclear reactor housing. But
since the ship also delivered our excavator and lunar lorry the
cost to deliver all three would be $130 million / 3 or $43
million each, however to compare it fairly with solar we’ll
negate using this method and just factor in a transport cost of
$100 million for 2-7 MWe. Let’s say 2 MWe for conservative
margins which is about $55/watt, 85% less than the cost of
batteries and 22% cheaper than the RFC!
Finally, from what public information we have available
these reactors appear to be on course to hit the market by
2027. Or 2028. Or 2030. Or 2032. Who knows, these are
being developed by government-funded private-public
partnerships so cost overruns and delays are to be expected
but it’s probably safe to say these will be available by the
mid-2030s.
So now we have our lunar outpost, but how do we get to
the next step: a lunar base? If we're talking about developing
the Moon rather than just visiting then we’re gonna need
more room and Lunarship lacks space, specifically of the
‘floor’ variety. We can theoretically make our Lunarships
bigger, but because they have to be aerodynamic to punch
through Earth's thick wet dripping atmosphere they’ll always
be, how should I put this? Constrained in the girthy direction.
Sure we can make the ships wider and taller but that means
making the boosters wider and taller with more engines and
more risk. It also means making the launch facility wider and
taller and entails increasing material strength making our
fairing walls thicker and heavier thus requiring even more
engines, fuel, volume, and money. See, rocket science isn’t
hard just because it involves complex formulas. Rocket
science is hard because it is a recursive balancing act
involving complex manufacturing constraints and supply
chain logistics. Increasing the volume of a rocket has many
tons of benefits (punnage intended) but these benefits have
diminishing returns when compared to the likewise

45
substantial cost of building a structure on the Moon using
resources found there, on the site: in-situ resource utilization.
If we can do this we can design structures to better suit
different purposes, tailored to fit certain needs just like
buildings here on Earth. So, how do we start building things
out of the Moon?

The answer:

46
 CHROMIUM ANODES
Constructing a lunar base presents unique challenges,
particularly given the Moon's lack of atmosphere and the
resulting extreme temperature variations. During its
prolonged day, the surface can reach a blistering +120°C,
while at night, without the buffer of an atmosphere,
temperatures plummet to a frigid -130°C. Such drastic
fluctuations lead to rapid expansions and contractions of the
lunar surface causing small quakes called “thermal
Moonquakes.” Four seismometers deployed during the
Apollo 17 mission recorded thousands of these Moonquakes
over an 8-month span from 1976 to 1977, but the poor quality
of the data made analysis impossible until 2023 when a group
of three scientists using modern computers developed
algorithms to accurately interpret the data.
While analyzing this nearly half-century-old data they
stumbled upon a mysterious, recurring vibration. It seemed
almost...unnatural. The epicenter? Precisely where the Apollo
17 mission had landed decades ago. As they poured over the
data, cross-referencing timestamps and analyzing waveforms,
a chilling realization set in: the vibrations were emanating
from the descent vehicle the astronauts had left behind. But
why? What forces were at play to make an abandoned lunar
module from 1972 the heart of such disturbances? Was there
something or maybe even someone aboard the abandoned
derelict? To this day nobody knows for sure. Unfortunately,
the scientists who conducted this study (probably coerced by
the deep state) tried to explain these anomalies away as
“thermal fluctuations.”As temperatures rise, the aluminum
lander expands, oscillating and creating detectable vibrations
on the surface, a phenomenon quite distinct from natural
Moonquakes.

47
But others are not so sure. Independent researchers believe
the origin of the mysterious vibrations might be something
otherworldly, maybe even ancient and alien.
Whatever is causing these mysterious vibrations
emanating precisely from the aluminum lander at the exact
times the lander is heated and cooled by the lunar day/night
cycle, the varying strength of the vibrations correlating
perfectly with fluctuations in thermal intensity… we may
never know. But one thing’s for sure: future lunar bases must
be constructed from materials that can withstand such thermal
stresses without inducing unwanted seismic activities– alien
or otherwise…
Aluminum, while lightweight, undergoes a contraction
and expansion cycle that may compromise its structural
integrity over time. Steel, on the other hand, with its high
melting point and ability to operate at temperatures up to
820-870°C, emerges as a preferable choice. When coupled
with efficient heat management systems, steel offers a
reliable and resilient solution for lunar habitats, ensuring the
safety and stability of its occupants in the face of extreme
lunar conditions. But what is steel?
Well, it’s just iron– with some carbon. The biggest
difference between the swords and plows of the Iron Age and
the metal skeletons holding up today's skyscrapers is how
much carbon is in that iron. Cast iron contains over 2%
carbon, making it extremely hard but also brittle. In contrast,
wrought iron, the purest form of iron, has less than 0.08%
carbon, granting it superior ductility, enabling it to flex
without breaking, but also rendering it softer than both cast
iron and steel. Positioned between these extremes, steel
boasts a carbon content ranging from 0.2 to 2%, striking a
balance between hardness and flexibility. Today, steel
production is a marker of a nation's economic strength but it
is also the single biggest industrial source of climate
pollution. Because steelmakers still use coal-fired blast
furnaces, industrial steelmaking releases about two tons of

48
carbon dioxide emissions for every ton of steel produced–
adding up to nearly 10% of Co2 emissions worldwide.
The solution: Use electricity to melt and purify the iron
rather than a coal-fired furnace. If you run electricity through
a cell filled with an Electrolytic mixture the electricity will
heat the cell up to about 1,600 °C ( 3,000 °F) resulting in a
hot Oxide and Molten iron soup. In addition to heating things
up, electricity drives the Oxygen-removing chemical
reactions. Molten iron gathers at the bottom of the
Electrolytic cell, and Oxygen gas is emitted instead of carbon
dioxide. Then they drain the high-purity Molten iron and add
carbon as it solidifies to make steel.
This process is known as Molten Oxide Electrolysis. Why
it’s named this I can only guess but it has the potential to
decarbonize the steelmaking industry. This process is
currently being developed to scale by Boston Metal, a
company headquartered in… yep, you guessed it: Woburn,
Massachusetts. Anyway, what this has to do with developing
the Moon is it potentially allows us to manufacture steel on
the Moon using lunar regolith since lunar regolith consists of
5-15% iron on average. In fact, Molten Oxide Electrolysis
was actually discovered in an attempt to figure out how to
extract oxygen from the Moon’s surface for lunar bases. See,
the Moon is actually covered in oxygen, it’s just trapped in
the lunar regolith. Lunar regolith consists of 41-45% oxygen
on average.
NASA has been funding lunar oxygen procurement for a
while now and in pursuit of these fat stacks, ahem* I mean
“scientific endeavors” many techniques have been developed
to extract the oxygen from lunar regolith, but the byproducts
of these techniques happened to be a garbage alloy of
whatever was left of the regolith that wasn’t oxygen– namely
silica, alumina, calcium, magnesium, titanium, and iron
which obviously got a lot of people thinking: “hey that’s quite
convenient– maybe we could actually use these ‘useless
byproducts’ to, oh I don’t know… make stuff on the Moon?”

49
 The problem was the alumina, silica, and iron weren’t
neatly separated into three different byproducts, instead, it
was a single clump of slag, an amalgamation of all the
leftover stuff tightly bonded together, and the biggest issue
was in finding a way to actually separate these leftover
constituents. Enter MIT scientist Dr. Donald Sadoway who
figured out the constituents could be separated by running
electricity through a cell filled with lunar regolith and an
Electrolytic mixture. The electricity heated the cell up to
about 1,600 °C ( 3,000 °F) resulting in a hot Oxide and
Molten regolith soup. In addition to heating things up,
electricity drove the Oxygen-removing chemical reactions.
Molten constituents gathered at the bottom of the Electrolytic
cell, and Oxygen gas was emitted. Sound familiar? Molten.
Regolith (41-45% oxygen 5-15% iron on average).
Electrolysis.
Unfortunately, besides those fat NASA stacks,
electrolyzing lunar regolith didn’t seem like it was going to
be very profitable (or useful) on Earth. But what about
electrolyzing terrestrial Earth regolith? Interestingly
terrestrial regolith (street name: dirt) consists of 0.2% to 55%
iron on average and has a higher market cap derived from its
locational advantage. But you know what else is abundant on
Earth and has an even higher iron percentage on average than
terrestrial regolith? Terrestrial Iron Ore… which is used to
make steel. Incredible, I know. So Dr. Sadoway got to work
developing the process that would become known as Molten
Oxide Electrolysis, electrolyzing iron feedstock to make
carbon-free ‘green steel.’
But there was an issue. The graphite anode was consumed
in the process, making the process too expensive since you
had to replace the anode each time. Losing the anode with
each run would be like having to replace your lightbulb every
time you turn on the light for a few minutes. So Dr. Sadoway
tried to find a material that wouldn’t be consumed and found
that iridium worked, but since iridium is extremely rare it

50
remained too expensive for any applications outside of a
research lab. Then a metallurgist, Professor Antoine Allanore,
joined the team and together they found that an anode made
of a chromium-iron alloy (cheap and abundant) worked
efficiently without being consumed. So they went and started
Boston Metals which has since scaled up this process from a
small lab cell using less than 5 amps of electricity and
producing just a few grams per day of molten iron to a
bus-sized cell that uses 2500 amps and produces tens of
kilograms per day. Currently Boston Metal is validating its
full commercial design which uses 25,000 amps and produces
hundreds of kilograms per day.
Now you might be thinking okay I get that Boston Metals'
foundational technology was created in pursuit of supplying
lunar bases with oxygen but their target market is the
terrestrial steel industry right… So what does this have to do
with industrializing the Moon? Well, Donald Sadoway is a
founder of both Boston Metals and Houston-based company
Lunar Resources which outright states their intent to
industrialize the Moon. This is yet another great example of
how NASA funding research in what to some may seem to be
far-flung vanity projects foolishly reaching for the stars
(while we have so many problems here on Earth) usually
results in amazing solutions to those same terrestrial
problems so often brought up as objections to the “vanity”
funding.
So what’s the difference between Molten Regolith
Electrolysis and Molten Oxide Electrolysis? Well, it’s
basically the same technology and in lunar development, the
terms mostly represent a ‘step distinction’. When you put
regolith into the cell out comes oxygen gas, aluminum, silica,
and low-purity molten iron. Molten Regolith Electrolysis.
Then you can take that low-purity molten iron and feed it
back into the cell, refining it into high-purity iron. Molten
Oxide Electrolysis. The difference is the purity of the iron,
and to make steel we need very high-purity iron.

