Open access peer-reviewed chapter

Access to Space, Access to the Moon – Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Written By

Yann-Henri Chemin

Reviewed: 05 May 2022 Published: 22 June 2022

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.105175

From the Edited Volume

Lunar Science - Habitat and Humans

Edited by Yann-Henri Chemin

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Abstract

The dynamics of human expansion towards space are going through Earth external layers, orbital space and the Moon. With its low gravity, slingshot effect relative to Earth, on-site resources and relative proximity to Earth in the solar system, the renewed space race is effectively returning first to the Moon. A psychological bridge to enlarge our civilization with a permanent bridge to our natural satellite. The development of this Earth-Moon system, requires enormous amount of finances, energy, science, technology, but over all, opportunities. This chapter deals with the efforts and the mental changes that may eventually result from all of these changes.

Keywords

  • space
  • access to space
  • access to the Moon
  • new space race
  • LEO
  • Moon
  • single stage to orbit
  • near Earth asteroid
  • astro-mining
  • ISRU
  • human health
  • food security in space
  • space exploration
  • Earth-Moon system
  • human expansion in space

1. Introduction

It is now obvious that the Moon is renewed in its aura of the Earth’s first harbor to the solar system and the first non-Earth scientific playground [1], even though it was recognized so more than 60 years ago already [2], alongside the now very reliable Earth orbiting International Space Station (ISS). The Global Exploration Roadmap [3] is a multi-governmental (USA, Canada, Japan, EU, Russia) roadmap to renew space exploration by integrating the Planet Earth in-orbit activities with the Deep Space Gateway in lunar orbit to facilitate sequential and relayed access to both the Moon and Mars, but also potentially the asteroid belt (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The global exploration roadmap [3].

To foster such a push in space, an accompanying financial support to the economics of space engineering has to be unrolled by the main governments involved in the space race. It turns out that the last few years have seen just that and more. Boosted by the long strides of privately funded commercial ventures to reduce cost to LEO, a new influx of trust sentiment has developed, from both private and public bodies.

This introductory chapter aims at developing the actual state of the ‘Access to space’ renewed race. In this highly evolving topic, it will venture into the place of the Moon as Earth’s first spaceport and as the solar system exploration gateway, but also into the changes of perspective that need to happen to enable this outward expansion of humanity.

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2. The increasing level of the investments in space

As a testimony of the recent dynamics of space investments, in 2019 budgets (Figure 2), the USA and its now very successful public-private partnerships, are leading the investment into the new space race. For a comparison, in 2019, the French government investment in space was in par with Elon Musk private investment.

Figure 2.

2019 billion USD investment in the space industry [4].

Fast-foward to 2022, the budgetary update of ESA as reported in the press conference of 13th April 2002, after the 307th ESA HQ meeting, is aiming at negotiating the 2022 Paris agreement with Member States upward of the 14B Euros (15.3B USD), which was the amount of the running Seville Agreement budget. Likewise, the French Government has earmarked 2.6B Euros (2.8B USD; [5]) for 2022 space activities, partially including the very active ‘New Space’ sub-sector, which also benefits from additional parallel incubator-type budgets. In the meantime, the NASA FY2022 Request (NASA [6]) is steadily increasing from 22.6B USD in 2020 to 24.8B USD in 2022.

Also worth to mention is that this does not account to the cost of labour and the cost of processed material, in that manner, the PRC’s capital/labour efficiency might have some advantage in the medium-term perspectives. Also to observe, the long-lasting experience and multiple collaboration system that Russia and Europe shared in terms of space launching expertise. This was abandoned by the 307th ESA meeting, held on the 13th April 2022, as the direct consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the same line and on the same day, the PRC announced that space collaboration with Russia was put on hold (NASA [7]). ESA is now redirecting collaboration efforts primarily with NASA, alongside some other space agencies. In any case, it is not anymore a question of who will get to space; it is more of a question of when and how the upcoming stations and settlements will be kick-started and inhabited.

