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This is How NASA Will Build a City on the Moon
This is How NASA Will Build a City on the Moon
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Phụ đề (339)
0:00
For a brief moment, the Apollo program made the Moon feel closer than ever - now,
0:04
after 50 years, NASA is sending humans back. It may look like just a flyby under the Artemis
0:09
program - but this time, the long-term plan isn’t to visit. It’s to stay. Hi, I'm Josh and
0:15
on today's episode of The Infographics Show, we'll reveal how NASA will build a city on the moon.
0:19
NASA’s Artemis program has already given us some impressive milestones. In 2022, Artemis I sent an
0:25
uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a successful loop around the Moon and back - proving,
0:30
at least, that the hardware works. Artemis II, scheduled to launch in 2026. This time, astronauts
0:35
will be aboard. The mission will retrace that journey around the Moon - testing life support,
0:40
flight systems, and every human-rated component during a high-stakes lunar flyby.
0:45
So what comes after the flyby missions? And why does NASA even want to go back to the moon?
0:50
The truth of it is that NASA isn’t just going back to the Moon - they’re heading somewhere
0:54
no human has ever set foot before. This time, the target is deeper,
0:58
darker, and far more extreme. When the Apollo astronauts touched
1:01
down on lunar soil between 1969 and 1972, they all landed near the lunar equator. And it made sense.
1:08
The equator had flat terrain and predictable landing conditions - it was a relatively safe
1:13
environment for 1960s technology. It was the cosmic equivalent of dipping your toes in the
1:18
shallow end of the pool. Mission accomplished,
1:20
flags planted, humanity inspired. But future Artemis missions will
1:24
throw out that entire playbook. Their eventual target is Shackleton Crater,
1:28
at roughly 89 degrees south - at the Moon’s south pole. And this isn’t random. It’s a calculated
1:34
pivot to the one location that could make a permanent human presence actually possible.
1:38
To understand why, you need to grasp one of the most bizarre paradoxes in our solar system.
1:43
The lunar south pole is a fascinating case study in celestial survivability.
1:47
Within just a few miles of each other, you’ll find two opposite extremes that
1:51
shouldn’t coexist. At least not logically. On one hand, you’ve got the Peaks of Eternal
1:56
Light - mountain rims and crater edges that are bathed in sunlight. Not all day, but pretty
2:01
close. It’s a lot like living near the parts of Earth’s poles that experience the “Midnight Sun.”
2:06
Now, why does this happen? Earth’s poles get 6 months of darkness because our
2:10
planet tilts at 23.5 degrees. The moon? Its axial tilt is just 1.54 degrees. So
2:17
barely tilted at all. This means the sun never climbs high in the lunar polar sky.
2:22
It just sort of crawls along the horizon, endlessly circling the same lateral plane.
2:27
Some peaks catch that low-angle sunlight almost
2:30
continuously - locations like the rim of Shackleton Crater and Malapert Mountain
2:35
where the sun basically never sets - unlike the lunar equator.
2:38
A permanent base at the lunar equator would face around 14
2:42
days of pitch-black freezing cold darkness.
2:45
You’d need a massive battery system just to keep the lights on during those two-week blackouts.
2:49
It’s an economical and logistical nightmare waiting to happen.
2:52
But at the south pole, you get near-constant solar power. It’s like finding a cheat code
2:57
in the Moon’s operating system. And NASA wants to exploit that.
3:01
Now here’s where things get wild.
3:03
Just a stone’s throw away from these sunlit peaks,
3:05
you’ve got the exact opposite. Permanently shadowed craters that haven’t seen a
3:09
single photon of sunlight in over 2 billion years. That’s not an exaggeration, either.
3:14
There are hundreds of these permanently shadowed craters known on the moon,
3:18
each maintaining temperatures lower than -200 degrees Celsius (-328 Fahrenheit) - cold
3:22
enough to freeze oxygen solid. Anything that’s unlucky enough to drift into one
3:26
of these shadows will get locked in place, effectively frozen in time for eternity.
3:31
And that’s what brings us to the Moon’s most valuable resource.
3:34
Inside these perpetually shadowed regions - scientists call them PSRs - lies something
3:39
worth infinitely more than Moon rocks… water ice.
3:42
A NASA probe on India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission detected approximately 600
3:47
million metric tons of water ice in just the north polar PSR alone. NASA’s
3:52
Lunar Prospector estimated 6 billion metric tons scattered across both poles combined.
3:58
For decades, scientists actually thought the Moon was bone-dry. Analyses of Apollo
4:02
soil samples seemed to show it was completely anhydrous, or waterless. And that made sense.
4:08
Any water vapor on the sunlit surface gets instantly decomposed by solar radiation,
4:15
But those permanently shadowed craters? Total game changer.
4:19
Lunar water exists in multiple forms. You've got small chunks of ice - maybe
4:23
4 inches (10 centimeters) across or smaller - mixed into the regolith, or lunar dust, like
4:28
frozen gravel in dirt. But there’s another form of water too - chemically bonded with minerals at the
4:33
molecular level. It’s not pooled or flowing; it’s dispersed, locked into the soil itself. In the top
4:39
few feet of the lunar regolith, concentrations range from about 5 to 30% by weight.
4:44
Scientists have even detected trace water molecules in the
4:47
Moon’s ultra-thin atmosphere and tiny amounts on the sunlit
4:50
surface - but those pale in comparison to the reserves in the cold traps.
4:54
Even if we take the most conservative estimate - from 100 million to 1 billion metric tons of
4:59
water ice per pole - we’re still looking at enough water to sustain lunar operations for a long time.
5:05
And that’s what’s making NASA engineers excited.
5:08
Because on the Moon, water isn’t just water. It’s survival. The difference
5:12
between a brief visit… and actually living there.