51
 But very high-purity iron is wrought iron, not steel, so we
need to add carbon to make steel. Additionally, there are
different types of steel with each having different grades of
that type. Traditionally different types of steel are made by
removing carbon to a certain percentage level and then adding
alloys such as nickel and chromium to yield certain types of
steel such as stainless steel or carbon steel. This step in the
process is usually done once the molten iron has been moved
into a ladle, basically a giant ‘pot’ to carry all the molten
liquid which is why this step is called ladle metallurgy.
However, with the electrolysis process, we’ll actually need to
add carbon to a certain percentage level in addition to alloys
as the electrolysis process doesn’t use coal and the lunar
regolith basically has no carbon to begin with.
The biggest limitation to full-scale lunar steel production
will be the amount of carbon we have since extremely pure
carbon needs to be added to the high-purity molten iron as it
cools. Unfortunately, carbon is scarce on the Moon. Luckily
we have approximately 1.85 quintillion tons of it here on
Earth, and humans are made of so much carbon that they
literally just spew it everywhere they go; every fingerprint,
every breath, every bowel movement– carbon just exhaling
and oozing out of every orifice. So it’s not really a hard
problem to solve.
The next step is to cast the steel into a shape using a mold
and then machine those shapes into other more useful shapes.
Also if we need to off-gas the molten steel at any point before
casting then it’s helpful that the Moon has enough vacuum
suction power to make James Dyson blush. As for electricity,
our nuclear reactor provides more than enough. If our outpost
uses 100 Kw and our reactor produces 2 Mw we’ll have 1.9
Mw left. The electrolysis cell that can produce hundreds of
kilograms of molten iron per day uses 25k Amps. The
electronegativity of iron is 1.83 and oxygen is 3.44. Since
electronegativity changes with temperature (thank Josiah
Gibbs for that) and we’ll need an overpotential, a realistic

52
setup would use about 1.5 to 2 volts. To be safe let’s go with
4 volts which would result in a cell that produces hundreds of
kilograms of steel per day requiring only about 100 Kw to
operate leaving us with 1.8 Mw left!
This technology can be scaled up or down to nearly any
size, but the hundreds of kilograms a day capacity requires a
volume of about 730 cubic meters. Lunarship has a volume of
about ~1,000 cubic meters, so it fits. Since the steel-making
process involves two electrolyzing steps we should specialize
and deliver two of these. For clarification these cells will be
delivered by a Lunarship that will return to Earth, not one
intended to be converted into a base. Since these reactors will
be dealing with sharp radiated regolith it’s probably best to
keep them outside the shelter. You could literally just
plopping them down exposed on the dusty lunar surface.
They'd be fine, but it would be better to shelter them a little
so the people working with them will be exposed to less
radiation. Fortunately there’s a bunch of unused space in the
empty fuel tanks of that nuclear reactor ship so just cut them
open and pop those bad boys into the back there
Once you have an electrolysis cell full of high-purity
molten iron ready to go you take a drill and drill a hole into
the plug holding all that liquid in. This is called ‘tapping.’
Once the cell is tapped and metal is flowing it needs
something to flow into which, as discussed before, is where
the ladle comes in. This will be about the size of a 100-gallon
water trough but with much thicker walls, and it should be
able to be lifted by two or three astronauts while full. Keep in
mind on the Moon things weigh ⅙ what they do on Earth. 100
kilograms would weigh 16.5 kilogram. Once you’ve got this
pot o’ iron you sprinkle in carbon and stir. (Optional: add a
dash of alloys to make different types of Steel.) Now your pot
o’ iron is a pot o’ steel and we need to pour it into fun and
useful shapes. We do this with a caster. This is basically a
space lined with rollers that are water-cooled. When we pour
our liquid steel into this space it comes into contact with the

53
rollers which exchange the heat in the steel, through the
rollers, and into the water which flows away. The energy in
this water can be used for something else or just fed into a
radiator. When the steel is cooled enough (but still really hot)
it becomes malleable, almost clay-like, and rollers massage it
into a long square or rectangular beam.
In industrial steel production plants here on Earth steel
beams come out of the caster still really hot so they can be
turned into even more shapes later on and then cooled off.
But we’re not talking about an industrial steel production
plant capable of making millions of tons of steel of a
thousand different varieties and grades into hundreds of
different shapes annually. I mean, we’re on the freakin’ Moon
so let’s just try to make some simple beams and panels to
start. Panels and beams make dreams! The caster will output
beams but for panels, we’ll need a press.
Then we’re gonna need somewhere for our molded steel
beams and panels to roll onto when leaving the caster so
we’ll need to add a table with passive rollers to our order.
This can be foldable and doesn’t need to be powered, so not a
big deal just something to note. Once a steel beam is
produced from the caster and squeezed out onto the roller
table it will need to be taken somewhere. I don’t recommend
just dropping these steel beams into the lunar regolith or
storing them aboard our already cramped quarters so let’s just
add a cantilever rack or two to our list. So we have a few
ladles, a caster, a press, a roller table, and a few cantilever
shelves which should fit into the ~200 cubic meters of fairing
volume we had leftover on each of our electrolysis cell trips
(two trips for two cells with an excess space of ~ 200 cubic
meters = ~400 cubic meters left over to transport this ‘stuff’).
The largest items will be the casters since they’re long but
they can be broken up into pieces and assembled onsite. Now
we have the capital to make steel.

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 The final step is to set up one more premade Lunarship
structure that comes with a 5-axis CNC machine, some 3D
printers, and some work surfaces built into a horizontal deck
according to a premade floor plan. Drop, flip, and bury it next
to the first Lunarship, and voila: a machine shop. We have
just unlocked the ability to produce things out of dust.
This is a huge next step just kinda crammed into one
paragraph at the end of a chapter so let me clarify: we have
one Lunarship buried and turned into an outpost. This outpost
has been receiving supplies from other Lunarships that return
to Earth (and actually function as ‘ships’). So far we have a
nuclear generator and two steel-making electrolysis cells.
Then, in this last step we sent another Lunarship to be turned
into a structure adding a second ‘building’ to our outpost.
This ‘building’ is a machine shop/workshop. Now that we
have steel we can machine it into tools and stuff. Amenities.
Things. Struts, nuts, bolts. Whatever. Now that we can make
steel beams and steel things we can build our base out of the
Moon. So how do we do that?

Well, as with any construction project, the first step is to…

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 BREAK GROUND
And don’t stop until you’ve dug a big square hole. How
big? Big enough to give us more space of the floor variety
than a Lunarship has to offer. I recommend going 20 meters
by 20 meters, and four meters deep. Hopefully, you sent a
remote-controlled excavating rover fleet the first time you
had to make those regolith radiation shield walls. The reason
we’re digging so wide and deep is because we’re going to put
a big building in this hole. This way the walls of the hole will
be the lateral radiation shield, except instead of three meters
thick they’ll be a mile thick. Now you might be thinking
digging a hole is more work than just scraping and piling
regolith around the structure like we did for the two
Lunarships we turned into structures but digging a hole
actually requires less work once we get to a certain building
size. A 20x20x4 meter cubic hole would require displacing
1,600 cubic meters of regolith. A 20x20x4 meter cubic
surface structure would require gathering 2,304 cubic meters
of regolith to pile around the structure to achieve the
necessary shield thickness. Digging a hole is equivalent to
gathering the roof/top shield material (plus a meter) but
comes with four “free” walls. While digging we may run into
boulders and other complications however the same is true
for scraping roughly 2 Kilometers of the Moon's surface
which, by the way, isn’t nice and flat but rather rough uneven
boulder-strewn terrain.
Once this hole is made habitable by filling it with steel
and polymers and gas and stuff, the regolith we displaced to
dig this hole can then be dumped on top of the structure
providing a shield ~4 meters thick atop the structure. This
structure needs to be rudimentary. This is the first true
‘construction’ project off-world and unforeseen
complications will arise. The techniques and lessons learned
here will allow us to expand our construction knowledge and

56
hone our capabilities for bigger more complex projects going
forward, but to minimize our troubles this first structure
should be as simple as possible to flatten the learning curve.
Essentially it’s a prototype, a demonstrator. So what’s the
simplest way to turn a hole into a home? Well, thanks to our
electrolysis cells we have steel beams, panels, and oxygen.
But pretty much everything besides that will need to be
imported from Earth. Fortunately, the heaviest part of any
building is the concrete foundation and steel support, both of
which we can make on-site.
Lunar concrete, or lunarcrete as it’s come to be called, is
probably unjustifiably costly, at least for this project. The
basic ingredients for lunarcrete would be the same as those
for terrestrial concrete: aggregate, water, and cement. In the
case of lunarcrete, the aggregate would be lunar regolith. The
cement could be manufactured from the silica, alumina,
calcium, and magnesium ‘slag’ content left over from our
Lunar Regolith Electrolysis step. But the fatal flaw of lunar
concrete is the need for either lots of water or lots of sulfur,
neither of which is particularly abundant on the Moon. Water
is almost certainly out of the question as it is too precious to
waste on concrete production; however, sulfur can be used in
its stead and there is natural sulfur on the Moon. In fact, the
2023 Indian Moon Mission’s six-wheeled Pragyan rover
detected significant concentrations of sulfur in the polar
regolith, but “significant” in this case is still a tiny percentage
of lunar regolith by weight. How much? Well at the time of
writing, we still don’t really know; which means it’s hard to
calculate whether or not we can realistically gather enough of
the stuff to justify the cost in equipment and space that would
be required to make lunarcrete.
Fortunately, we don’t necessarily need a lunarcrete
foundation as our structure will have a wide base made of
steel and be held down by the tons of regolith piled atop it.
Basically, it boils down to if we can easily gather lots of
sulfur then great let’s make it. Perhaps our Lunar Regolith

57
Electrolysis step will yield lots of sulfur-infused slag. But if
we can’t easily gather lots of sulfur to make lunarcrete then
it’s not the end of the world. Also, it’s worth noting that any
sulfur we do gather may have higher priority uses as it can be
used to make sealants and fertilizers. Anyway going forward
let’s assume we can’t make lunarcrete so the base of our
structure will literally just sit on the surface of the hole. If we
feel we need to anchor it in place for whatever reason we can
drive steel beams deeper into the ground at several points,
staking it in place.
Alright so we have a gaping hole that needs to be filled,
so the first step is to create a foundation by laying steel beams
in a grid with vertical beams rising up at all vertices. Or as
many beams as is necessary to support the roof plus the
several thousand tons of regolith that’ll be piled on it. Ya
know, just do a basic load-bearing analysis and then multiply
it by 1/6th. Then use a hot glue gun to join all the beams
together (or maybe use fasteners or cold welding?). Once dry
and stable, create a mirrored grid at the top: a roof, and glue
them together. Now you have a big scaffolding from which
you can affix steel panels too. Just cover the whole thing in
steel panels, making a big steel box. That’s what buildings are
right? Big steel boxes? Well at least on the Moon they are
since you’re going to have a damned hard time finding
enough trees and plaster to do anything else. Anyway, the
Lunarship structure we’ve been living in up to this point is
basically just a big steel tube so this is pretty much the same
thing. Next hermetically seal the box shut so it’s airtight as air
is kinda important on the Moon. Wiring, plumbing, floor
material, door seals, windows, water filters, what shade of
white carpet we should put in the bathroom, and where we
should eat out tonight are all details I’ll leave to the
engineers. Again, we’re focused on development, not design.
But here are some notes to keep in mind:
First, store all the water in the roof and walls for the same
reason we did in the Lunarship structures: to combat

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secondary radiation. Remember the regolith itself is slightly
radiated so you don’t want to be directly touching walls that
directly touch it. A layer of Polyethylene a few centimeters
thick acting as a bladder for water storage should do the trick.
The next thing to note is we’ll need to actually be able to get
in and out of this steel box so don’t forget to make an airlock
access point somewhere at the top. Lights, life support,
ventilation, ducts, copper wiring, gaskets, pipes, pumps, rails,
nozzles, crown molding– most of these will have to be
imported from Earth but a lot of things can be made in our
fancy 3D printer-equipped Lunarship machine shop. Also, as
with the Lunarship structures, we’re going to need lots of
radiators to keep this steel box from turning into a big oven;
however, we may be able to make these mostly of steel,
saving much expense. Then pressurize it with 40% nitrogen
imported from Earth and 60% with the oxygen produced by
the electrolysis reaction when making the very steel this box
is made of. Isn’t that cool? Both the building itself and the air
inside it will have been made out of Moon dust. Note on
nitrogen imports: The internal atmosphere could be 100%
oxygen but this poses a substantial fire risk. Modern
spaceflight missions use a 40/60 nitrogen/oxygen mixed-gas
composition to reduce the chances of a flash fire as well as to
eliminate the complications of purging nitrogen from an
astronaut's body prior to launch to avoid decompression
sickness (the bends). Fortunately, any imported nitrogen is
nearly infinitely recyclable and very inexpensive making the
cost insignificant. But what should we do with this building?
What is the optimal use of 400 square meters? Well, how
about a place to store food and water?
(P.s.i. If you’re worried about pressure bulging because we
made this structure a ‘cuboid’ just remember that the internal
pressure will be around 14 psi. Structural steels typically have
tensile strengths in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 psi. Think
about cuboid fish tanks. Beveled edges and tension cables are
additional solutions.)