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3. Making a mental shift from using space to being in space

A large part of our effort as a spacefaring society is still within the close vicinity of Earth. As the use of satellites for communications, strategic positioning, global positioning, monitoring of agriculture, climate and environment, among many other applications, are seeing a tremendous break into the daily routines of businesses and policy decision-making, the World looks up to the artificial stars in orbit ever more. This psychological adoption of the orbiting tools, embedded in every vehicle, phone or connected device has made a very long way into making space-borne tools as much ubiquitous as placing a long-distance call or following navigation routes to the regular human. Space is a very real extension of the connected human.

Communication platforms and atomic clocks are in constant connection with human interacting devices. The actual psychological boundary is to make the thought that everyday human physically can transfer through that dimension on a more regular basis. To enable such a mental shift to happen practically is a generational effort and a civilizational challenge. It would be a postulate to claim here that we are in the midst of its inception. At the forefront of this is a vision, of many, in their own way, to reach space. There is commercial willingness to follow space as a market, and also a vast amount of engineering exploration, life-long expertise and dedication. The first practical step, the closest, will be orbiting Earth, settling there, making rendez-vous, refueling, maintenance, repairs, etc. The second practical step is enabling engineering/commercial solutions to transport commoners to/through space according to their needs.

3.1 Enabling engineering of in-orbit transfer, servicing and assembly

In this regard, the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations [8] is a 2016 DARPA-funded industry initiative to create an ecosystem of industries cooperating to generate a long-term viable space industry commercial service environment. The Consortium has eventually morphed in two parts, one focusing on the technical aspect of satellite servicing, initially establishing common standards for safe operations and then, hardware standards for interfaces. On the policy side, preparation is made to inform the regulatory system and to lobby regulators that the Consortium answers properly to their vision.

A satellite servicing platform was launched in 2019 by SpaceLogistics, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. The platform is called the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1). It docked to Intelsat 901 early 2020, a geostationary communications satellite. It took over the attitude and navigation control for the next 5 years of extended operation of the telecommunication satellite. An increment of the concept extends beyond attitude and navigation control. DARPA owned payload (Mission Robotic Vehicle; MRV) will be transported by SpaceLogistics in a future launch (2023) which intends to add on-orbit repair, augmentation, assembly, detailed inspection and relocation of client satellites.

In the same thought process, Orbit Fab, a 2018 start-up, tested in 2019 the on-orbit transfer of water to two pseudo-satellites before transferring the water to the ISS. Called Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI), this technology is applicable to fuel, even compressed Xenon [9]. This market segment niche, for the short term, is to support in-orbit relocation services and deployment of pluri-orbit systems. In the longer term, larger opportunities exist with this proven technology to support in-orbit assembly of complex vehicles for long-haul transport in the solar system. The first operational tanker, Tanker-001 Tenzing was launched the 30th of June 2021 by the SpaceX Sherpa-FX orbital transfer vehicle [10].

3.2 Making earth orbit an accessible extension of human life

Like the time revolution that the Concorde provided to cross the Atlantic in the early age of the supersonic civilian flights, a similar revolution could be perceived to go through a certain altitude (stratospheric/sub-orbital, von Karman line, orbital) to fasten travel across opposite sides of Earth. The psychological importance of such a commodity on the human civilization is non-negligeable. Technology mainline acceptance, incremental reliability, robustness, reducing prices, adoption of a way of doing things. In brief, internalization, as a global society, of the extended boundary layer of human daily life. To permit this, the evolving technology should provide extensions of tried and tested means of transport, already widely accepted by all: from an airplane to a spaceplane, there is nearly no psychological barrier when someone climbs in what may look like an airplane, even if it goes much further up, it still may look like what is known to be strongly reliable: an airplane.

Access to LEO by humans on a regular airplane was a long-time revolution to come to fruition. Eventually, evolutions of the 1959 Dyna-Soar [11], the Virgin Galactic Space Ship One [12], the Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (Scaled Composite, 2010) and the SpaceShipThree released in April 2021 have evolved the spaceplane concept to reduce the cost of oblation protection to much less than the initial design by using the feather fall concept (thus the articulated and elongated winglets) that generates a stable high-drag shape for atmospheric re-entry (Figure 3). The SpaceShip planes have three flight controls, depending on the in-atmosphere flight being sub-sonic (manual control) or supersonic (electric) or space (RCS). This space plane launches from larger airplanes (Scaled Composites Model 318 & 348) with a standard runway though longer and larger [13] compared with the Dyna-Soar which was designed smaller and to be launched on top of a rocket.

