As there are no trees there, probably the best location for a nest on the Moon remains, however, the underground.

Moon, 2009

The future of mankind living on the Moon sounds neither bad nor good, but rather minimal.

As stated in the previous post also, although some of us would very much like to see  a real human lunar colony vibrating with activity, it seems we will not have this chance too soon.

If this happens not even in films, how could we hope it will happen in reality ? Or should we be so ultra-optimistic as to hope in a “life overcomes the movie” evolution of facts ? I wouldn’t exactly think so.

But let’s see how the mid-term future of human presence on the Moon is pictured by a presumptive credible sci-fi film called “Moon”.

Beyond the serious (and even metaphysical) theme of human identity (does a clone has a soul ?; especially as we see him praying in the take-off scene), the film is a good illustration of how a moon-base of the 21^st  century might really look like.

According to the filmmakers, this human settlement will be supposed to serve just one single purpose: to harvest helium 3 (a substance that could solve the global energy crisis) from the lunar soil and to send it regularly to Earth.

No other activities (scientific research of any kind - astronomical observations, biological experiments in vacuum conditions etc, etc - or military activities etc) are foreseen. Only mining done as thrifty as possible. And with that, the plot is generated. 


The Lunar Industries mining colony is typically made up by a single inhabitant, assisted by a robot without any humanoid design but who proves during the film remarkable qualities of friendship, qualities that we’d be happy to find in any of our real fellow beings.

Gerty, the robot, is a mix between Robinson Crusoe's Friday (i.e. a support against alienation caused by loneliness) and Big Brother (the all-seeing eye). Despite a quite rough interface of communication (a device moving through the base, caught by a rail fixed to the ceiling, equipped with a flexible arm and a small screen which displays different faces according to its mood; and having a very human voice), it embodies the perfect assistant: it prepares the meal, it cuts the hair, it bandages the wounds etc. But, most surprisingly, Gerty seems to have feelings and adopts attitudes, as we observe him smiling, laughing, in a state of confusion, unhappiness, crying, comforting the man and, finally, even helping the man against the instructions received from the Company. He even justifies this behaviour (refusal to follow his instructions) arguing that his main purpose is to serve the astronaut. Nice guy, this Gerty.

Moon, 2009

The interior of the colony seems perfectly suited for its destination, having all the functionalities needed to provide the man with a working and leisure environment: command centre, bedroom, kitchen, shower, garden, gym and a few corridors of a somehow…eerie white colour. Perfectly predictable, no surprise...so far.

Somehow surprising is the location of the building, which is not set, as we would expect, completely above the lunar surface, but in a space dug into the lunar soil. Why is this so, we are not told. Probably on account of protection reasons or maybe due to some economic calculations, who knows... Also interesting is the name of this underground bunker, „Sarang”, which in Malaysian means „nest”. In a sense, this name is quite justified: as there are no trees there, probably the best location for a nest on the Moon remains, however, the underground.

On the contrary, the machines displayed during the show are permanently reinforcing the feeling of credible sci-fi that dominates, more or less, the entire film. 

As such, the lunar rovers do not contain any extravagant element, they are basic solid vehicles, tank-like, seemingly perfectly fit to march across the unfriendly ground of the Moon. Similarly, the lunar harvesters, who collect and process the lunar soil in order to extract the desired substance, resemble, to some extent, the harvesters who can be seen at work on the earthly lands.

Even the astronaut of the 21^st Century is an absolutely common man, a little bit blasé person (with no impulse to explore the foreign world he inhabits), with joys and sorrows, fears and expectations, rather vulnerable, being haunted by the usual family life sinusoids (his wife left him for a while) and completely dependent on his feelings. A nice common man, who wants nothing else than to finish his contract and to return to his wife and child. As such, the only inhabitant of the colony counts impatiently the days remaining till the end of his mission, dividing his time between professional activities, conversations with his family from Earth, sports, watching tv and a few other hobbies such as gardening or modelling some little cardboard buildings.

Moon, 2009

On the other hand, the outdoor moonscapes are truly remarkable, displaying a perfectly intertwined realism and eeriness.

Both the splendid view of the Earth seen from the Moon and the monochromatic vastness of the lunar plains (empty and bleak but so challenging in terms of all that might be discovered there) provide the film with a huge power of seduction, bringing forth the mythological sense of  far off spaces into the spotlight: the mystery and fascination of a world waiting to be truly explored and discovered.

But if we are to give credit to the vision of the film, this exploration will not take place in the near future. On the contrary, Moon will continue to remain an untamed and hard-to-be-reached natural environment, where humans will work with difficulty, having only a limited presence there, that will be justified only be purely economic reasons and in no way by some exploratory enthusiasm.

To sum up, the future of mankind on Moon sounds neither bad nor good, but rather minimal.

We can only hope that our presence on Mars  will be more consistent than on the Moon. 

Moon mining is getting started

www.sxc.hu

The children who enthusiastically read Jules Verne in the early 80s of the last century were imagining that around the year 2000 the Moon will be  swarming with human activity. Compared with these dreams, which at that time seemed achievable even to adults, the reality of 2012 (nobody landed on the Moon during all this period) can be somehow disappointing.

But in the last few years, some news has come to reinforce those expectations a little: an American private company is planning to set up what many generations have dreamt of for so long, namely a level of permanent human activity on the Moon. Although this is not exactly what we would have expected to happen in the year 2016 (the older public lived with the expectations that a true human colony on Moon would be established around this moment in human history), the achievement of this objective will be an important step forward, anyway.

Actually, with the start of 2016 Moon Express Inc., a private company, intends to set the basis of a  permanent Moon mining activity, using a robot which will exploit one of the natural resources found there in abundance, namely the „rare earth elements”. Unfortunately, the purpose of this project is not to settle a mining colony on the Moon, but to man a hover aircraft vehicle that will carry out scientific missions, customer-designed missions and, most importantly, business missions.

In other words, this seems to be the first step towards the privatization of outer space. The whole philosophy behind this strategy is that the private sector should take over those space activities that already have the needed technology at their disposal (technology which has been previously developed by the public sector). By doing this, by being relieved of these tasks, public agencies (like NASA) could focus their efforts on creating new technologies that will allow humanity to go forward into space (Mars, asteroids, etc). To put it simply, NASA does not withdraw from the Moon, but lets the private sector take care of this.

And since we talk about the private sector, we must say that we talk about business here: the initiators of this project plan to obtain a profit of billions from this activity. According to their view, the money will come from the sale of the ore extracted there, as well as from other services provided to individuals (transportation  to and placement on the Moon of several things belonging to private persons, like messages, photos, etc).

Copyright 2011 Moon Express, Inc

All in all, even the image of a little robot working on  the Moon is not exactly what we would have expected to see after a lapse of more than 40 years from the first moon-landing, however, in the opinion of Naveen Jain, the co-founder of Moon Express Inc., the entire Moon will be full of such machines working hard on that terrain in the not too distant future.

But till that moment, in the next article, we will try to see how a genuine lunar mining colony is actually supposed to look like  (Moon, 2009, Directed by: Duncan Jones).