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 FOOD & WATER
In 1969, when the Apollo astronauts made their historic
return from the Moon, the prevailing belief was that the lunar
surface was devoid of water. This perspective began to
change as a series of missions over the subsequent decades
started to paint a different picture. For nearly 20 years,
various orbital and impactor missions undertook detailed
studies of the Moon. One such mission, NASA’s Lunar Crater
Observation and Sensing Satellite, confirmed the presence of
ice within the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's
poles. These are areas that never see sunlight, making them
incredibly cold and perfect traps for water ice. Parallel to
these discoveries, several other space missions began
uncovering hints of hydration beyond these cold, dark
regions, identifying signs of water even in regions that do
receive sunlight. A pivotal moment in our understanding
came in 2020. NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared
Astronomy (SOFIA) made a groundbreaking confirmation:
the presence of water on the sunlit areas of the Moon. This
wasn't just a minor discovery; it suggested that water on the
Moon wasn't limited to its cold, shadowed recesses, but could
be more widespread than previously believed. By 2023,
building on these revelations, SOFIA had crafted the first
water map detailing the amount of water distributed across an
area about one-quarter of the Moon's Earth-facing side.
So the Moon has tons of water, all we have to do is scoop
it out of crater bottoms or steam it out of the regolith and we
can just continue on our merry way developing the Moon,
right? Of course, it’s not so simple. SOFIA confirmed water
even in sunlit areas to the order of about 100 to 412 parts per
million: or about 12 ounces of water per cubic meter. The
bottom line is that even the wettest parts of the Moon are still
100 times drier than the Sahara desert. To top it off another
recent 2023 study found that heating regolith to ‘steam out’

60
the trapped water doesn’t work nearly as well as previously
hoped. The regolith, being such a strong insulator, basically
cakes into a hot hardened layer around the outside of the
heated mass impeding ambient conduction and trapping water
inside this shell. This can be solved by continuously stirring
or vibrating the regolith but now we’re talking about even
more energy input for a tiny amount of water.
But hey aren’t we already heating up regolith to extreme
temperatures using tons of energy to create steel in the
electrolysis reactors? Precisely. Besides oxygen, the regolith
electrolysis step of our steelmaking process will undoubtedly
also yield trace amounts of hydrogen and water vapor which
can be captured. However, because the amounts are so low
this will essentially be supplemental in nature– not a source
we can realistically depend upon to water our people and
plants.
Likewise, lunar ice prospecting could prove useful but
also dangerous and logistically challenging. Venturing into
the bottom of billion-year-old craters might be just fine. Or it
might prove fatal, with loose deposits of regolith and
boulders undisturbed for millennia suddenly becoming
dislodged and tumbling down in a Moon rock-regolith slide.
So unless we can confirm the exact location of a few dozen
deposits of ice at least a few tons in size this source will also
be supplemental as we shouldn’t rely on the chances of ice
prospecting to keep our people alive. Maybe we’ll find some
ice while digging and moving all those tons of regolith for
our Lunarship shields and holes. But if not we’ll need to
bring every liter of water needed to the Moon from Earth.
Fortunately, we have the technology to recycle almost all
water used once brought up. In 2023 the International Space
Station’s Environmental Control and Life Support System
(ECLSS) was upgraded to achieve a record 98% water
recovery rate. This system treats and recycles all water
aboard the ISS including sewage, wastewater, and even
humidity scrubbed from the air. The small 2% loss rate means

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that the two aforementioned sources of water procurement,
possibly even just the water recovered from the electrolysis
cells alone, should be enough to counter this loss.
We’ll need to send about five liters (1.3 gallons) of water
per person up from Earth for basic necessities. If we want to
live more comfortably with hot showers and stuff it’s more
like 100 times this at around 200 liters (52 gallons) per
person. An entire Lunarship full of water would provide
200,000 liters, or enough water for 40,000 people to live like
they’re on the ISS (no showers) or enough for 1,000 people to
be able to enjoy showers and stuff like on Earth. Using our
$100 million launch costs this would be $500 per liter,
roughly the same price as concert venue water bottles. Put
another way, 1000 people can live comfortably on the Moon
for about the same price as a private jet. Every delivery
increases our carrying capacity. Recall this water also plays a
vital role in radiation shielding as it will be stored in the hull
of our structures providing an efficient barrier against
secondary radiation.
Food is harder. When it comes to farming the issue isn't
whether or not we CAN grow food on the moon, it's how
many calories you can yield per cubic meter. Is a cubic meter
of moon-grown calories more expensive than a cubic meter
of Earth-grown and rocket-transported calories?

If the answer is yes: import food from Earth.

If the answer is no: Farm on the Moon.

So first: How many calories can you yield per cubic meter?
With highly efficient modern farming technology on Earth
10,000 square meters (1 hectare) can yield enough calories to
feed an average of five (five!) people per year. But on the
Moon, and pretty much everywhere else besides Earth, we
have to do a lot more work than simple soil processing to
grow crops. We have to hermetically enclose a space and then
pressurize it with the right amounts of oxygen and nitrogen

62
and carbon dioxide, add a regenerative closed-loop life
support system, and then protect this enclosed space from
radiation. So we need to look at hydroponic farming.
Let’s consider a hydroponic farm that is 1 cubic hectare,
or 1 million cubic meters. Assuming a 1 meter gap between
rows we get roughly 50 hectares of food, or enough to feed
250 people a year. But the advantage that hydroponics have
over regular open-air farming is one can yield 3-4 harvest
seasons a year rather than just during the spring-summer
cycle. Thus a cubic hydroponic hectare farm can yield
enough calories to feed 750 people annually. The average
cost to build a single story warehouse on Earth in Austin
Texas is about $175 per square meter on the high end. Let’s
round up to $300 to include furnishing it into a hydroponic
farm. 1 story is about 3 meters tall, but let's go with just 2
meters and say we have a 100x100x2 meter building (1
hectare^2) then on Earth the hectare sized hydroponic
building would cost about $6 million. Then again assuming a
1 meter gap between shelves, a cubic hydroponic farm would
be 50 of these and would cost $300 million- which is about
how much a cheap skyscraper costs. But how much would it
cost to build one of these on the Moon? Well that’s the hard
part. Assuming we’re building according to the method laid
out in this book in which we use chromium anode electrolysis
reactors to melt regolith into steel and build big steel boxes in
holes, the cost is going to be determined by the useful lifetime
of the reactors and excavating equipment, plus wages and
transport costs. For example this first 20x20x4 meter building
would cost $3.125 million per cubic meter of space made
habitable.
But if you use all the same equipment and just build another
building exactly like this it will cut the costs in half plus
operating expenses, so maybe a 40% cost reduction from
$3.125 million to $1.875 million.
Then do it again, and again, each time reducing the cost by
nearly half.

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 (In millions: $3.125; $1.875; $1.125; $0.675; $0.405, etc.)
How many times can you do this? Precisely. I don’t know. It’s
impossible to find out without rigorous testing of all
equipment involved, so let’s just guess. Let’s say it will cost
3x as much to build per cubic meter on the Moon. That
means our $300 million dollar Earth-based cubic hectare of
hydroponics would cost $900 million on the Moon. This
includes hermetically sealing it and insulating it against
thermal fluctuations and- if humans are present burying it
under regolith for radiation protection, as well as importing
water and nutrient substrate and other components. That’s a
lot, I know, but increasing the price only works in favor of
my argument so I’m trying to be as lenient as possible while
still maintaining some realism. So $900 million. Let's round
up to $1 billion or $1000 per cubic meter.. $1 billion to feed
750 people annually, or $1,333,000 per person.
How does it stack up to importing food on a Lunarship?
Requiring 3,000 kilocalories (kcal) a day, to feed one person
we need 1,095,000 kilocalories a year per person. There are
3,640 kcal/kilogram of white flour, 2,710 kcal/kilogram of
beef, 1,300 kcal/kilogram of rice, 770 kcal/kilogram of
potatoes, 3,870 kcal/kilogram of sugar, 4,020 kcal/kilogram
of cheese, 7,170 kcal/kilogram of butter, 1,550 kcal/kilogram
of eggs, 2,390 kcal/kilogram of chicken, and 8,840
kcal/kilogram of olive oil (the most calorie-dense food).
Using these ten examples we get an average of 3,626
kcal/kilogram of human food. A single Lunarship load of
human food would provide 725,200,000 kcal, enough to feed
662 people for one year. Another way to think about this is
that we can “send up” 132.4 hectares worth of food per
Lunarship.
Adding in the cost of food procurement, the most
expensive food group in the US in 2023 is meat with a mean
price of $1 per kilogram or roughly $1 per 2,500 kcal. We’re
not filling our Lunarship with meat but we will count it as if
we were so we have a ‘most expensive’ estimate to be safe.

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This increased margin should also account for the cost of
packaging and logistics of everything since it was already
factored into the meat cost. Using this highest of costs we get
a price of $290,080 to fill an entire Lunarship, and combined
with the launch costs we get a total cost of $100,290,080 to
feed 662 people, or ~$151,495 per person, an order of
magnitude less than the hydroponic farm! So a lunarship can
feed 88.2% the amount of people, but for basically 11% the
cost, and the farm would have to produce food for 10 years
before breaking even with lunarship imports assuming no
reduction in launch cost, but as we’ll discuss in a future
chapter launch cost reductions to less than $20 million are
nearly guaranteed using modern technology. If this is the case
it will take the farm over 50 years to break even. It is in a race
against launch costs and bound to lose.
We were also very generous with build costs, but even if
we get to the point where building on the Moon doesn’t cost
3x as much as on Earth but is on par with it, we still have to
consider market demand and opportunity cost for those
habitable spaces which will undoubtedly have much more
valuable use cases and people willing to pay more for said
space than you’d ever make from farming. An Iphone's value
isn’t what it costs to make an Iphone, an Iphone's value is
what people are willing to pay for it- market demand. Same
with habitable space on the Moon.
Value density. Any space not on Earth requires a lot of
modification to be made habitable. We have to hermetically
enclose a space and then pressurize that space with the right
amounts of oxygen and nitrogen, add a regenerative
closed-loop life support system, and then protect this
enclosed space from radiation, and control the thermal
environment with radiators. This is why I prefer to think in
terms of ‘Habitable Space’ as it helps to form a more accurate
conceptual image of what we’re actually doing when
developing the Moon. This might seem pedantic but it’s
essential. Understand that we are building bunkers not

65
levittown homes. We don’t get to spread across the heavens
organically like we did here on Earth. The entire history of
humanities mass migrations out of Africa– onto 7 continents,
across 5 oceans– was easy compared to what we have to do
now. Any activity beyond Earth requires careful planning and
focused intention as we painstakingly carve small, warm, gas
and moisture filled pockets out of the cold entropic abyss,
one little oasis at a time. This naturally makes every cubic
meter of habitable space expensive. So we have to maximize
the value gained per cubic meter. Only extremely high-value
activities can be profitable here.
We can see a similar effect play out in the terrestrial real
estate market. Real estate downtown is much more expensive
than real estate in rural areas because of market competition
for proximity advantages. In January 2022, the median price
per square foot in Queens, New York was $540 dollars, in
Manhattan it was $1,612 dollars. If you spend $16 million
dollars to buy 10,000 square feet in Manhattan it doesn’t
make sense to use that floorspace to grow crops. Instead
you’ll want to maximize the value per square foot to the point
that you either break even or profit from the initial
investment. Maximization of value density.
Saudi Arabia specializes in crude exportation because oil
naturally occurs there. Sure you can synthesize oil from coal
in Germany but why would you when you can import it
cheaper from Saudi Arabia? California specializes in wine
exportation because of its naturally occurring grape-friendly
climate. Sure you can grow grapes in a greenhouse in Canada
but why would you when you can import it cheaper from
California? Sure we can make Iphones in the US but why
would you when you can import it cheaper from China? Sure
you can grow food on the Moon… but why would you when
you can import it cheaper from Earth? This is geographic
specialization on a solar system scale and it leads to an
interesting long term vision. In many visions of the far future
Earth is portrayed as a cramped, polluted, dying world-

66
resources stretched thin- just barely able to keep up with
humanity's demands. But now think about the far future of
Earth in the context of there being a market dynamic
incentivising agriculture. Eventually factories and people can
be moved off world, but farming will remain. I see a vision of
the future in which Earth serves as the sole breadbasket of a
solar system spanning civilization, a gaia world in which
environmental stewardship isn’t just necessary, but part of a
profitable business environment, for maintaining a healthy
ecology yields abundance.

