It’s fitting that only one day after the 46th anniversary of man first setting foot on the moon that scientists are now saying that colonizing the moon is actually significantly cheaper than previously calculated. In fact, there are prospects of large economic growth on the moon in the not-to-distant future.
How to Begin Colonizing the Moon
The original cost estimates of the two competing companies working in tandem with NASA to send people back to the moon were 90 percent higher than what experts are now estimating. Coming down from the estimate of $100 billion to only $10 billion is an extreme change that increases the legitimacy of finally colonizing the moon. If companies are willing to offset some of the costs in colonizing the moon, it will be more affordable for NASA and they will potentially really expedite the process.
What People Would be Doing on the Moon
Scientists imagine the astronauts building an industrial building that mines the hydrogen in the ground of the moon, turning it into fuel and selling the fuel to companies. At this point in time, hydrogen fuel is not used for much else besides powering spacecrafts. But this is because it’s hard to come by hydrogen fuel on Earth. If it was to be sent from the colonized moon in large quantities, companies would certainly pay for it as it is very effective and efficient.
The selling of hydrogen fuel would also offset the cost of future missions to the moon. Part of the profits that come in will go to funding future expeditions. Also, future expeditions will likely use the hydrogen fuel mined from the moon to continue colonizing the moon. After base operations are set up, researchers have predicted that sending a single crew to the moon would only (yes, only) cost $4.6 billion.
The Moon for All
Scientists who put this news forward are NASA employees. However, they do not claim to own the moon. They proposed the creation of an International Lunar Authority to serve as law on the moon. It would start initially through government treaties and eventually would become its own identity. After the International Lunar Authority gets its ground and becomes an independent power, it would then be in charge of the mining on the moon as well.
Scientists hope that colonizing the moon to mine for fuel will help offset future expeditions into space as well as journeys to other planets like Mars so humanity can spread out into the solar system and beyond. If humanity is destined to expand out into the solar system, new bodies of power will have to be made. Individual powers for each planet or moon will have to be split into regions. Then there would also have to be a higher body of power in charge of space travel that would also have to be split up into regional powers as well, but that is all just speculation.
Wherever humanity ends up, it will be interesting to see. Perhaps colonizing the moon is one of the first steps of commonplace space exploration.
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