• Question: What stops us from living on the moon now?

    Asked by HarryMac to Craig, Flavia, Giuditta, Jack, Sheona on 7 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by the one and only.
    • Photo: Jack Carlyle

      Jack Carlyle answered on 7 Nov 2015:

      The cost! It would be really expensive to send all the things we’d need to start a self-sustaining colony away from the Earth. You need to figure out a way to get food, water, air, and lots of other complicated things. Maybe someday!

    • Photo: Craig Bull

      Craig Bull answered on 8 Nov 2015:

      I agree with Jack – the cost of getting everything there we need to survive – however technically (if cost wasn’t an issue) we have most of the technology to overcome the problems of living there

    • Photo: Giuditta Perversi

      Giuditta Perversi answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      I am absolutely sure that the cost would be giganormous, but even the technicalities could be particularly hard!

      In every space mission, an incredible amount of the overall cost goes into the rocket and particularly in the fuel for the rocket! The type of rocket and the river of gasoline that you put inside it are of course dependent on how heavy is the cargo.
      Since there is nothing on the Moon, if you want to set up a hub for humans to live in you need to bring absolutely everything!

      I also don’t think that building up the “facility” would be so trivial, because you would have to do all the “scaffolding” in reduced gravity and without atmosphere and it would likely go on for months.
      I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be so keen on being in charge of the works!

      Moreover, everything would need to be solar and nuclear powered at the top of the technology, and it is the type of environment where a power outage or a system fault is likely to be deadly, not a minor inconvenience like at home!

      It would surely be an interesting challenge, but I think that the people with the money would wrinkle their noses a bit! 🙁

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