Unless of course Earth was smashed by an asteroid or

obliterated in a nuclear holocaust in which case you’d
probably wish you had a few backup farms on the Moon or in
orbit…

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 THE ENVELOPE’S BACK
Let’s attempt the impossible and try to calculate how
much this strategy would cost. The first thing we need to
estimate are our research and development (R&D) costs. Up
front we are not looking at the R&D costs of developing a
Starship/Lunarship type launch vehicle, these are separate
because- while being able to develop the Moon does depend
on this technology existing, this technology isn’t being
developed with the sole intent of developing the Moon.
Starship's use as a vehicle for building out and maintaining
the Starlink constellation alone is justification enough for its
development, not even counting NASA and other government
or military contract missions or the entire private market
earning potential or any of our lunar development use cases.
Caravels weren’t developed to cross the Atlantic, they were
developed to sail down the coast of Africa, but once they
existed they made crossing the Atlantic possible. Same with
Starship-like launch vehicles. So then what exactly are we
researching and developing?
Two vehicles, the process of burying a Lunarship under
three meters of regolith using one of these vehicles, lower
gravity adjustments to the steel-making electrolysis cell,
vacuum-steel casting, and biggest of them all: The lunar
structure construction methods. Building big steel boxes in
big holes on the Moon may seem simple enough but you can
be sure there will be lots of devils found in the details.
Usually to estimate R&D cost a team of analysts are paid a
few hundred thousand dollars to perform a deep investigation
typically taking several months but this analysis always takes
longer and cost overruns are to be expected …and so the cost
analysis costs more than originally expected and when it’s
finally complete they come to some conclusion that a project
will take x amount of time and money…but that project
always takes longer than x as cost overruns are to be expected

68
and so the cost is more than the cost analysis originally
expected…so a performance review is initiated by a team of
analysts who are paid a few hundred thousand dollars to
perform a deep investigation typically taking about a year but
this investigation always takes longer and cost overruns are to
be expected. But I don’t need to justify my MBA induced
$50,000 student loan indebted, father disappointing
existence- so we can take a shortcut and just estimate R&D
cost as a historic average.

Saturn V: Cost - $83 billion, Years - 7

Space Shuttle: Cost - $46 billion, Years - 10
Falcon 9: Cost - $0.357 billion, Years - 4
SLS (Space Launch System): Cost - $19.1 billion, Years - 9
Starship (SpaceX): Cost - $5 billion, Years - 5
MMRTG: Cost - $0.083 billion, Years - 5
Perseverance Rover: Cost - $2.2 billion, Years - 7
Ingenuity helicopter (Mars Helicopter): Cost - $0.08 billion, Years - 5
Large Hadron Collider (LHC): Cost - $5.15 billion, Years - 15
Hubble Space Telescope: Cost - $5.51 billion, Years - 12
Manhattan Project: Cost - $30 billion, Years - 3
International Space Station (ISS): Cost - $175.86 billion, Years - 23
Curiosity Rover: Cost - $2.83 billion, Years - 8
James Webb Space Telescope: Cost - $10 billion, Years - 20
Tesla Model S: Cost - $1.7 billion, Years - 5
Google's Waymo: Cost - $1.18 billion, Years - 6
Human Genome Project: Cost - $5.28 billion, Years - 13
Airbus A380: Cost - $26.63 billion, Years - 15
IBM Watson: Cost - $2.11 billion, Years - 3
Blue Origin's New Shepard: Cost - $2.5 billion, Years - 14
Boeing X-32 (Joint Strike Fighter): Cost - $1.22 billion, Years - 4
Square Kilometer Array Radio Telescope: Cost - $2.62 billion, Years - 4
Apple iPhone (Original): Cost - $0.185 billion, Years - 2
Microsoft Xbox One: Cost - $3.29 billion, Years - 5
SpaceX Dragon Capsule: Cost - $2.81 billion, Years - 6
Toyota Prius: Cost - $1.68 billion, Years - 3
Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine: Cost - $2 billion, Years - 2
Boston Metals Electrolysis Reactor Cost - 0.352, Years - 12
Average Years: 7.66
Average cost per year: 0.513
Total: $3,929,580,000
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 Okay so the list actually isn't that long. I was going for at
least 100 items spread across as many industries as possible
but it turns out most companies aren’t actually that happy to
publish R&D numbers I guess because they want to keep
secrets from their competitors. So most of these are
government numbers or values revealed in court documents.
But I think it’s good enough for our ballpark estimate. I could
make it longer but- meh. With 28 items we get an average
yearly cost of $1.658 billion with an average project duration
of 8.1 years for an expected R&D cost of $13.265 billion.
But this is not a good model because things cost less to
develop when they're no longer cutting-edge. There's a lot of
basic research needed between 0 and 0.5, progress isn’t
linear, there's a steep initial learning curve. Saturn V
development began just 5 years after we had put a single
satellite into orbit. The Manhattan project began just barely 3
years after fission was even discovered. We are much further
down the development track than that and aren’t inventing
anything from scratch, almost everything we are using is
derived from existing technology. The most cutting edge
ambitious thing is the excavator, but excavators and lunar
rovers already exist; we are just combining the technology.
So if we remove the extreme outliers like the Manhattan
project and the Saturn V and the International Space Station
(which is the most expensive thing ever built in history by the
way, mostly because the only thing more irresponsible with
money than the government is 15 governments). I also didn’t
include anything Boeing, which you won't question if you
know anything about Boeing. With these adjustments our
new numbers are much more favorable with an average
yearly cost of $513 million and an average project duration of
7.66 years for a total R&D cost of $3.929 billion. We might
as well just round up to $4 billion over 8 years. So our costs
were basically cut in half but our time remained the same.
Obviously this will take longer and cost overruns are to be
expected so you might as well hire your team of investigators

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now so they can finish investigating around the same time the
project wraps up.
Now that we have our R&D cost, it’s just a simple matter
of adding up an estimate for all that equipment we just
researched and developed. How much does a Lunarship cost?
If you recall from the chapter ADDRESSING THE
XLEPHANT we suggested a Lunarship build cost of $50
million, plus a lunar launch cost of $80 million. For
ships-turned shelters that are not returning their usable
lifespan is not 5 launches but rather just 1. It might be
possible to do the retrofitting necessary after it has already
flown 4 or more missions, thus distributing the build cost,
however, let’s assume this is not the case and it eats up the
entire build cost on its first flight to the Moon where it will
stay. Also since it doesn’t need to return to Earth it would
need less fuel and so its flight cost would be less than $80
million however we also wont factor this in just to remain on
the high end of estimates. So we get a Lunarship-turned
outpost cost of $130 million per unit. This is not its value,
just its cost to build. We are maintaining its value by reusing
it as a structure rather than a reusable launch vehicle. So we
retrofitted, dropped, flipped and buried three ships, that’s
$390 million. We also transported two electrolysis reactors
with other equipment on two different trips and we
transported humans to the Moon once in our journey so far,
the engineers who constructed the base but had to leave after
two weeks due to radiation exposure. After this another crew
will come and these will be the ones to furnish the place and
since they can shelter in the radiation protected outpost they
can stay longer and will oversee the installment of the
reactors and machine shop etc. So let's add a second trip.
Then let’s assume all this takes place over the course of one
year and that there is at least one crew change after six
months, so adding another trip for three total. Then let's add a
fourth trip for margins sake, maybe a crew resupply mission
or something. So two electrolysis reactor payloads plus four

71
human-oriented trips for $600 million. Our nuclear reactor
cost is $10 million but was delivered aboard one of the ships
turned shelters. To find out how much the two chromium
anode reactors would cost I was going to compare them to the
cost of similar reactors used in industrial aluminum
production but I couldn’t find this information without paying
something like $2,000 for a report (ha!) but a quick look at
industrial furnace costs shows they’re typically between
$10-30,000 dollars. I saw nothing over $500k so it’s probably
safe to assume these reactors will cost tens of thousands
rather than millions which makes them a rounding error but
to be safe let’s just say they’ll cost $1 million each. This
should also be more than enough of a margin to cover the
cost of all the auxiliary equipment that comes with them, the
caster being the most expensive. So add another $2 million to
our scorecard.

3x ships-turned shelters: $390 million

2 reactor payloads + 4 human trips = 6 flights: $600 million
1 nuclear reactor + 2 electrolysis reactors: $12 million
Total: $1.002 billion.

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 So $1 billion plus our R&D costs for a total of $5 billion
over the course of 8-10 years. While $5 billion may seem
expensive to a peasant like you, let me put it into perspective:
we can gain the ability to develop the Moon for the same
price as 45 F35 fighter jets or the Seattle Seahawks or 25
Marvel movies, or 2% of the money the government wasted
in 2022 alone.
For comparison the US government wasted 247 billion in
2022, the Department of Defense currently fields 450 F35’s,
NASA spent $11.8 billion to develop the SLS, and the
Pentagon spends $500 million a year to run Guantánamo Bay
($13 million per prisoner), and as of 2023 humanity has spent
about $6.4 billion to produce 32 Marvel movies with 12 more
in development; so $5 billion to begin developing the Moon
is not much, all things considered.

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 PROFIT
Did you know the USS constitution was nicknamed “old
ironsides” because the wood it was built of was so strong and
dense cannonballs would literally bounce off it. This was
because the ship was made from old growth trees. Trees
hundreds of years old, great big white oaks and pine found
only in the vast virgin woods of the New World.
Dense. Mature. Strong.
By contrast the old world, covered in vast farms, where man
had felled the primeval forests a millenia ago, had now only
specially designated royal forests left: all new growth. In a
centuries long shipbuilding arms race with France and Spain,
the British naturally began sourcing much of its lumber from
the American colonies, providing them with a considerable
advantage. By the mid 18th century the Royal Navy, so
formidable, unmatched by any equal, was built from
American wood. By the time of the American Revolution
shipbuilding had become the lifeblood of New England. In
the age of sail shipbuilding was one of the most capital
intensive activities done on Earth. It doesn't make sense to
build ships on the Moon today just as it didn’t make sense to
build ships in Massachusetts in 1550 despite Massachusetts
having better wood... But by 1750? Once Massachusetts had
a developed settlement and infrastructure building ships there
became a logical conclusion and ship building was the
northern colonies main economic driver because it had the
natural advantage of hardy new world old growth wood. But
what drove settlement and capital to New England before
there was a thriving shipbuilding sector? New England is not
known for its rich fertile soil and abundant crops. No, that
was Virginia and Carolina. The incentives that began and
grew the Plymouth Company colonies were intangible.
Religious freedom, cultural freedom, the general pursuit of an
unrepressed lifestyle drove people and capital across the

74
atlantic. It was not some ‘high value trade good’ like with the
less populated Virginia company settlements but rather
something more transcendental. Less quantifiable, but
possibly even more powerful.
But let’s be real, even if the Moon was a tropical paradise
and not a radiated hellscape I doubt religion and the pursuit
of freedom would lead to its development today. If only there
was something similar today, some sort of intangible thing
people valued enough to pay for. But that’s silly, I mean,
afterall we all know modern economies are just
manufacturing based right? Right?
Oh wait, what about TOURISM?
Imagine if you wanted to start an industrial technology
company. It doesn't make sense to start an industrial tech
company in a random field in Texas in the middle of
nowhere. No engineers will want to move to a random field
in the middle of nowhere because there's nothing to do and
nobody around. Plus you’d have to construct a new building
from scratch and since we’re in the middle of nowhere labor
and materials will have to travel further which will increase
their cost. Then your facility needs water, power, and sewage
which means you have to pay to install a powerline,
pipelines, and a septic tank which will need to be cleaned
annually, further increasing your costs.
But if that same random field was, over time, developed for
some 'other' reason: perhaps it was found to contain a ton of
oil or gold, maybe it was religiously important, or it simply
had a nice river, then it might be transformed from a random
field into a small city. Now it has all the places, parks, and
amenities your engineers would like, plus easy to connect
water and sewer, road infrastructure and power. Now it makes
a lot more sense to start your tech company there.
For the Moon this 'other' thing that will develop it is
tourism. Across the Earth tourists flock to exotic destinations,
carrying with them resources and capital– the means to
develop untamed land into habitable territory– and what