Figure 3.

Boeing X20 dyna-soar (1959), virgin galactic StarShipTwo (2010) & three (2021).

And yet, closing the single-stage spaceplane surface-LEO-surface loop might just come from New Zealand, where the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted Dawn Aeronautical [14] an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certificate to fly a suborbital spaceplane from a conventional airport [15]. Dawn aerospace is developing a spaceplane drone (Dawn Mk-II Aurora at this stage of development) in the initial aim at providing a single step to space delivery for smallsat and cubesat-type EO platforms in LEO, with a view to scale the spaceplane design with payload requirements onboard the next iteration, the Mk-III, an 18 metric tons spaceplane. Take-off and landing can be done (Figure 4) from any standard runway in the world, permitting government and private companies to have at hand the launching platform and insert the payload directly in their premises. In all, spaceplanes, whether airborne launched/runway landing (Virgin Galactic) or runway take-off/landing (Dawn Aerospace) is decreasing vastly costs to LEO for both passengers and freight. But the most important part is the ubiquity of launching geolocations that they address, vastly reducing some of the most common risks and costs to space payloads. Also, bringing spaceplanes one step closer to be visible to all in daily life, a critical part of society adoption of the extended space dimension these carry within.

Figure 4.

Operational diagram of Dawn mk-II Aurora single-stage loop to LEO [14].

At this point, we, as a people, reach the very close to Earth external boundary and orbital space. A vastly non-negligeable step in itself to appreciate the civilizational expansion as a daily happening. As with all progresses and development, many steps are intertwined, as it is in these years, both sub-orbital, orbital and the next part to be focussed on. That part is one step further, more difficult, more careful, in terms of engineering, more complex to survive as a human without increasing amount of assistance. Further away, yet also orbitally intertwined with us.

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4. Going further, expanding earth to an earth-moon system

4.1 Moon segment: in-orbit station and missions, surface research station

The SpaceX Crew Dragon mission Inspiration4 [16], launched on 16th September 2021 and was sponsored by Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, acting as mission commander with a crew of three astronauts (Prof./Pilot Sian Proctor, Medical Officer Halley Arceneaux, Mission Specialist Christopher Sembroski). Followed on the 30th of March 2022 by the Axiom sponsored fully civilian crew visiting the ISS for few days onboard Crew Dragon [17]. The SpaceX Starship is a multi-use Moon/Mars transport/settlement vehicle, with return capability. It is now in very fast pace development with early tests proving automatic attitude controls for lifting, landing and free-falling. On the 15th of May 2021, Starship Number 15 (SN15) proved the autonomous Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) capability of the spacecraft. The actual development is the stacking of SN20 above the Super Heavy Booster (Figure 5) to permit Earth escape velocity. One of the first use of the starship will be the space tourism #dearMoon project (dear [19]), sponsored by the Japanese Entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, with the aim at inspiring a broad range of artists by having them do a fly-by of the Moon by 2023. This will also bring SpaceX in the forefront of the Moon transport industry. In parallel, plans were for a first Martian crew by 2024 [18], but eventually are going to be delayed a few years until circumlunar flights of starship become a viable resource to SpaceX.

Figure 5.

NASA’s SLS and SpaceX’s Starship [18].

The Artemis program [20] is a Moon landing and settlement mission from the USA. It is aimed at using public-private partnership to access the Moon in the years ahead and eventually create a Moon’s south pole settlement. In preparation, Artemis 2 is planned to be the first crewed mission to perform a flyby of the Moon. To reach to the Moon surface, but also as a relay to Mars, the Deep Space Gateway (Figure 6: [3]) also called the Lunar Gateway [21] is created as a relay station, and lunar in-orbit space port. Canada, EU and Japan space agencies have formalized partnerships for the Lunar in-orbit station [21]. The lunar Gateway is also clearly defined as a relay station en-route to Mars. On 16th April 2021, NASA granted 2.9B USD to SpaceX to create the ARTEMIS lunar lander, from its Starship series of spacecraft.

Figure 6.

Government’s missions timeline [3].

