The Night Sky
Imagine the night sky in your head. Are there stars? Are there stars like Cassiopeia, the little dipper with the unmoving Polaris and so many others shining faithfully against a dark background nightly in the northern hemisphere? Perhaps an airplane is blinking as it progresses across the sky, flashing red and white, or a twinkling string of satellites is crossing the heavens. From remote locations, the observant may picture the clear, starry streaks of the Milky Way. Planets may be visible, reflecting back to Earth the light of the sun.
In the center of it all, slowly cycling in appearance from fully lit to virtually invisible, is the moon.
This sky has not always appeared as it does now. It is dimmer than before, with light pollution obscuring the light of stars beyond for 99 percent of people in Europe and America. The satellites and planes one sees are rather new additions, with the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, only launched in October of 1957.
But, the sky will likely continue to change, and the moon’s place as a centerpiece of the night sky will too. In the future, it may no longer look the same as it does now.
Habitation
While many authors could once only have imagined a lunar future, average citizens are quickly on the way to becoming astronauts as humanity explores the idea of living on the moon. This vision is now becoming more and more of a reality as technology is being developed to make habitation of the moon and other celestial bodies possible.
One such technology is bricks made of mycelium — the thread-like structure that makes up fungi — to build houses. NASA’s Ames Research Center is making steady progress, with the advancements now reaching a “phase III” status. These fungal bricks use water to grow around an existing man-made framework. Using cyanobacteria, the mycelium could stay alive and function by converting water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, as well as “fungus food” (coined by Frank Tavares, an Ames Research Center communication specialist) using energy from the Sun.
Another developing technology for lunar habitation is 3-D printed structures. By sending a 3-D printer up to the moon, NASA could construct homes and buildings layer-by-layer with lunar concrete — made from rock chips, mineral fragments and dust already available on the moon. The technology may even be simple enough that regular people, not just astronauts, can use it.
With this technology, scientists are optimistic that the moon can be inhabited in the somewhat near future. Many optimistic NASA scientists have speculated that by 2040, Americans will have their first lunar settlements.
The Prospect of Mining
The moon is rich in resources: rare-earth metals like lanthanum and neodymium; other metals such as aluminum, titanium and silicon; helium-3; oxygen and more. Such resources could serve a myriad of purposes, and extracting them yields promising benefits for Earth.
In particular, several nations across the globe are eyeing Helium-3 for the isotope’s promising uses in nuclear fusion. The chief scientist at China’s Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP), Ouyang Ziyuan, claims it could “solve humanity’s energy demand for around 10,000 years.”
Other resources could be useful for prospective moon inhabitants themselves. Powdery rock on the Moon’s surface, for instance, could make dwellings and landing pads. Oxygen and water could be used in making rocket fuel. Other mined resources could be used to build additional lunar equipment and facilities.
Currently, it seems most likely that the mined lunar materials will be used on the moon itself. According to Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Colorado School of Mine’s Space Resources Program, sending rare earth elements back to Earth would be comparatively expensive.
In fact, humanity already has the necessary technology to mine on the moon. For example, the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) is an active NASA mission that will search for water in the moon’s south pole. It is equipped with The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT), a specialized drill for excavating and bringing to the moon’s surface ice and regolith (moon soil) samples, and the Mass Spectrometer for Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO), a device that can measure the chemical composition of these samples.
Furthermore, scientists appear to have not only definitive interests, but plans, to mine the moon in the near future. Abbud-Madrid, for one, speculated that in the five years after lunar mining reveals the composition of the moon’s resources, there will be a great number of exploratory moon-drilling missions to further understand them. Then, in the following decade, he speculated the actual mining of materials will begin.
However, despite the interest in and value of mining the moon, the activity could have negative consequences. Mining and even setting up lunar mining bases to begin with would require great amounts of regolith to be destroyed. In turn, the clues regolith contains about the formation of the moon and Earth could be lost. Moreover, the dust thrown up by mining could lead to erosion of the treasured features of the moon, such as the footprints left by Apollo astronauts.
Further Innovation?
Mining and settlement seem the most likely ways the moon can change in the coming future, with new structures and quarries possibly appearing all across its surface. However, as new technology is created and advanced, other unprecedented changes may occur as well. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the job market outlook for aerospace engineers will grow 6% from 2022 to 2032. With this growth, more minds will be at work in the aerospace industry, innovating new ideas and technology that could vastly change the appearance of the moon.
