Is that a good name for a lunar colony? Or, “The Second Generation Lunar Cooperative Introvert Society and Conservatory Band.” I’d like to live there. I’ll be the resident piano person and orchestra maestro. Are we able to synthesize water? That’ll be important.
Forty years ago, they said that removing salt from seawater for public consumption was too expensive and not sustainable; but now coastal cities are doing just that through reverse osmosis.
It seems like we should be able to just “make” water. I’d imagine the process being something like blowing micro-misted hydrogen at oxygen gas at a particular temperature in a pressurized vacuum. (That’s a total guess — I’ll look it up at the end of the post. If I got it right, I’ll throw a water synthesis party in Watertown at a water park.)
O
This is the sort of thing that I would’ve done as a science fair project in middle school and gotten in way over my head.
I wonder if a small, completely closed economy made up of vetted moon residents could be sustainable. Two-thousand seems like a good number — 1200 working-age adults, 500 children, 300 seniors. Just enough people that you’d know everyone without having to know everyone. Certainly, people would need things to do; and there are things that would need done. So that takes care of jobs.
O
I suppose what I’m talking about is essentially a lunar self-sufficient combination of a Home Owners Association and a grocery Co-Op. hardware and home items can be ordered. I imagine a currency-less society.
Every time a version of this has been attempted in the past, money and ego has brought it down. So, let’s go money-less. We should still have stores and things like that, because that’s good socially; but you wouldn’t pay for anything. Just do your job and take what you need. Abuses can be addressed by the community. I’d imagine that a weekly meeting in which grievances can be discussed would be a component.
This is all in the works, in fact. NASA plans to have habitable human space on the Moon by 2040. This is not a flying-cars-by-the-year-2000 thing — it’s very real. Three moon landing missions are planned for this decade, and NASA has partnered with a construction technology companies (to the tune of $60 million).
There was a terrific article last weekend in the New York Times about NASA’s plans. Alas, I’ll be turning eighty in the 2040s — probably not a good time for a major relocation.
After looking it up — I was right! But you don’t need the pressurized vacuum. Yes, believe it or not, it really is that easy to synthesize water. However, there’s heat and an explosion involved. That’s kind of a problem. The Hindenburg is an example of what happens when a large amounts of hydrogen and oxygen tango together.
O
Sit Still Phill 
the thing about living in a lunar colony is that the area we live in would be completely terraformed anyway. for the initial part, living quarters would be more or less like a hotel with fewer amenities, apart from what is needed to sustain life. i would visit the moon. but i sure would not want to be a colonist, and in later years, also not a full-time resident. it would be a few lifetimes before individual family housing would be possible. resources will be scant, even when the terraformed areas are self sustaining. while colonists would start with communal living, if it ever became a market based planet, it will be expensive. exploring outside the terraformed area will be expensive, and likely occupied by rogues somehow. producing food and water is primary to terraforming, so we’d have that figured out before we sent colonists. ❤ karenadair