With the successful lunar orbit injection of Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, the Indian government approved a follow-on mission, Chandrayaan-3, which is launching in 2023 [22], carrying both a lander and rover, with the same set of payloads as Chandrayaan-2, but without an orbiter (C-2 has already successfully inserted an orbiter). ISRO is also working with JAXA to conduct a feasibility study for a joint lunar exploration mission.

The PRC has now fully and officially, engaged into the race to create a Moon base. Weiren [23] announced that the PRC’s ‘next steps in […] lunar exploration endeavour will be challenging and demanding as we aim to set up a scientific outpost on the moon’s south pole. In the near future, we will also send our astronauts to land on the moon’. The station will aim at an international cooperation, named the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). On 21st February 2021, Roscosmos confirmed that the administrative steps to join the ILRS are ready to be signed with the PRC [24]. Across the board, the targets are 2030 for robotic and short-term human presence. By 2036, ILRS settlement and long-term human presence are expected [25]. Prior to the Ukraine invasion, and the subsequent EU sanctions, both EU and Russia had explored the collaboration possibilities, by May 2022, the time of reviewing this text, there is a certain level of uncertainty about the EU positioning on that subject.1

4.2 Human health, its requirements and limitations in space and on the Moon

Surface/elevation mapping, exosphere, radiation and volatile composition are the main subjects of interest for governments involved in lunar science, besides the engineering proof of work for orbital control, landing automation and sample return. Its lack of atmosphere also brings advantages to astronomical observation, more so with a large distributed array [26]. The Moon surface is in itself a human health issue, from the micro particulate size of the Moon regolith and its toxicity [27]. Indeed, the lunar environment has detrimental impacts on the human organism [28], but as found in the Global Exploration Roadmap (Figure 7; [29]), the Moon environment and astronauts in transits have much less to fear on the Moon base than in deep space or on a 3-year return mission to Mars. Here, we note in Figure 7 about fractional Earth gravity that the impact of even a fraction of Earth gravity is highly beneficial on the human health. Indeed, only 1/10–1/2 of Earth gravity would suffice to bring considerable health benefits to humans, whether on the Moon, Mars or within the artificial gravity of a rotating spacecraft.

Figure 7.

Health concerns in space (from the [29]) Health concerns Legend, Red (Unacceptable): A risk with one or more of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) currently exceeding established human health and performance standards for that mission scenario. Yellow (Acceptable): A risk with all of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) well understood and characterized, such that they meet existing standards but are not fully controlled, resulting in ‘acceptance’ of a higher risk posture. Lowering the risk posture is important, but the risk is not expected to preclude a mission. Green (Controlled): A risk with all of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) well understood and characterized, with an accepted mitigation strategy in place to control the risk. It is still helpful to pursue optimized mitigation opportunities such as compact and reliable exercise devices.

Most of the orbiting space stations study human health and adaptation to micro-gravity. PRC’s TianHe core module launched end of April 2021, the station’s environment is studying mutation breeding, medicines and new materials. After 6 months in orbit, a taikonaut returned to Earth 18th May 2022, enabling study of the effect of micro-gravity on the longest period in space for a woman.

Similarly, the ISS is running a large number of scientific experiments on a rotating basis, recently, the Dragon Crew-1 had a Multi-purpose Variable-G Platform (MVP) Cell-06 experiment dedicated to Cartilage–Bone–Synovium (CBS) Micro-Physiological System (MPS) Investigation. This particular experiment is vital to low-gravity adaptation of CBS system. It is especially dealing with the problematic recovery from trauma that happened in space or on the Moon due to its micro-gravity compared to our Earth-adapted bodies (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

Glover installing MVP Cell-06 in the ISS (courtesy: NASA spaceflight Center).

4.3 Human protection and primary survival needs in space and on the moon

The main human protection requirement in space and on the surface of the Moon (which has technically no atmosphere and no magnetic field) is radiation protection. In this matter, another set of experiments on Cygnus transport aims directly at the Moon. The Artemis HERA on Space Station (A-HoSS) modifies the Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor (HERA), built to operate as the primary radiation detection system for Orion and certified for flight on Artemis 2, to operate on the space station. The investigation provides an opportunity to evaluate this hardware in the space radiation environment prior to the Artemis 2 flight [30].