75
reachable destination is more exotic and in need of capital
than the Moon? As travel to the Moon becomes more
accessible, people will pay to experience the awe-inspiring
views, the thrill of low gravity, and the novelty of being on
another world. Like the impact of tourism on the economies
of developing countries, the boom in lunar tourism will spur
the growth of the service sector. Tour guides will be among
the first of these service providers, leading lunar excursions
and providing visitors with a comprehensive understanding of
the lunar environment. Tour guides, providers of goods, and
operators of souvenir shops selling 3D-printed mementos will
all find a market on the Moon. As the lunar base grows, so
too will the demand for expansion.
New shelter units will be needed, offering greater comfort
and amenities. Specialist roles will emerge, from repairmen
of EVA suits and 3D printers to construction workers and
rover mechanics. #MADEONTHEMOON. Mugs. Desk toys.
Fidget spinners. T-shirts. Anything that can be 3D printed
will, for a time, be coveted as novelty. Also, even Moon
rocks and lunar regolith could be exported. Wouldn’t you buy
a lunar rock paperweight or a Moon mug? Zero to Low
Gravity 3D printing is already well established and a printer
by MadeInSpace is currently used to 3D print tools for
astronauts on the ISS.
Other appeals include the ability to gaze upon the greatest
night sky imaginable during the lunar night, unfiltered and
unobstructed by an atmosphere or light pollution, an
experience increasingly rare on Earth. The ability to play
sports and a few other physical activities I’m too polite to
mention– all enhanced by low gravity. Low-gravity paintball,
racing, and UFC fights. Low-gravity dancing and yoga.
Low-gravity trampolines and trapeze. Nearly anything you
can think of that we normally do here on Earth but with 1/6th
the gravity, which naturally makes it six times cooler. Once
the seed of a space economy has been sufficiently nurtured by
tourists, lunar development will organically grow as effects

76
continuously compound, externalities increase, and local
advantages layer.
So, if we want a self-sustaining presence on the Moon,
one that justifies itself economically so humans are kept in
the heavens via market demand and not just political forces or
ideological aspirations then we need to host tourists and to do
that we’ll need to have a profitable lunar tourism base, a lunar
resort (for lack of a better term) which… sounds kinda
boring. I don't want to be a hotel owner as much as the next
guy (no offense hotel owners reading this) but the goal here is
to kickstart a lunar economy with the eventual goal of doing
much more with it. If a New York City hotel owner can
become president of the United States, just think what a lunar
hotel owner could do. Actually, let’s try to estimate profit
potential.
Our flight cost to the Moon is $100 million, and our
internal fairing volume is 1,000 cubic meters. SpaceX has
said Starship would be able to carry 100 people to Mars, but
that is a 7-9 month journey. The Moon is only about 3 days
away. Considering A Boeing 747 has an internal volume of
876 cubic meters (less than Starship) and carries 416
passengers, 200 for a 3-day Lunarship journey to the Moon is
reasonable. $100 million divided by 200 passengers is
$500,000 each for transport break even costs. Unfortunately
even after 42 years of trickle down Reaganomics not all 8
billion humans can afford to dish out a minimum of $500k for
a trip to the Moon. So then how many humans CAN? I guess
a good place to start is by asking how many millionaires there
are. In 2022 the world's millionaire population amounted to
59.4 million adults. Credit Suisse forecasts that the number of
millionaires will still grow to 86 million by 2027, a 45%
increase from 2022. But not all people with at least 1 million
dollars will buy a ticket. Some don’t care, some aren’t
healthy enough to make the trip. Some people will buy
multiple tickets while others will buy just one and many will
buy none. But I think we have a metric that already exists

77
involving people who have money, health, and an interest in
things like space, science and tech. Something that would
correlate well with potential ticket buyers: General Aviation.
Like potential ticket buyers some people have one aircraft,
other people have many aircraft and some aircraft are owned
by many such as in flight clubs, but all aircraft have owners
with money to spend on an interest that should overlap with
lunar tourism. Sure this is comparing apples to oranges but at
least they’re both still fruit. Now, we cannot just count the
number of aircraft in general aviation as most aircraft cost
less than $200k and most general aviation aircraft are over 50
years old and the price of aircraft has risen significantly over
the past 50 years even adjusting for inflation. So really we
need to limit our data to aircraft costing over $500k that were
sold recently. This limits us to turboprop airplanes,
helicopters, and business jets sold within the last 5 years. This
gives us a range from about $500k to several million.
According to data released by the General Aviation
Manufacturers Association, the total number of worldwide
aircraft that fall into this category is: 10,763. That’s nearly
11,000 people who spent at least $500k on an interest that
would likely align with lunar tourism in the last 5 years.
Since Credit Suisse estimates a 45% increase in millionaires
over the next 5 years I think it’s safe to just round up to
11,000.
So we have our target market and our transport break
even costs but what about our build and labor break even
costs? To estimate both these costs we need to know how
long our guests are staying. Let’s say we send up 200 guests
at a time and they stay for an average of two weeks. Why two
weeks? Well it doesn’t have to be but I think it makes sense
because of the Lunar cycle- moonwalks during the day,
stargazing at night. And it’s actually kinda long, don’t you get
tired after two weeks abroad? A higher turnover rate means
less capacity so it also helps us remain on the high end of a
conservative estimate. So 200 guests every two weeks would

78
be 5,200 a year meaning we would be able to serve our entire
target market in 2 years.
Some of the highest rated cruise lines have a crew to
passenger ratio of 1:12 while the lowest rated ones have
ratios around 1:25. Since we’re serving the ultrarich let’s use
a ratio of 1:10. Also borrowing from cruise lines typically
employment contracts last 6-months and due to the low
gravity causing bone and muscle atrophy, 6-months on the
Moon is a long time although many astronauts have stayed
longer on the ISS which has basically no gravity. This means
we’ll have 20 employees living and working on the Moon for
6 months at a time, or 40 employees a year, 80 contracts over
2 years. If each contract pays $100,000 then we’ll need to
spend $8 million on wages, which would add $727 to each
ticket. One lunarship can carry enough food to feed 626
people on a 3k calorie diet continuously for one year, and
since we are hosting 200 people plus 20 staff (220)
continuously a single launch-worth of food over the course of
two years is more than enough, adding another $9,000 to each
ticket. Note I am not suggesting sending up two years worth
of food in a single launch; this is a launch-worth of food,
most likely sent up with each trip. We also need to add the
cost to launch the staff to the Moon to each ticket which
would be 80 people or 40% of a launch ($40 million) so add
another $3,636 to each ticket.
How large do we need to build to host 220 people at a
time? Well Cruise ships have about 122 cubic meters per
passenger and the international space station has about 130
per astronaut so let's go with 130 cubic meters per head
which would result in us needing 28,600 cubic meters of
habitable space. Let’s round up to 30,000. To build this large
we must deliver another nuclear reactor since it only provides
enough power for 20,000 cubic meters. Two reactors would
provide enough power for 40,000 cubic meters and with our
first outpost (+1,000) and the machine shop (+1,000) and the
first +1,600 cubic meter building plus the 30,000 cubic

79
meters we intend to build we’d have 33,600 cubic meters
needing power. So let’s deliver the second reactor with a
second excavating rover aboard a ship that will land
sideways, open like a cargo-plane and unload the rover, then
close and be buried to serve as the reactor housing same as
we did the first one. This whole process adds another $140
million ($10 for the reactor + $130 for ship). Our steel
production rate is unknown but 30,000 cubic meters isn’t a
small project and we still have a bunch of empty space in the
rear of that second ship so we might as well send up another
two electrolysis reactors for an additional $200 million. Now
we’ve essentially doubled our build rate capacity (unknown)
for an additional $340 million, adding $30,000 to each ticket.
As for construction labor cost we don’t know if most of this
can be done remotely using Boston Dynamics Robots or if
humans need to be present or just partially present. This cost
could only be estimated by simulating the entire build process
and finding the optimal strategy first, but let's just assume 2
years of build time involving 4 flight missions and a team of
20 robots/humans being paid $150,000 a year (Boston
Dynamics Atlas cost about $150,000). This would total $106
million or $3,533 per cubic meter, adding a final $9,636 to
each ticket.

Our final ticket break even cost is: $552,999.

Obviously we have to round that up to $553,000.

Importantly we did not push our $4 billion R&D costs

onto our 11,000 consumers for several reasons. First it is safe
to assume much of this cost would be subsidized by grants
from Uncle Sam. Second, even if that were not the case the
R&D costs directly translated into the ability to build on the
Moon. This is very powerful and can generate revenue in
many different ways outside of tourism. I’m sure NASA and
ESA and JAXA and CERN and the Pentagon and many other
private corporations will be lining up to pay you to build

80
them a cool lunar crib. Our tourism analysis is just to get a
very narrowly defined conservative baseline estimate of
earning potential to prove the viability of being a lunar hotel
owner. We only added up the ticket cost for things directly
related to tourism. So with a $553,000 break even ticket cost
the only question now is how much should we charge for
profit? The higher the ticket price the more people will be
priced out lowering our earning potential, but we also have to
consider demand as the first trips will be worth more than
later trips and the best way to do that is to auction off the
tickets- letting the market decide.

However, just to get an idea: if the average ticket sold for

$600k we’d profit about $517 million in 2 years.

81
 WALMART
You can do A LOT with steel panels and beams and five
axis cnc machines, yet no matter how advanced your
domestic lunar production capacity becomes, no matter how
much you make off world, this roaring economic engine will
always need inputs from Earth or elsewhere for anything that
cannot be easily sourced on the Moon. No organic
compounds, none of our favorite breathable inert gasses, no
edible carbohydrates and hydrocarbons like maltose and
microplastics; and- realistically- no meaningful amounts of
water for anything larger than a few dozen people. This
shouldn’t be that surprising, every modern economy on
Earth- even the most insulated still need imports. But how
much our lunar economy can import will depend on two
things: How often we can land a load on the lunar surface and
how large that load is.
A Lunarship-sized super-heavy lift launch vehicle has a
generously high-end estimated payload capacity of 200 tons
to the lunar surface. If we land 1 Lunarship-sized rocket on
the Moon every single day, 365 days a year, then we could
deliver 73,000 tons of stuff a year. That may sound like a lot
but it’s not. It’s not enough for even a small lunar economy,
much less a growing and thriving one. To put it into
perspective that's less than a single medium-sized panamax
bulk carrier from 1980 can carry, which is about 75,000
metric tons a year… wait, no- not in a year.

In a single trip.
At any given time.

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 But okay I realize comparing cargo ships to rockets is like
comparing apples to atom bombs, however we’re not
concerned about energy but rather logistics here and 73,000
tons a year is very little, so let me try another comparison
that's probably a bit more familiar. A small Walmart receives
about 5 trucks a day to remain stocked which would be about
1,825 trucks a year. This was surprisingly hard to find data on
but according to several truck drivers it seems that the typical
semi-truck load weight is roughly 22 metric tons in the US,
although it can be much higher, but let’s just say 22 tons per
truck as a conservative estimate meaning a single Walmart
receives about 40,150 tons of goods a year.
I’m basing this on info garnered from Quora and Reddit
posts… but after all 7,000 grains of barley weighs 45% as
much as a chunk of platinum-iridium alloy from 1889 so I am
officially proposing the addition of a new unit of
measurement to the International Bureau of Weights and
Measures: the “Walmart” which is equal to 40,150 metric
tons, 40,150,000 kilograms or about 619 billion grains of
barley. If we land 1 Lunarship-sized rocket on the Moon
every single day, 365 days a year, then we could deliver 1.8
Walmarts worth of stuff a year. But how realistic is that
launch frequency? I mean can we actually land 1
Lunarship-sized rocket on the Moon every single day of the
year?

Well, no.

2023 saw 223 orbital launches, setting a world record for

the third year in a row. That averages out to roughly a single
launch every one and half days across all of Earth. Think of
all the things that go into a single launch from Earth, the
logistics, communication and supply lines, the timing and
tracking and coordinating. All of this, done once every 24
hours on Earth by an essential workforce with rare skills and
experience who need vacation and sick days. And now realize

83
that launching a rocket from Earth is not the same as landing
a rocket on the lunar surface, and this landing aspect is likely
the tighter end of this bottleneck as you have to take all those
things involved in an Earth launch, and do them again for
landing on the lunar surface, plus the extra steps of
unloading, refueling, and then launching again from the moon
back into orbit, all in under 24 hours. This means a round the
clock workforce with constant supply inputs, not to mention
that any time delays and scrubbed launches will cause a
traffic jam in the logistic network both on Earth and on the
Moon. And there’s solar storms and meteoroid streams which
is sorta like a space weather problem of its own. So landing a
fat load of any size on the lunar surface once every 24 hours
is likely impossible in both the near and mid term.
But let’s say we can, optimistically, get to the point where
we’re able to launch a superheavy rocket from Earth every
single day of the year, 365 launches a year. These would not
be direct trips from the ground to the lunar surface, because
in reality Starship-like vehicles need to undergo orbital
refueling once reaching low earth orbit to give them enough
juice to make it the rest of the way to the Moon. It’s currently
estimated that for each trip to the Moon, anywhere between
5-12 fuel launches will have to be performed.
At a 10:1 ratio, for every ship sent to the Moon, 10 fuel
launches would need to be performed, 11 launches total. At a
launch rate of one a day, out of 365 launches a year only 33
would be Moon-bound yielding just 6,600 tons, or 16.4% of a
Walmart. With 8 fuel launches per trip we’d net 20.2% of a
Walmart and with just 5 launches we’d net 30.3%. But let’s
be super optimistic (and unrealistic) and say the ratio of
payload to fuel launches is just 2:1, so for each moon bound
ship only 2 other fuel-ships will need to be launched, 3
launches total. At this unrealistic ratio, if we launch the
largest and most powerful rocket ever built, every single day
of the year only 60.6% of a small Walmart would make it to
the Moon.

