15 thoughts on “The Costs Of Living On The Moon”

  2. Overall NASA costs ($57.8b) are 3.5 times Golden Spike($16.6b)?

    NASA habitat: $7.35 billion for four. Bigelow habitat: $456 million for six. No calculator or pencil handy but that’s about 25 times more (per person) for NASA?

    The lowest of those costs are too high. I’m sure it could be done for less.

    The main take is because of continuous resupply costs the moon is more expensive to support than mars. Being so close resupply seems more viable than ISRU which can’t be done on the moon as easily as on mars.

    It cost more to get to mars. It cost less to live there. Getting to mars is a one time cost per person. Living there as a colonist is reoccurring lifetime. So if you’re not committed go to the moon. If you want a spacefaring civilization go to mars. Mars is the anchor colony for the entire solar system. Other places are less so because mars offers the fastest growing industrial base off earth.

    The moon would be the government version at many multiples the cost. Free enterprise and competition has no competition.

    1. The moon would be the government version at many multiples the cost.

      I don’t think so. If the government was actually going to the Moon, you might have a point, but they’re not, at least not ours. With only entry-level SLS Block I configurations in the offing now that all the enabling technology for Block II has been cancelled, the government has no way to get people to the Moon on its own resources. With no lander budgeted, and no change to this situation realistically in prospect, the government couldn’t land anyone on Luna even if they could somehow get people into lunar orbit. No, if the Moon is revisited by Americans, it’ll be corporate astronauts who do the visiting. Our government may well decide to buy some rides for government employees too, but they won’t be leading the way nor running the show dirtside on Luna.

      The lowest of those costs are too high. I’m sure it could be done for less.

      Oh yeah, way less. Falcon Heavy at its current $85 million per mission price can put mass in LEO for ca. $730 per pound. A few years down the road when there are used Falcon Heavies being offered for half that or less, contracting with SpaceX to boost one’s self-developed lunar expeditionary hardware will be a no-brainer.

        1. I know that Ken. Sometimes, though, I just have an irresistible urge to trowel it on even thicker and deeper. The idea that private enterprise will ever be the leading force in space exploration, especially beyond LEO, is still a mental bridge too far for a lot of folks, even ones who otherwise mostly agree with us. Never hurts to put up a few more relevant numbers and give them all a little something more to contemplate.

    2. There are numerous options for ISRU on the Moon, and being close to Earth allows you the time to learn how to do it. By contrast if you mess up with your ISRU on Mars you are just out of luck. I know most Mars advocate still suffer from the myth created by Percival l Lowell that Mars is just a desert version of Earth, but its a lot more hostile than that to human life.

      And if you do any research on closed ecosystems you will see we don’t even know most of the questions to ask yet about build one. The Moon is the best option beyond Earth to learn about building closed ecosystems out of local materials.

      1. Agreed. That’s particularly true of learning to deal with dust. Lunar regolith dust is nastier in just about every way than Martian dust. The lunar particles are all sharp-edged because there is no wind on the Moon to rub the particles against one another and round off the worst of the jaggedies like there is on Mars. Where dust control/abatement is concerned, the Moon is New York; if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

        1. Yes, I recall a talk by Capt. John Young at ASCE Space 2006 where he indicated that after the third EVA he felt his space suit was probably no longer safe to use because of the damage from the lunar dust to the joints.

          Dust mitigation is going to be a major issue for any space habitat on a celestial body and one where only one-site research is going to solve.

          As a side note, I wonder if it was to blame for the problems with the Chinese rover.

          1. Interesting thought. Perhaps if the Chinese really are planning a future manned lunar expedition they’ll elect to make their first landing somewhere near Yutu and go take a look in person, kind of like what we did with Surveyor back in the day.

      2. if you mess up with your ISRU on Mars…

        We will mess up and it will be perfectly ok that we do. It’s not a closed system. It’s a system with well distributed abundant resources. Abundant energy, heavy equipment and people with the right mind set are all that are required. You don’t have to leave your Barcalounger to watch it happen (although certainly slower than I’d like.)

        Biosphere two was a success, not a failure. It taught us. Mars will teach us more. Especially about what ‘can do’ can do.

        its a lot more hostile than that to human life.

        Yes it is. But you’re claiming more than that. You’re claiming it’s beyond the ingenuity of martians which will provide a list for those in the future to laugh at.

  3. Yeah, the SLS costs are way low. The first contract for core stages makes them $1.4 billion per unit all by themselves and that’s with government-provided engines. They’ll get even more expensive when (if) all the extant SSME’s are gone and a new engine has to be ginned up. Neither NASA nor its SLS contractors seem much inclined to address that issue in any meaningful way yet.

    There is no Altair lander and there isn’t going to be if one depends on NASA to build it.

    Haven’t been following Golden Spike, but if they have any plans involving Atlas 5’s they’d best be about changing those. Ain’t gonna be no more Atlas 5’s. With Falcon Heavies coming on-line soon, why would anyone who is paying his own way be looking seriously at Atlas 5 anyway? Even leaving aside the issue of future availability, the things are ruinously expensive.

    The lunar night is two weeks long, not a month.

    I think Bigelow’s $450 million number is for a whole year’s lease on a whole BA 330, not 1/3 of one. And I think it’s for a LEO-orbiting hab, not one on the Moon. But that number is probably at least in the right order of magnitude.

    Overall, an interesting back-of-the-envelope exercise, if not terribly rigorous. Even this casual level of analysis, though, easily reveals the utter absurdity of continuing to regard SLS as any kind of solution to anything. In that sense, if in no other, it’s a useful effort.

      1. You’re probably right about full module or full station lease rates being discounted from list price. I was just pointing out that the description of Bigelow pricing in this article was 200% higher than list. But the quoted price on the Bigelow web site is for space on-orbit in LEO, not on the Moon. Hab space on the lunar surface might well be pricier than in LEO, but 200% more seems unlikely.

        1. I agree. You will have higher transportation costs than you would have from LEO which would need to be amortized over the lease, but once the habitat is sited and covered with shielding it should cost less to operate.

          1. Operating costs might turn out to be pretty much a wash, but it’s hard to avoid concluding that more, and more varied, hardware infrastructure will be needed to support a Bigelow hab on the Moon than one in LEO.

            In orbit, electricity is available the majority of each orbit from sunlight on solar arrays and one only needs enough battery capacity to see one through the portion of each orbit spent in Earth’s shadow. On the lunar surface, much larger storage batteries would be needed to tide over residents through each lunar night and much larger solar arrays would be needed to charge them during lunar daytime.

            Rejection of waste heat also seems likely to be trickier on the Moon and to require a greater mass of equipment to accomplish. In orbit, the heat that needs to be gotten rid of and the radiator units required to do it are relatively constant. On the Moon, quite modest and simple radiators would be sufficient during the lunar night. During lunar day, though, the situation is more complicated. Perhaps drilling heat rejection “wells” to take advantage of permanently cold rock many meters below the reach of surface heating during lunar daylight would be needed. If so, add in the mass and energy requirements of something akin to a terrestrial water well drilling rig as minimum requirements. Alternatively, I suppose, a system involving compressing some working fluid to a very high temperature to achieve an acceptable gradient for radiative heat rejection even during lunar daylight could work too, but that has its own problems.

            Providing human-compatible habitation on the Moon is going to be complicated. Long-term, closed or nearly closed-cycle environmental systems may not even wind up being the most severe of the challenges. All the more reason to get seriously cracking on these issues now. As with human space travel in general, the commercial entities involved – specifically Bigelow with respect to lunar habitation – are doing more, and more serious, work than is NASA.

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