Radiation is both a human and a technological constraint. Indeed, shielding for radiation takes weight and redundancy for technology. Humans on the other hand, are subject to certain radiation related diseases, and shielding them, as well as making them more resistant to regular radiation doses, is still the centre of many designs, experiments and research works. On the Moon, a most ubiquitous radiation protection is the use of regolith above settlements’ habitats. This would serve a combined purpose of mechincal kinetic absorption for micro-meteorids and radiation shielding.

The main human survival need is oxygen (counted in 1–3 minutes roughly), then it is water (counted in 2–5 days roughly). Recycling water is altogether a strategic endeavor in many ways, as water redundancy is very costly in weight to space, and recycling it increases safety and resilience of space explorers and dwellers. As shown by the Martian rover Perseverance soon after its arrival, ISRU, in this case the CO2 transformed in O2, is the most economic and reliable way to have access to non-limited resources once on a given planetoid surface. While O2 can be easily compressed for transport, and uncompressed into a globally controlled environment system in some inhabitations on another planetoid, it is not the same for H2O, as it is incompressible, and vastly more dense than O2. Finally, H2O can be split in H2 and O2, providing respectively energy and life support if needed.

4.4 Why a lunar station at the south pole: Aitken basin?

On the Moon surface, a practical ISRU is water extraction, which can only be found in the vicinity of the poles, where some craters bottom are always under shadow, keeping frozen ice from sublimating [31]. This is where (the South Pole – Aitken basin) the joint Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station was to be built in the coming years (to be redefined the after May 2022 hold of PRC from Russian space ventures; NASA [7]), for the obvious reason of water ISRU (Figure 9). Nevertheless, water recycling technology will always be a must on the surface of the Moon, first of all, for emergency reasons, but also for the settlement missions when ISRU water mining/extraction tools will be on inititialization/maintenance phases and return only partial yield.

Figure 9.

Chandrayaan-1 M3 lunar surface water. South & North poles [31].

4.5 Food security, ISRU and fluxes circular sustainability

Already 60+ years ago, Trudeau [2] mentioned that settlements in man-made tubes underground the Moon regolith would provide mechanical protection from meteoroids gardening and cosmic radiation. He also added that ‘Early attention will be given to hydroponic culture of salads and the development of closed cycle food production systems’. In 2021, NASA and CSA launched the Deep Space Food Challenge [32], to increase innovation in the field of nutrition and make the food tasty to ‘encourage people to continue eating during long space voyages’, recognizing the psychological impact of appearance, something understood by earth livestock supplement producers early on. Additionally, the challenge aims at finding new food production technologies (or systems), which would have little waste produced or resources required.

ExoAgriculture’, a term coming from the exogenically designed and applied agriculture, as opposed to the Earth-based endogenic agriculture, is a new field of science in itself (also referred to as ExoAg), and is being developed now constantly in the micro-gravity of the ISS, alongside being experimented on various Martian soil analogs in various research laboratories on Earth [33]. As for the Moon, in the absence of atmosphere to deflect/absorb both cosmic radiation and some of the meteoroids, the actual constant and thorough gardening of the regolith has led to the reduction of its differentiation and down-homogeneization of the mineralogical properties. The result being powder/dust with less to no macro-structure or molecular properties, radiation further sterilized its macro-properties by breaking molecular loose crystalline structures. Even if some Moon rocks maybe mechanically crushed into structurally interesting macro structured soil interesting to plants root development, it will most probably still require additional minerals, Earth microbes and fertilizers to grow on it, returning to an initial perspective from 1959 mentioned above which might be more practical.

Besides the most prominent human survivability performance improvements by the benefits of adding vitamins, minerals to the diet, as well as recycling CO2 into O2 as a redundancy of mechanical/chemical scrubbers, the actual proximity to and care of plants may also affect positively the long-term conditions of life of humans in adverse environments, though a reviews calls for more experiments on this [34]. Yet, the probability of adding a plant or a frame with a natural environment in a windowless office has been found five times more attractive than not adding any in a more recent study from Bringslimark et al. [35].