84
 And then we still have to get people there! So far we’ve
just assumed people are on the Moon but they have to get
there using the same vehicles as the goods they’re
consuming, sharing from the same pool of 365 launches a
year! Using our unrealistic ratio of 2:1, out of 365 launches in
a year 244 would be devoted to refueling missions. That
leaves us with 121 launches for goods and the humans they’re
intended to supply. So if we can only get 60% of a Walmart
to the Moon, we need to know how many people that can
support, and how many launches it will take to get that many
people to the Moon and those launches will reduce the
percentage of a Walmart which will reduce the number of
people and launches, so we need to find the optimal ratio of
people: to cargo launches. The first step is to find out how
many humans would a single ‘Walmart’ support? And we’re
not talking about survival necessities- food and water. We’re
talking about a lunar economy with a large tourism base- so
amenities. Sure in the case of tourism they’re there for the
experience itself and people often live in smaller quarters on
cruise ships than they would otherwise, but cruise ships still
have alcohol and games and stuff. So how many people can a
Walmart worth of amenities support? Well
“people-per-Walmart” is kinda a bad question because man
cannot live off Walmart alone, there are lots of other suppliers
in the market so how could you ever find a reliable metric to
base this on, I mean it’s not like there are any places that just
have a single Walmart providing for the entire community
like some corporate dystopia deserted island-Walmart
scenario…

Oh wait, that's the US midwest.

85
 All across the midwest and Appalachia there are small
towns with populations between 2-6 thousand people whose
entire economy and existence is supplied by a single
Walmart. Most of the town works at the Walmart and shops at
the Walmart. Like mining company towns of old, they are
Walmart company towns. Which kinda confused me. How
are these sustainable if they don’t produce anything, they just
consume Walmart goods… in exchange for working at
Walmart? Sure coal-company towns monopolized the entire
market, but they existed to export coal. They produced
something. I grew up in a small town in Texas, but it was near
a large city, and most people commuted to the city for work.
But these towns I’m talking about are in the absolute middle
of nowhere, way too far to commute. So then how do these
towns, which don’t commute to a nearby big city, and don’t
really seem to produce anything, no factories or workshops or
mines, not even farms in most cases, remain on consumption
alone?
I’m making broad strokes here as every one of these
forgotten places has a unique background and character but in
general it seems that most of these places were established
and grew to their peaks from two things: Energy or
Transportation. Either coal or oil being discovered there at
some point a hundred years ago, the mines and wells now
long since exhausted, or a railroad or cattle trail stop.

And that’s pretty much it.

But that's the story for tons of abandoned ghost towns.

Why are these still here? How are these places sustainable?

86
 Well the answer is: they aren’t. All of them have seen
population declines every census for decades except in 2020
when many moved from the city to the country during the
Covid-19 pandemic, but this was largely temporary and
population declines returned the next year. It seems most kids
who grow up in these areas move out as quickly as possible.
So they are on their way to ghost town. They are dying, just
slowly. Does having a Walmart slow their death spiral? Well
there is only a Walmart because Walmart felt there was a
large enough serviceable market to warrant the upfront
investment so there has to be something other than Walmart
bringing money into the town. In fact if the Walmart is
making a profit it is technically siphoning money from the
town. So then where does the money come from?
Those who remain and aren’t employed by a local
Walmart are typically employed in either trucking or the oil
industry, the nature of which sees them leaving home for
several weeks at a time and then returning for a few weeks of
off-time. So they do commute, but instead of heading to a
nearby city, they traverse state lines and national borders.
Interestingly, this pattern of employment links them to the
very industries that originally led to the establishment of their
towns: Energy and Transportation. These industries have
deep historical roots in the community, shaping its identity
and economic foundation over generations. Deep roots to the
past. Roots, which give these places staying power long past
their expiration. Debt, welfare, addiction- they all do their
part in keeping people in places like these, but the real
staying power, that which has kept these towns on a map with
enough population to warrant a Walmart are their roots to the
past. Like old oaks communities with deep roots may stand
for generations, nourished by the past. But while roots can be
nourishing, they can also be entangling, entrapping,
suffocating. While many may leave, emigrating to greener
pastures, places of growth, these forsaken places endure
because every year some of the youth remain, some who

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might otherwise have found opportunities and fulfillment
elsewhere. Trapped by their families, their memories, their
homes. The weight of history both anchors and restrains.
Every generation that remains sustains the community,
preserving its traditions and stories.
But the truth is, eventually, the day will come when even
the strongest oaks must bow. These towns are nothing more
than the high water marks of a long forgotten wave, the
remnants of historical echoes in a void, silently living out
their twilight years, quickly approaching oblivion as one by
one homes are left to rot and the concrete cracks grow. No
matter how many once called them home, eventually these
forsaken places will fade.

Even the oldest trees, with the deepest roots are toppled
eventually; usually cut down to make way for a new Walmart.

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But we still don’t know how many people a small
Walmart-worth of amenities can serve per year!

2145 Eastern Ave, Gallipolis, OH 45631 Pop. 3,297

100 McGinnis Dr, Wayne, WV 25570 Pop. 1,405
4490 Gallia St, New Boston, OH 45662 Pop. 2,245
240 Wal-Mart Way, Maysville, KY 41056 Pop. 8,742
11217 State Rte 41, West Union, OH 45693 Pop. 3,002
1750 S Perryville Blvd, Perryville, MO 63775 Pop. 8,488
6495 Country Club Rd, Murphysboro, IL 62966 Pop. 7,033
1870 W Main St, Salem, IL 62881 Pop. 7,113
2700 W Broadway St, Princeton, IN 47670 Pop. 8,367
2251 IN-54, Linton, IN 47441 Pop. 5,162
1304 E Main St, Robinson, IL 62454 Pop. 7,094
1701 N Main St, Beaver Dam, KY 42320 Pop. 3,490
1725 W Everely Branch, Central City, KY 42330 Pop. 5,810
1600 W Main St, Walnut Ridge, AR 72476 Pop. 5,492
1007 N Douglass St, Malden, MO 63863 Pop. 3,580
60 S Stewart Rd, Corbin, KY 40701 Pop. 7,856
175 Walmart Plaza Dr, Monticello, KY 42633 Pop. 5,755
1650 Edmonton Rd, Tompkinsville, KY 42167 Pop. 2,297
2988 Burkesville Rd, Columbia, KY 42728 Pop. 4,846
333 E Walnut St, Thayer, MO 65791 Pop. 1,900
1433 S Sam Houston Blvd, Houston, MO 65483 Pop. 2,163
1888 Hwy 28, Owensville, MO 65066 Pop. 2,806
1802 S Business 54, Eldon, MO 65026 Pop. 4,545
1250 W Dallas St, Buffalo, MO 65622 Pop. 3,422
3020 S Elliott Ave, Aurora, MO 65605 Pop. 7,412
500 W Mt Vernon Blvd, Mt Vernon, MO 65712 Pop. 4,550
2115 S Main St, Grove, OK 74344 Pop. 7,215
2121 TX-16, Graham, TX 76450 Pop. 8,750
2614 N Swenson St, Stamford, TX 79553 Pop. 2,921
2801 Avenue F, Childress, TX 79201 Pop. 5,797
12910 OH-664, Logan, OH 43138 Pop. 7,258
200 Wal St, Summersville, WV 26651 Pop. 3,369
1983 S Mississippi Ave, Atoka, OK 74525 Pop. 3,200
2008 W Grant Ave, Pauls Valley, OK 73075 Pop. 6,026
1907 E Washington St, Idabel, OK 74745 Pop. 7,056
772 Airport Rd, Cleveland, OK 74020 Pop. 3,217

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This is a random smattering of 36 Walmarts in towns across
the midwest and Appalachia that have less than 10k
population and aren’t located close to a major city. I literally
just typed into google maps “Walmart” then zoomed into the
middle of nowhere, then clicked “search this area” and did
that 36 times. There are a LOT more (obviously) so this is
neither rigorous nor exhaustive but it gives us a general idea
of how many people we can have per Walmart.

The lowest population was 1,405

The highest was 8,750
And the average was: 5,075

Let’s just round that down to 5,000 people per Walmart. We

also have to consider this a high-end estimate because
Walmarts typically get their nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres for
free from the planet they love to pave over, and thus they
don’t have to maintain an enclosed and pressurized
environment with an extensive and material-heavy life
support system that, even with very high efficiencies will
always need some level of input, all of which eats into our
annual mass allowance. In other words there's a lot more
overhead, as some of the Walmart-worth of mass will need to
go into maintaining the figurative Walmart itself… but
anyways we’ll ignore that and just say 1 Walmart equals
5,000 people. So of our 121 lunar-landing launches how
many should be devoted to people and how many to cargo?
For instance if all 121 were devoted to cargo and the humans
were left to hitchhike to the Moon then we’d achieve that
60% of a small Walmart discussed earlier, which would be
enough amenities for 3,000 people. But since humans cannot
hitchhike to the Moon, how many of those 121 launches
would it take to deliver 3,000 people? How many people per
launch?

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 A Boeing 747 has an internal volume of 876 cubic meters
and carries 416 passengers. A 200-ton capable
Lunarship-sized rocket would have a 1,000 cubic meter
fairing, 14% more than the 747, but would also have to carry
more supplies per passenger on a much longer 3-day journey
to the Moon than the 747, so we’ll call it even and say a
single launch to the Moon can carry 400 people.
So at this point we need to figure out the optimal ratio use of
our launch allowance, which is recursive. At 400 people per
launch it would take 7.5 launches to deliver 3,000 people to
the Moon, Which would subtract from our 121 launches,
leaving us with only 113 launches for supplies which would
reduce the number of people we can support from 3,000 to
2,814 which would require 7.03 launches which would leave
114 for supplies which is enough for 2,839 which would take
only 7.09 launches.
So we could host about 2,800 people continuously. That
is the maximum growth bottleneck of lunar development,
launching a fully reusable 200-ton capable super heavy lift
launch vehicle Every. Single. Day. That- unrealistically- only
needs two orbital refueling launches.

When we imagine humanity's future in space do we imagine

2,800 people? Or ten thousand? Ten million?

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 So that’s the problem. The lunar economy's growth will
be bottlenecked- not by capital investment or even launch
costs- but by import logistics: launch frequency. More than
anything else. Sure you can establish new launch sites and
expand old ones to try and meet demand and loosen FAA
standards but every scrubbed launch due to weather or
technicalities will cost time and money, building out lots of
infrastructure, further increasing scale and supply chain
logistics for everything from fuel to ground operations. We
can also increase the size and payload capacity of the rocket
itself, building an even larger rocket than those currently in
development. Besides the additional upfront R&D costs this
will also require an increased buildout of launch
infrastructure, larger facilities for larger rockets, more scale
and supplies running through larger and longer supply chains
and a larger workforce. And actually this sounds great, a
massive thriving space industry employing hundreds of
thousands of people is a future I want, but each of those steps
would only marginally increase the percentage of a Walmart
delivered per year and we already took a highly optimistic
measure of 2 fuel launches per trip, almost all improvements
we could do on the ground in the next few decades would just
get us to that level.

Now I know it seems crazy that saying 2,800 people on the

Moon isn’t enough, at a time when we haven’t had a single
person on the Moon in over half a century, but unless we
want humanities lunar presence to end up like those Walmart
towns in rural america, a flash in the pan, then we’ll need to
do something drastic to increase our supply lines- and with it
our off-world economic staying power.

