We Commit To The Moon-Mars Mission - The True Spark for Changing the Culture - Report - Page 7
Lunar Industrialization
Make Artemis the first step towards the industrialization of the Moon, as
the economic platform enabling human colonization of Mars and human
exploration of the Solar System — as first thoroughly defined by the late
space visionary Krafft Ehricke.
According to space engineer and visionary Krafft Ehricke, “If God wanted man to become a spacefaring species, he would have
given man a moon.” A 1982 painting by Christopher Sloan visualizes Selenopolis, Ehricke’s proposed lunar city. It will provide
housing for the thousands of people required for scientific work, life support, resource extraction, and manufacturing for space
endeavors further from the Earth. The fusion power plant supplying the city is seen on the right.
The Moon will serve as a necessary step in our voyage to greater understanding and control over the Solar System and beyond.
The Moon isn’t just an exciting place to explore; it will
provide key resources for the interplanetary economy
and become a vital manufacturing center supporting
mankind’s colonization of Mars and beyond.
The first comprehensive lunar industrial program was
designed by the great space visionary, rocket pioneer, and
philosopher Krafft Ehricke (1917-1984). As Ehricke noted,
“the energy required to deliver cargo from the Moon to
geosynchronous orbit and return to the Moon is 7.2% of
that required for the same mission from Earth.”2 (The
2. “Lunar Industrialization and Settlement—Birth of Polyglobal
Civilization,” Krafft Ehricke, in: Lunar Bases and Space Activities of
the 21st Century, edited by W. W. Mendell, Houston, TX: Lunar
and Planetary Institute, 1985, p. 827.
Colonizing Space Will Change Our Culture
significantly lower gravity on the Moon makes it much
easier to launch from the lunar surface.) Because of this,
once we get mining, processing, manufacturing, and
transportation infrastructure operating on the Moon,
it becomes far more economical to develop and launch
certain products from the lunar surface (as compared
with launching from Earth).
One of the first resources we’ll develop from the Moon
will be water—used not only for the needs of astronauts
and eventual space agriculture, but also to provide oxygen and hydrogen for propellant. Even at this very first
stage of lunar mining, the ability to refuel spacecraft
in Earth orbit or lunar orbit using lunar resources will
qualitatively transform mankind’s relation to space—
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