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5. Moon commercial activities and advanced ISRU

5.1 Space mining laws on earth

Space mining’ as a concept was born out of the 1990s. It practically kick-started when President Obama signed what is now coined as the ‘Space Law’ on November 25th, 2015. It was later ratified by the US Congress, giving it an independent life. The fast pacing development of private-public partnerships to reach space is reaching an ever reducing cost and repetition of launch per week by the same launchers (SpaceX), and even now the development of suborbital launchers from standard airplanes (Virgin Orbit), lastly one stage airplane to suborbital apogee (Dawn). Companies with clear interest in asteroid mining are among many others: Deep Space Industries, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Mars One, Bigelow Aerospace, etc.

In 2016, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg announced the creation of Space Resources, an initiative to generate a long term investment in space resources extraction and use. Initially received with mixed belief and with a concentrating focus on astromining, it nonetheless attracted 50+ companies with a mandate to do astromining. One of the most impressive gesture it had, was to sign the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, later (October 2020) reinforced by the Artemis Treaty. Luxembourg, in 2017, modified its own constitutional laws to allow local companies to exploit space resources. At the time of the writing of this chapter [36], the Grand Duchy is joining NASA in the hope to develop businesses that can provide Artemis Base Camp with extraction and processing of vital in situ resources like oxygen and fuel (H3, Thorium, etc.).

5.2 Near moon commercial activities example: near-earth-asteroid mining

The Near-Earth-Asteroids (NEAs) approaching Earth are monitored by NASA [37], their weekly entry into the 0.05 AU Earth boundary are recorded and accounted for. Several NEOs per week are found, with diameters reaching 100+ meters for some! The common content of such asteroid in high-quality Fe, Ni, Pt, Co, etc. makes them attractive astromining targets in term of energy spent to reach a resource. Considering that 0.05 AU is about 7.5 Millions of km, and the Moon is at 0.4 Millions of km from Earth, with its low gravity and slingshot effect relative to Earth. There is energy-based reason to consider the Moon as a NEA mining base. Blair [38] already identified the impact of NEO asteroid mining on the Platinum market and Earth supply streams, LL chondrites already found in NEOs are indeed rich in Pt, at a rate of 32 + k USD per kg, the economics of reaching to space for astromining are getting vastly efficient as time passes and Earth mining pressure increases.

As an example, the NEO asteroid 2011 UW 158 (Figure 10) made the news in July 2015 when it passed near Earth at 2.4 millions of km. It is 452 m x 1011 m and was estimated to carry 90 Millions of tons of Platinum (2022 value: 2.9 Trillions of USD). In recent news, JPL jointly with NASA announced the completion of the payload assembly in April 2021 for a mission to Psyche, a peculiar asteroid since it exhibits all the characteristics of the remnants of a nickel-iron rocky planet core ([40]; NASA [41]). Here again besides the obvious scientific treasure trove about inner rocky planet origins, formation, geomagnetism and actual composition, there is the question of the purity of the ore found there, and the potential for in situ extraction or redirection to another location for exploitation.

Figure 10.

NEA 2011UW 158, carrying 90 million tons of platinum [39].

As an example of advanced ISRU, metal 3D-printing technology matures in micro-gravity (i.e. [42]), with its Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing (LMM), it is rather straightforward to envisage the use of high-quality metal ore into such machine, in space or on a planetoid, for infrastructure creation, whether spacefaring designs or settlement on-the-spot adapted constructions. Obvious questions of heating power source will come to mind, but there are already such solutions rolling on six wheels on the surface of Mars, it would require some scaling, but it is in the realm of feasible and transportable.

5.3 Optimizing economic returns and ISRU of NEAs

Literally, any rock flying around is an addition to Earth resources if safely added to the Earth surface. Likewise, it can become an addition to any rocky moon or planet in its economical action range. In this regard, Vergaaij et al. [43] have economically optimized orbits and trajectories to maximize both ISRUs and economic returns in the Earth-Moon-Mars settlement ecosystem (Figure 11).

Figure 11.

Economic ecosystem of space resources in earth vicinity [43].

In the context of this contribution, it becomes logical that the Earth-Moon system, and the Moon as a springboard to low-energy access to local space permits vast economies of transport from and to NEAs. Whether pre-processing can be done in space, on the Moon surface, are still to be evaluated. It is in the author’s belief that ‘technically’ some level of metal 3D printing should be feasible on the Moon surface very soon, as for a timeline for economic viability, it is still an unknown.

