Having a night of backyard stargazing as your eyes gaze around the night sky, your discoveries lead to questions. As you find a distant object, amazement can lead to questions like how far away is the star in our eyepiece. The same happens when we view the brightest object in the night sky, the moon. Can we live on the moon? It’s something I have pondered over on many cold nights as I look in amazement into the night sky.
At the moment, we can not live on the moon. Because we simply don’t have the resources on the moon to support life on the moon. There are many space missions ongoing trying to overcome the challenges so we can, at some point, live on the moon.
What do you need to live on the moon?
To even consider the possibility of living on the moon, you will need a couple of critical elements. The following items are a must:
- Breathable air
- Water
- Food
- Pressurized shelter
- Power
Getting these resources extracted from the moon itself would be the best, as shipping to the moon will cost a lot. But how possible would it be to do this? Let us find out.
Is Breathable air Possible on the moon?
Breathable air shouldn’t be too much of a problem as the soil on the moon contains oxygen. It shouldn’t take too much to turn the oxygen in the ground into breathable air, so one less item to ship.
Can we get water from the moon?
Water is a critical element of human life and would have been a huge problem until very recently. Shipping water to the moon would have been expensive and needed to be routinely carried out trip. However, with the recent discovery of water on the moon, extracting water from the moon should be possible with this discovery. Or at least a lot easier than we once thought it would be to get water on the moon.
Getting food on the moon
Food would be a problem as humans eat around 450 pounds of dehydrated food per year. If there were a colony on the moon, you would have to multiply this by the number of people. Growing plants’ process needs elements that are not present on the moon, so these would need to be shipped.
Living in a pressurized shelter on the moon
A pressurized shelter would need to be shipped to the moon as the raw material is not present on the moon. One solution would be to ship an inflatable structure that could quickly and easily be erected on the moon. An inflatable structure would only be a temporary fixture as sunlight would most likely breakdown the structure over time.
How to get a power source on the moon?
Power would be needed to keep the pressurized shelter inflated if that’s what we had to be used. The first ideal would be solar energy; however, just like earth, the moon only gets sunlight part of the day. Running out of power would be a disaster as the inflatable pressurized shelter is what would be keeping us alive.
Nuclear Power would be the most stable power source that we could use to keep a steady flow of power. Then we have a problem with transporting nuclear power to the moon.
That I’m sure you will agree is a lot of problems to overcome, but next comes a bigger one. Money!
How much does it cost to live on the moon?
Ok, so you are still dreaming of living on the moon, after all, the challenges.
The guys over at Wendover Productions have broken the cost down. Considering all factors we have discussed above, four astronauts’ cost to live on the moon for one year comes in at an eye-watering $36,000,000,000.
Not a sum of money you may find down the back of your sofa, but a sum of governments worldwide are considering spending with lunar space expectations all starting again over the coming years. The USA has put a lot of money into lunar projects and is set to put the first woman on the moon before 2024.
Some argue that it’s a price worth paying as it would be a crucial first step of discovering how to live on another planet when the earth is no longer.
How long can you live on the moon?
Indevernatly would have to be the answer. However, you are going to need to overcome all the challenges in the sections above. At the moment, without the above element overcome, you will not survive very long at all.
You would be lucky if you lasted more than a few minutes without a spacesuit.
Conclusion
We have many problems to overcome so we can live on the moon. Looking at all of the issues, it’s not hard to see why we don’t have a human colony yet on the moon.
Next time you are moongazing with a telescope for the moon, and you think, “could we live up there” you will know that it’s not going to be easy.
The cost and technology will have to come a long way before we have a human colony on the moon. With all the money being put into lunar expeditions over the coming years, it may just come quicker than we think.
