In the beginning of the space race it was believed if you wanted to build anything on the moon it would require you to bring building materials there. You can understand what a feat this would have to be using today’s technology, but one recent discovery by NASA shows we can use moon material to create bricks, which are relatively strong. Researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California have been creating bricks using a small amount of a biological binding and simulated moon soil. A NASA scientist stated, "We really knew we had something pretty nifty from a NASA perspective." There are some people who believe we are already on the moon and the military has colonized it. There are others who claim there are ruins on the moon which were covered by glass domes over some craters and there are remains of these glass domes which are being hidden from us. There is some irony connected with this. The artificial moon soil used by NASA was created from volcanic ash found in Arizona. The strongest concrete on earth was created by the Romans who used volcanic ash in their mixture. Perhaps this is where NASA got its idea. Scientists at NASA are saying the same thing about the simulated NASA soil that others have been saying about the Roman cement, which is they want to understand why it works so well. The Roman cement gets harder as time goes by and is stronger now than when originally created. Perhaps this will mean the bricks created with lunar soil will act the same way.

Using bricks made from lunar soil is not the only idea for constructing buildings on the moon. Another popular method is to use a 3D printer which would use local materials. The European space agency has adopted this idea and is working with architects to conduct a study on the feasibility of printing with lunar soil. This construction method has become very popular on the earth and someday may replace all other forms of construction. Giant printers here on earth have been used to construct entire buildings. I am not an engineer or architect, but it does seem to me this should be the preferred method for creating buildings on the moon. The only thing which will have to be transported to the moon would be the printers. Once you have a 3D printer on the moon you can use it to create other things too. It could become the handiest tool people living on the moon have. It has been said the next generation of 3D printers will be able to complete an entire building in about a week.

We have been talking about building on the moon for quite a few years. It has been said the Germans before and during World War II were drawing up plans to do just that. Supposedly the earliest practical US plan for developing a base on the moon was made by the US Army in 1959 when they designed a nuclear powered fortress. They wanted to create it before the Soviet Union had a chance. Another idea the military had was to build an underground fortress. This was to be  accomplished by 1968. Someone living on the moon would need 3. 9 pounds of food, 2.64 gallons of drinking water, 1.06 gallons of water to cook their food assuming they use dried food and they would need 1.85 pounds of oxygen. All these things would be needed every day for each individual to survive. Some scientists think water can be obtained from the moon itself and perhaps if there is enough water, oxygen can be extracted from it. There is probably nothing to eat on the moon so food would either have to be shipped there or created.

If we put a base on the moon it would turn out to be a test if humans could survive the lower gravity. We know what no gravity does to astronauts in space, but we really don’t know what lower gravity might do if anything. One can suspect however lower gravity would lead to weaker muscles and anybody returning to the earth after any significant period on the moon might have a very hard time moving around or might not even be able to move around. There are some advantages to having a moon base which are not military. One of them is the fact the low gravity on the moon would allow us to send things back to the earth without expending a lot of energy. What I mean by this is the moon’s lower gravity would make it much easier for vehicles to accelerate off of that body and there has been talk about using magnetic rail guns to shoot projectiles back to earth rather than using rockets which consume propellant. This means anything created on the moon could be shipped back to earth comparatively cheaply. There is another plus which is the moon is so close to the earth it wouldn’t take very long to send things back to the earth. In the future a trip to the moon might easily be completed in one day. It only took the astronauts on the Apollo mission three days to reach the moon.

Everything is not rosy however when we talk about settling on the moon. Since there is no atmosphere on the moon spacesuits must be worn at all times when colonists go outside of their buildings. No matter how comfortable some of the newer spacesuits might be, this is still a burden. We don’t know how this might effect the psyche of a colonist over a long period of time. There is a delay in communications between the earth and the moon, but is only about three seconds. One problem with sending a colony to the moon is the fact there are very long lunar nights and this prohibits the practical use of solar energy, even though there are a few places on the moon which have almost continuous sunlight.

There is an eternal question which has been asked many times and that is should we colonize the moon or another planet before we fix the problems right here on earth? Space exploration and colonization seems to be very popular and those who want to do this seem to outnumber those who want to correct our problems here first, by considerable numbers. It will be expensive in the beginning to colonize the moon, but after we do it the colony will probably pay for itself by mining and other such endeavors and there may be some type of future manufacturing taking place there which might be impractical to do on the earth. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.