Notes: Blue triangles: resource locations (1) Earth surface, (2) Lunar surface, (3) NEA, (4) Martian surface, and (5) MBA. Red circles: customer locations (1) Earth surface, (2) LEO, (3) GEO, (4) SE-L1, (5) SE-L2, (6) Lunar surface, (7) LLO, (8) Lunar Gateway, (9) Martian surface, (10) Mars Base Camp, (11) SM-L1 and (12) Psyche.

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6. Conclusions

In a few years, space resources, space economics and the space race in general have had a major boost from private-public partnerships, as well as from the space narratives of (now many) Earth governmental entities. The now nearly weekly launch or test of SpaceX rockets, the ever-growing number of space related start-ups, the various economic pressures they generate on well-established slow R&D turn over space mammoths is as much a breath of fresh air that it is a renewed psychological return to space for humanity.

While research on human in space and microgravity is on a full swing in ISS, humans’ adaptation to planetoids/moons of lower gravity than Earth can be fast-forwarded on the Moon alongside many more practical research and logistical developments about actually living on a planetoid/moon.

The space ecosystem for humans’ explorers, resources acquisition and settlements requirements are all identified. The first part of the Chinese Earth orbital space station is in LEO for several months already. The ISS has the largest crew on-board for a long time, increasing the space experience of more people at the same time. The first fully commercial crew flying and staying onboard ISS is the Axiom Ax-1 crew (shuttled by a SpaceX Dragon-Crew capsule) in April 2022. The commercial space station Orbital Reef is now is early phases (Orbital [44]), the Axiom space station too [45].

The NASA Moon orbital Gateway to Mars, the PRC-lead International Lunar Research Station, are all effectively getting built. SpaceX is sending tourists around the Moon (Yusaku Maezawa and 10–12 artists) by 2023 on a 6 days trip to lunar circumvolution. NASA selected SpaceX to land people on the Moon initially by 2023, then by 2025, thought it might still take more time (NASA [46]), NASA issued a second round of call in March 2022 for other commercial Moon landing options, reaching the Moon surface by an initially stated target of 2027 [47].

The Moon is de facto a gravity well for our expanding civilization and its willingness to enlarge its dimension of economics of resources, as a proxy of developmental support. As importantly, it enravels a primordial corollary, making us, humans, an Earth-Moon species. Shall we?

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the insightful comments permitting to reinforce the central claims and improve the quality of the manuscript.

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Abbreviations

A-HoSSArtemis HERA on Space Station
ARTEMISMoon landing and settlement program of NASA
CONFERSConsortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations
CAACivil Aviation Authority
DARPADefense Advanced Research Projects Agency
EOEarth Observation
GATEWAYLunar Orbit transfer station of NASA
GEOGeostationary Earth Orbit
GERGlobal Exploration Roadmap
HERAHybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor
HORIZONMoon Base project of the US Army in 1959
ILRSInternational Lunar Research Station
ISSInternational Space Station
ISROIndian Space Research Organization
ISRUIn-Situ Resources Utilization
JAXAJapan Aerospace Exploration Agency
LEOLow Earth Orbit
LLOLow Lunar Orbit
LMMLithography-based Metal Manufacturing
MBAMain Belt Asteroid
MEVMission Extension Vehicle
MRVMission Robotic Vehicle
MVPMulti-purpose Variable-G Platform
NASANational Aeronautical and Space Agency
NEANear-Earth Asteroid
NEONear-Earth Objects
PRCPeople’s Republic of China
PRACPorto Rico Arecibo Observatory
RAFTIRapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface
RCSReaction Control System
SM-L1Sun-Mars Lagrangian 1
USAUnited States of America

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Notes

  • At the time of the editing of this manuscript (May 2022), the state of the Russian-lead presence in space is undefined and will certainly be delayed on many planned ventures. The 307th ESA HQ meeting press conference is found here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Yox7Jmzlk) with elements provided on stopping all collaborations with Russia.

Written By

Yann-Henri Chemin

Reviewed: 05 May 2022 Published: 22 June 2022