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 INFRASTRUCTURE
Before we had rails and roads we had rivers.
Unfortunately the Moon has none of these things so we have
to do everything ourselves (as usual, grrr). We need to move
a lot more mass between the Earth and the Moon but
unfortunately the go-to answer of simply increasing the size
of the rocket would introduce a ton of complications for only
marginal gain. It's possible to do this for sure, but it doesn't
really solve the core issue. The real issue impacting
lunar-landing frequency is not the size of the rocket but rather
the unavoidable need for orbital refueling of superheavy-lift
launch vehicles if they’re going to make it to the Moon.

But what if they don't?

What if instead of going all the way to the Moon they

could rendezvous with another spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit
which could take on their payload and fly it all the way back
to the Moon? Well then the Starship-like rocket wouldn’t
need to be refueled, it could just serve as a ground to Low
Earth Orbit shuttle, and the secondary spacecraft would never
need to enter into Earth's atmosphere which means it won't
need to be aerodynamic and if it’s just taking on cargo it can
be fully automated which means no humans which means no
pressurized interior hull- it can be made very simply- just a
platform which means we could make the entire thing out of
steel made from lunar regolith using chromium-anode
electrolysis reactors which means we can scale this thing to
be extremely large and it could take on several 200-ton
payloads in a single trip like how this section took on several
paragraphs worth of ideas in a single sentence.

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 What if we make something like the shipping container of
space? On Earth shipping-containers have revolutionized
supply chains as they allow loads to be easily transferred
from factory to truck to ship in a standardized fashion, so
what if we could make something like that but large enough
to take on the 1000 cubic meter volume of a superheavy
payload. And what if, to facilitate this payload transfer
between craft, we could build some sort of mechanized
scaffolding- essentially an orbital port- just a simple matrix
which could move payloads from the Earth-ship to the
Lunar-ship? Maybe we can divide this port into three
sections: One side for empty containers, the other for full
containers and a loading area. Perhaps we can design it so
that once a ship arrives at the orbital port it won’t need to
dock, it can simply maneuver into approximate range, open
its fairing doors, and the payload could then be captured by
the port itself; after which it would be transferred into a
waiting container. That container would then be moved into
the full area where an incoming freighter would pick it up
after dropping off its load of empty containers on the empty
side. Then that freighter would return to the Moon fully
loaded with supplies for a growing and thriving lunar
economy.

Then I suppose we’d solve our supply problem.

94
 What we essentially just did was reinvent bulk-carrier
ships and ports but for space. However one little detail we
gleaned over was the actual return and landing of the
freighter to the Moon. You’d think it would be as easy as just
landing on the Moon, unloading, then launching back and
repeating the process- but here our real troubles begin, for in
those details, there be devils. You don’t want to land the
freighter too close to the lunar base for safety reasons, but
you do want to unload your cargo close to the base for
efficiency reasons. You also need to figure out a way to refuel
the vehicle which means you need a fuel depot but you don’t
want that to be anywhere near your landing spot for explosive
reasons and also you’ll want to load your freighter with
empty containers to return them to the port for that closed
loop container trade.
So what, do you land away from the base and use a bunch
of gantry cranes for everything? Do you load its cargo onto a
rail cart? Do you add wheels to the freighter adding to its
weight? Do you grab it with chopsticks? Well what if you
land the freighter on a landing pad far removed from the base,
and that landing pad itself can move the freighter towards the
loading unloading and refueling area near the base entrance-
sorta like the NASA crawler used to move rockets into place.
And what if we gave the freighter a little boost in its liftoff by
accelerating the landing pad to a few dozen Kilometers per
hour by simply making the rails longer.
But why stop at a few Kilometers per hour? Why not go up to
a few Kilometers per second and use the landing pad itself to
also launch space freighters from the lunar surface back into
orbit, so the freighters themselves wouldn’t need to carry the
dead weight of lunar-launch hardware and fuel? We could
accelerate to orbital escape velocity using electricity so the
landing pad is like a reusable catapult if we space two rails
apart for each leg and run an electric current through the rails
and then the landing pad legs ride upon a conductive
armature which connects the circuit: a rail gun.

95
 Lunar escape velocity is 2.38 Kilometers per second and
d = v/2a so if we maintain a gradual acceleration of just 1 G
(that of regular Earth gravity) then our track length would
need to be about 300 Kilometers and it would take 4 minutes
to reach escape velocity. At an acceleration of 2 Gs our rail
length is halved to just 150 Kilometers and 2 minutes and at 3
Gs it would be just 100 Kilometers or 62 miles for only 81
seconds. While 3 Gs is perfectly fine for cargo we may want
to use this same system to launch people and 3 Gs can be a
lot on the human body, but it can be withstood for short
amounts of time. For reference astronauts on rockets
experience it for up to a minute while fighter pilots
experience 6 and even up to 9 Gs for a few seconds, however
considering tourism would likely be a major part of our lunar
economy it makes sense not to limit our visitors to only
highly trained fighter pilots. Legally roller coasters can pull 3
Gs for no more than 12 seconds so a passenger version would
likely need to be about 300 Kilometers although we could
shorten this by having a gradual increase in acceleration and
accelerating more towards the end- pulling 3 or even 4 Gs in
the last few seconds. Initially it makes sense to just use this
for cargo per the cargo-freighters and secured cargo can
easily accelerate at 4-5 Gs or more without much of an issue.
5 Gs would give us a track length of just 25 Kilometers or 15
miles and would achieve escape velocity in just 48 seconds.
But even 25 Kilometers is a significant distance. It would be
by far the largest thing ever built offworld, however it can be
made of very rudimentary components, just simple aluminum
rails created from in-situ resources using a robotic rover
construction fleet either automated or teleoperated from Earth
and it would be worth the investment because, by saving the
freighter from also having to accelerate itself up to escape
velocity we save a lot more capacity for cargo which means
more resources for more people for more habitats for more
freighters for orbital port expansion for more cargo for more
resources for more run-on sentences.

96
 What we have just arrived at, through a bottom up-
step-by-step problem solving approach is the creation of a
reusable, electric-powered system used to drive mass into
orbit.

A market-driven mass driver.

But it has issues.

The concept of the rail gun is over 100 years old, first
conceived of in France during world war I and everyone from
the Nazis, to the Chinese, the Russians, Indians and both the
U.S. Army and Navy have all poured significant resources
into the effort at one time or another with the Japanese most
recently picking up the mantle. Despite all this no railgun has
ever been fired in anger, no designs mass produced. It has
never been used in war for the same reason it’s considered a
“bad” lunar mass driver design. Ablation. Essentially rail
wear, gouging and grooving due to the high stresses imparted
into the rails from heat and arching and forces involved in
accelerating a projectile up to 2-3 Kilometers per second
within just a few meter barrel. Ablation is the major
bottleneck limiting the systems reusability. The US Navy was
able to get off 400 rounds before a barrel needed to be
replaced and was approaching 1000 before the program was
shut down in 2021 but the major costs involved make it
impractical as a weapon. But we aren’t trying to build a
weapon. We are trying to build infrastructure. All previous
research has been done in the context of trying to make navy
guns with super short track lengths and super high
acceleration rates- like tens of thousands of G's. Very
demanding. Lots of ablation. We have a lot more room to
work with as we can make our track long and our
acceleration rate low.

97
 Despite this though we will still have ablation, and this is
why railgun designs have largely been considered “bad”
candidates for lunar mass drivers in favor of coil guns which
suspend their payload between copper coils allowing for no
surface contact and no structure wear. But the issue with this
approach is the payload size would be constrained to the
diameter of the coil-gun mass driver which means it won’t
work well with our freighter design, a design which was
logical in being a basic easy to construct platform meant to
simply move cargo back and forth. The only reason we
reached mass driver was as a means to amplify the
effectiveness of these freighters which themselves were the
solution to our original market driven supply problem.
On the Moon and beyond Earth in general construction
costs are the largest costs, which is why we need to put
premiums on simplicity like with the freighter design, and the
coil gun mass driver would have much higher construction
costs derived from a more complex architecture demanding
more resource intensity per cubic meter compared to that of
the rail gun which is basically just simple suspended rails and
capacitors. Now sure with the coil gun you have rapid
reusability, no repair needed, and so while your payloads
have to be smaller you can launch a ton of them in quick
succession. But what I think most people miss is we aren’t
launching bullets, we are talking about launching spacecraft.
You cannot just shoot chunks of the Moon out of this thing to
a predetermined destination. The loads still need to be
powered. There's all kinds of perturbing forces acting on any
object at any given time. Consider the sun and moon and
earth all interact which is why some Lagrange points are
unstable. Even the varying topology of the nearest planet,
different density at say mountain ranges vs maria has an
effect when an object is within the hill radius. So any payload
will need to perform descent burns to get into a specific
altitude/orbit. We are talking about launching spacecraft
which have to be manufactured and fuelled, and so the mass

98
driver really needs to be thought of as a first stage for a
rocket more than anything else and the same principles for
why big rockets are better still applies. Scale.
So with this context in mind the question of railgun vs
coilgun becomes: do you want to launch 10,000 tons aboard 2
large spacecraft or 10,000 tons aboard 1,000 little spacecraft?
In either case it makes sense to build those spacecraft on the
Moon and it’s much easier to build two large spacecraft than
1,000 little ones.
As if that wasn’t damning enough the 1,000 spacecraft,
basically little rocket pods, have to be recaptured and
transported back in a closed loop cycle. Are you just
throwing them away? This means they also need to be
decelerated back to the lunar surface somehow… man if only
there was a big platform to capture lots of mass in orbit and
transport it back to the Moon and then decelerate it.
Oh wait, that'd just be the freighter! But instead of
transporting cargo in it’s containers it would have to transport
these little spacecraft, which are too small to be used to
import a starship sized load unless you want to redesign the
entire orbital port to be a much more complex sorting facility
to piece apart every incoming payload into a hundred
different bundles to fit into these pods which is stupid. A
potential solution could be to make the pods much, much
bigger so a single one can launch several starship payloads
worth, and maybe you could land it on a landing pad that
moves, and maybe you can move that landing pad really fast
on some electrified rails to help with the first stage… and so
you can see how a railgun design is optimal.

But we still haven’t solved that ablation issue.

I am going to propose a radical solution to that.

What if, and hear me out, what if…

99
We simply embrace the ablation.

What if we simply embrace the fact our rails will be

damaged and just simply repair between launches. So far
we’ve talked about building nearly everything out of steel,
the shelters and ships and rovers. Why bother with aluminum:
the balsa-wood of metals when you have the option of using
steel? But for the mass driver rails aluminum actually makes
the most sense because aluminum has higher electrical
conductivity than iron and even though we are embracing the
ablation, like alcoholism we don’t want to embrace it… too
much.
Over time we can reduce this wear by upgrading rails
with cooling systems and composite platings etc. By cooling
down the rails to 50K or -223 degrees Celsius, -370 degrees
Fahrenheit, we could reduce resistance by an order of
magnitude, and this sounds like a lot but remember the lunar
night already drops down to -133°C, -208°F naturally. So
with all this in mind one could easily conceive of a lunar
construction rover built around an electrolysis reactor that can
print these rails. Regolith goes into one side, rails come out
the other. But this is admittedly an oversimplification, really
you’d need a fleet because the rails themselves should be on a
surface that isn’t just plopped down onto the moon because
the electrostatic dust will interfere with launches. Fortunately
you can lightly melt regolith into what is essentially a rough
asphalt paste using orbital mirrors to concentrate sunlight or
by creating the evil moon-version of a Zamboni- a nuclear
powered melting rover. It doesn’t matter whatever is easier.
Also the lunar terrain isn’t nice and even, it’s rugged and
boulder strewn so you also need, basically, a lunar bulldozer
to clear the path. Ya know, basic construction stuff.

