• Question: wouldn't it be possible to build domes on the moon for people to live? all you'd have to do is send a rocket up with some building supplies and lots of oxygen and you could do it! thanks

    Asked by jamjam8901 to Adam, Catherine, Leila, Nazim on 22 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      If only it was that simple, we’d have done it already! I think Adam has already answered a question with an excellent diagram, where he fitted everything he needed for a Mars base into one spaceship. Still a bit optimistic though!

      In theory, while it would be possible to send lots of spaceships with all the things we’d need, a big problem with long-lasting occupation of space is safety. If something goes wrong, which, working in a vacuum, it’s quite likely to do – you’re 400,000 miles from home and with no way to fix it. Nobody wants to take that risk until we’ve found ways round it.

      And we’re still lacking some crucial bits of technology that could make it work. One thing that I’m going to work on next year is the problem of making oxygen. You might be able to take a bit of oxygen with you, but never enough to fill a moon base, so you need a way of making it there. We’ll probably use algae – but we haven’t got that far yet 🙁

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      Short answer – yes, easy peasy.

      Long answer – no, costs lots of money. We have the technology to do this. We really do. It would just cost a hell of a lot. We would never be able to take enough oxygen up, even with complex rebreather/CO2 scrubber systems, so like Leila says we would need to find a way of making it up there. Maybe we could use plants, but then we have to take water and plant food as well!

      We could extract it from the rocks but that would be even more expensive. Basically, we have the technology, but we need to make it way more efficient before we could use it to live on another planet in a realistic way.

      A lot of science fiction stories involve doing this and they think of some novel ways to do it. Most often you live in a ‘geodesic’ dome (like the Eden project in cornwall) but then you need very strong materials to build it with and some radiation shield on top, which makes it heavier, which means you need even stronger materials!

      The other (and probably better) alternative would be to live underground – dig big tunnels and fill those with oxygen. Then you’re using the rocks as your support materials /and/ as radiation shielding.

      And also evoking primitive man living in caves :>

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