100
 Let’s jump back to the mass that’s actually being driven
by this mass driver: the freighter. The freighter itself is just a
simple platform, a powered carriage built to carry containers,
we only called it a freighter because it was carrying freight.
But what if you carry a tank full of liquid oxygen? Now is it a
tanker? I dunno, I hardly know her, but I do know it wouldn’t
be hard to make pressurized tanks; you're already making
pressurized habitats for people; this is the same thing, we just
call it a tank when it holds something other than humans. If it
holds fuel it’s a fuel tank, if it holds fish it’s a fish tank, and if
it holds humans it’s a lunar habitat. Unless it’s getting shot at,
then it is a tank. So what do you call it when you strap a
human-tank onto this freightless freighter and then use it to
take people from leo to luna the same way we did cargo,
cutting out the 8 or so refuel launches per trip? Do we call
this a ferry?
How much would this ferry reduce launch costs and how
much more revenue could we generate from it? Keeping our
Starship flight numbers, we'd have a LEO flight cost to
rendezvous with this ship of about $20 million, then an
unknown cost from LEO to the Moon using the freighter. In
other words we know how much it would cost to get from the
ground to low earth orbit but we don’t know how much it
would cost to fly from low earth orbit to the Moon on a
ferry/freighter. How much did it cost to research and develop
and build? How large is it and how many trips can it make
during its useful lifetime? How much did the orbital port
cost? The mass driver?
Fortunately we do know each ferry/freighter flight would
be at least less than $10 million which is the projected
marginal flight cost from the ground to Low Earth orbit of a
Starship-like rocket which travels through an atmosphere,
something the freighter is not doing- that’s the whole point.
In all likelihood it would probably be less than $1 million per
trip because it should have a very long lifetime since- again-
it’s not getting beat up flying through an atmosphere, it just

101
peacefully floats between the Moon and Low Earth orbit. But
let's just go with ~$1 million per trip as a conservative
estimate to account for amortized R&D and build costs. This
would result in a transport cost to the Moon of ~$21 million.
Using our aircraft data once again this would open up our
target market to include piston airplanes and would increase
from 11,000 to 18,000 (17,959). But the only reason we used
aircraft data in the first place was because we wanted a
correlating interest with spaceflight in a market where people
could afford the outrageous price of a ticket so we counted
recent sales of $500,000 aircraft. This is why we didn’t just
count millionaires because even they couldn’t afford a ticket,
only the ultra-rich could. Also we limited our number of
people per flight to just 200 since it is a 3 day flight but if we
are able to accommodate many more people on the freighter
then we can reduce ticket costs even more. We could build
this thing to carry a thousand people but if it carries just 400,
which is still less than a Boeing 747, then the cost per ticket
would be reduced to just over $50,000 which means that-
actually, we can just count millionaires. Polls have shown
that 35% of U.S. adults say they would be interested in
orbiting Earth in a spacecraft, so if 35% of people with at
least $1 million opted to purchase a ticket, the serviceable
market would be over 30 million people. With 30 million
people purchasing a $50,000 ticket, if we just add a 1% profit
margin which would only add $500 to each ticket then we’d
have a profit- not revenue- but profit potential of over $15
billion.

Why stop there?

102
 Once you have a ferry/freighter and mass driver, using
them exclusively to increase lunar imports and profit is… like
inventing a teleporter and only using it to advertise chocolate.
If the Moon is humanity's gateway to the stars, a lunar mass
driver is the key to unlocking that gate. So what if we
assemble a bunch of these human-tank ferry hulls (habitable
spaces) together into a big ring in lunar orbit? Now are they
prefabricated station modules assembled into a big-ass
rotating space station? and what if we use a few freighters to
move a few of these big boys from lunar to low earth orbit,
carving out significant amounts of habitable high-value
real-estate, is the freighter now a cis-lunar tug? The station
now an orbital reef? What if you replace the standard engines
on these tugs with very powerful open cycle gas core nuclear
engines and then use them to accelerate several stations fully
loaded with people and supplies past Earth-escape velocity,
into a Mars transfer orbit?

Well then, I suppose we’d call that a colonial fleet made from
the Moon full of people made from the Earth.

So if you can do all this, if you can create modular,

standardized, scalable, interchangeable designs, then it would
be the end of the beginning of humanities expansion into the
rest of the solar system.

103
 THE ENTROPIC ABYSS
At the end of World War Two, the world was ordered
according to two different visions: that of the US and the
USSR. The Age of Imperialism was done. The Age of
McDonalds and Tenement Housing had dawned.

In the West golden arches stretched across the Atlantic,

heralding from the new world to the old:

“Rejoice for free market capitalism has arrived! And to

celebrate this new age the US is offering a limited discount
on all reconstruction of war-ravaged cities! All you have to
do is sign up with the nearest US embassy and use promo
code: ‘Marshall’ to claim this amazing limited-time offer!
Terms and conditions apply”

In the East, an iron curtain rose under a red star, within it

a new world would be made out of the old:

“Comrades of the world, unite! As a testament to our shared

destiny, the USSR introduces a dedicated program for
rebuilding lands torn by imperialist wars. Pledge your
solidarity with the socialist cause at your nearest Soviet
embassy and invoke directive number: ‘Comintern’ to
participate in this grand endeavor! Collective duties and
commitments apply.”

This ‘system’ was not invented in the US, or by

Americans, but it had been perfected in the US as a way to
forge a new continent into habitable territory. The system led
to the development of the North American continent, and
then it re-developed the European continent after it had been
reduced to ash. To win the cold war the system was expanded
globally via what grew from a Bretton-Woods seed. You

104
know it as globalization. This system has the amazing ability
to create growth, but it also depends on frontiers to grow into.
Its final frontier opened when the Berlin Wall fell. That was
12,405 days ago (at the time of writing) and since then
globalization has devolved into a bloated frontier-less mess in
which the stock market depends on the ability to control the
entire planet to leverage itself back from the brink of
collapse.
We now live in a global organism made of humans, their
creative brains and nimble hands, the organs; material wealth,
the blood. Like the most basic organisms, it is simply a basic
feedback loop that grows through consumption. Remove the
frontiers and the organism starves. It’s no wonder then why
the middle class is shrinking as the global organism within
which they live undergoes autophagy.
Growth depends on a growing demographic, the basic
unit of productivity, and the basic unit of wealth generation.
Today in our developed societies we can have as many
children as we want and they won't die. Yet we don’t have
many children today because we have to pay a price in terms
of our social class. Everybody in the upper-lower to
lower-upper classes today has a limited number of children
because having more of them would result in a big economic
hit to the family since children, especially in the US, are very
expensive to raise. One is only taken out of this if they are on
the extremes and are super wealthy or super poor. If they are
impoverished it doesn’t matter how many kids they have
because their status is not going to change. In fact, for most
of human history, when we were mostly agrarian
communities, children were useful labor. Having more
resulted in more productivity per household, so children were
actually wealth-generators, the inverse of today. If one is
super wealthy they can afford to have as many children as
they want just like flat screens, cars, and boats.

105
 Today the majority of families reproduce under the
population replacement rate which is 2.1 as it takes two
people to make one baby but one baby only replaces a single
person. If we want our population to grow we have to have
more than two children per couple. All developed nations
except the US, France, New Zealand, and Argentina are
below the replacement rate of 2.1, and both the US and
France are only at the replacement rate after adjusting for net
immigration. South Korea has the lowest, with a rate of 0.9
children per woman. As for developing nations, Niger is the
highest with a rate of seven children per woman.
Initially, it may seem like having fewer children resulting
in a smaller population may be a good thing as it will force
humanity to reign in its overgrazing and return to a more
stable carrying capacity, but unfortunately, fewer children
will also result in fewer labor inputs which will cripple the
ability to maintain the scientific edge we have used to inflate
our carrying capacity since the 16th century. Technologically
inventing our way out of the entropic abyss relies on a
growing and healthy economy with lots of inputs which
requires a growing population. This lack of having children is
mostly due to urbanization and the increased cost of living
arising from a lack of frontiers. Why do people migrate? For
opportunity. When people migrated into the western frontier
they made more humans. When people migrate into cities
they have fewer children. Not all opportunities are equal.
Over the course of the next 20 years, the mass retirement of
humanity's largest working population will rust the
machinery of globalism and slow the growth we have all
become so accustomed to, and so reliant on. We are already
feeling the pains of contraction as more and more humans
migrate into cities instead of frontiers as they have done since
the dawn of man. This system -the one around you- all of the
institutions, and all the mechanisms whereby the modern
world operates are all reliant on growth.

106
 Some argue we can adapt and formulate a “post-growth”
system, but listen Peter Zeihan (or whatever your name is),
history is very clear that there is no such thing as a good
post-growth system just as there is no such thing as a good
famine. Scarcity is scary. Post-growth systems are deeply
conservative and allow no room for a growing middle class
because that would require… growth. All civilizations'
twilight years are examples of the post-growth system
manifesting, but we do not call these post-growth
systems…we call them Dark Ages.
The Roman empire made its wealth expanding into
frontiers. But lacking combustion engines, computers,
AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, and super heavy lift launch
vehicles the empire eventually ran out of new frontiers, or at
least frontiers that were profitable, see hadrian's wall. When it
could no longer expand, towards the end, Roman coins were
continuously minted as taxation only met 80% of the imperial
budget. This shortfall was met by putting more money into
circulation. Since the Roman currency was backed by gold
and silver, which have limited quantities, the Roman
government couldn’t do like the Federal Reserve and just
print as much money as they wanted, so to squeeze as many
coins out of the metals they had they debased the coins by
reducing the valuable metal content. Nero reduced the gold
content in Roman coins by nearly 5% and silver by 11%.
Commodus, Septimius Severus, and Caracalla all debased
Roman coins even more causing more inflation. Gradually,
silver coins went from pure 100% silver to 50% silver, and
then on down until they reached an all-time low of just 2%
silver content. Such blatant manipulation of currency did not
go unnoticed by the population who retaliated by paying their
taxes using the newer shit coins and keeping the older more
valuable ones stored under their mattress.

107
 As the quantity of the Roman empire increased so too did
the quantity of resources it had to address problems. But
when the quantity of the Roman empire stalled, the quantity
of problems demanding resources did not. Additionally, as
the quantity of Roman wealth increased the quality of Roman
leaders decreased, which caused the quality of the Roman
empire to fall, which caused an even greater quantitative
increase in the number of resource-requiring problems, which
caused the baseless Roman leaders to debase their currency to
increase its quantity, causing its quality to fall. This meant the
standards were reduced and the ability to produce counterfeit
coins was increased, which meant the quantity of counterfeit
coins increased to the point that tax collectors were
overwhelmed by the flood of fake coins; so the silver
currency collapsed, and the Roman government began to
collect its tax, not in roman coins, but in goods themselves.
With the collapse of the Roman monetary system and the
return to… well, basic bartering, regional trade collapsed. For
the rich and powerful wealth increasingly became measured
not in coinage but in the amount of that which produces
goods: productive people on productive land. Peasants. The
more productive land and people one had the more goods one
had the more warriors one could hire with said goods to take
more productive land from one's neighbors. Feudalism. And
so, for about 300 years this anarchic game of Agario was
played in the corpse of Rome as petty lords fought to expand
their throne.
If we’re being honest though, Rome never fell; it simply
became a church. The Papacy and its puppet kings rode into
the dark ages on the back of peasants, descending into
ignorance and strife as cities crumbled and aqueducts fell into
ruin as the remaining engineers and stonemasons built forts,
not roads, to protect the parasitic nobility from the masses of
people they fed on. Slowly the knowledge of how to build
anything but war machines was lost, slowly the light of
civilization dwindled, health and medicine disappeared and

108
disease ran rampant; all while the Vatican sat on endless
archives of Greco-Roman knowledge. Thousands of years of
human creativity and innovation, literally buried
underground: locked away and dismissed as heretical,
purposefully covered in darkness for ages. For they knew that
unearthing the light would challenge the darkness over which
they ruled. The flash of doubt caused by the spark of an
educated genius might have revealed their true forms,
showing to the masses that their power was nothing but an
illusion, an imposing shadow extinguished by the smallest
flame. Despite this, the light was recovered. Slowly. It took
centuries of blood and warfare before the ember of antiquity
was unearthed ushering in the Renaissance and the Age of
Enlightenment.

All of this is to say we need a new frontier. There are

post-growth systems. They aren’t good. They are brutal, dark,
and ugly. Post-growth systems are autocratic in nature, where
a minority of elites fearfully control information flows,
brutally hoarding what resources are left, greedily guarding
the grain silos. We are headed there now. Developing the
Moon will avoid this fate. From dust to dust we live, but from
lunar crust we ascend. It is not about conquest. It’s about
carrying capacity. And it’s not too late.

Claw out of the entropic abyss.

109
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I invite you to validate any other claims, data, or information contained

within this work via the use of state-of-the-art search engine analysis.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian Long is the creator of Anthrofuturism and hopes this work
speaks for itself.

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