5:15
Think about what it takes to keep a human alive in space. You need air - specifically oxygen - to
5:20
breathe. You need propellant and fuel to move spacecraft around. You need shielding from the
5:25
relentless cosmic radiation. Normally, all of that has to come from Earth - at a huge cost.
5:30
But water? Water is all three problems solved with one resource.
5:35
Run an electrical current through it - a process called electrolysis - and you
5:39
split water into hydrogen and oxygen. That oxygen becomes breathable air.
5:43
Now you don’t need regular shipments from Earth to breathe. You just need some power,
5:47
ice, and some relatively simple equipment.
5:49
And that same hydrogen and oxygen you just produced? Combine them
5:53
as liquid propellants and you've got Hydrolox - one of the most efficient
5:57
chemical rocket propellants possibles. Spacecraft can now refuel on the Moon.
6:02
Then there's radiation.
6:03
Cosmic rays are a massive problem for long-term lunar habitation. Radiation
6:07
levels are significantly higher than Earth’s background radiation - up to 100 - 200 times
6:13
more. They slice through metal, they damage DNA - they're a silent killer.
6:17
And that’s exactly where water becomes a lifesaver.
6:20
It’s phenomenal at blocking that radiation. Better than aluminum,
6:24
better than most materials we could realistically transport. Surround your
6:27
habitat with water tanks and you've got a radiation shield and a resource reserve.
6:32
Now, let’s talk dollars - this is where the lunar south pole shifts
6:35
from a scientific curiosity to strategic goldmine.
6:39
Historically, launching anything into orbit costs between $10,000 and $25,000 per kilogram.
6:45
Today, reusable rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and
6:48
Falcon Heavy have slashed that figure to roughly $2,000–$5,000 per kilogram under
6:53
typical commercial pricing. That’s a revolution by historical standards.
6:58
But space is still brutally unforgiving.
7:01
Want to send a single ton of water for drinking,
7:03
life support, or fuel production? You’re still looking at roughly
7:07
$2–$5 million. All for something that literally falls from the sky on Earth.
7:11
But the Moon's gravity is one-sixth of ours, about 5.32 feet per second squared (1.6 meters
7:16
per second squared) versus Earth's crushing 32.2 (9.8). That’s not only easier to launch,
7:21
it’s significantly cheaper. Sending a ton of water from the lunar surface takes a fraction of the
7:26
energy, a fraction of the fuel, and a fraction of the cost compared to launching it from Earth.
7:31
A mission to Mars needs hundreds of tons of water for drinking, oxygen for breathing,
7:36
and propellant for the journey. Launch all that from Earth, and you’re looking at
7:40
billions of dollars in fuel costs alone, fighting gravity every part of the way.
7:45
Or…you could mine the ice on the Moon, process it into fuel and life support,
7:49
and launch from a celestial body with one-sixth the gravity. The spacecraft
7:54
leaves the Moon already fueled, already stocked, and ready for the real journey.
7:58
Suddenly, the Moon becomes a gas station almost 239,000 miles (384633 km) from Earth.
8:03
Not only that, but a water treatment plant. A construction yard. And a launchpad.
8:07
This is why Shackleton Crater matters.
8:10
The equator has sunlight and pretty vistas. The south pole has infrastructure potential.
8:15
If Apollo proved we could visit, Artemis hopes to prove we can stay. And that changes everything.
8:20
But before we can harvest ice and build bases… we first have to face the Moon’s deadliest threat.
8:26
It’s not meteors. Or the radiation. It’s not even the insane temperature swings.
8:31
It’s the dust.
8:32
And it can ruin all of NASA’s plans - it nearly derailed the Apollo program.
8:37
Lunar regolith - the technical term for Moon dust and soil - is unlike
8:41
anything on Earth. It's the result of 4 billion years of meteorite impacts
8:45
relentlessly pulverizing Moon rock into progressively finer particles.
8:49
Without an atmosphere to burn up projectiles, oceans to absorb impacts,
8:53
or wind to smooth surfaces, the Moon’s dust is unlike anything on Earth. Jagged and sharp,
8:58
it ranges from talcum-powder fine to sand-grain size. With a hardness of
9:03
5 to 7 - comparable to actual glass. The regolith layer averages between
9:07
13 to 16 feet (4 - 5 meters deep) across the Moon’s flat mare regions.
9:12
That’s just the beginning.
9:13
It’s 33 to 49 feet (10 - 15 meters) deep in the highlands. Apollo missions measured depths up
9:18
to 39 feet (12 meters) in some locations. At the granular level it is “sharp, corrosive…potentially
9:23
fatal,” and since it’s electrically charged, too, well, it also sticks to absolutely everything.
9:29
Apollo astronauts reported dust penetrating multiple layers of sealed equipment. It got
9:33
everywhere, eroding layers of their spacesuit boots, camera mechanisms,
9:37
and sample containers. The vacuum seals on their carefully engineered equipment
9:41
got compromised. It even scratched their visors.
9:44
And that’s not the worst part.
9:46
When Apollo 17 astronauts came back inside the Lunar module and removed their helmets,
9:51
they inhaled trace amounts of dust. Several moonwalkers reported symptoms - sneezing,
9:56
watery eyes, sore throat, nasal congestion. Harrison
9:59
Scmidt called it “lunar hay fever,” and in some cases, it lasted for days.
10:04
Recent studies show this dust isn’t especially poisonous - you’re more
10:08
likely to get sick from everyday pollution here on Earth than from lunar regolith.But
10:12
it does contain sharp crystalline silica particles, the same stuff that
10:15
causes silicosis - permanent lung scoring - in miners. And in the Moon’s one-sixth gravity,
10:21
these microscopic particles stay suspended longer and penetrate deeper into lung tissue.
10:26
But here’s the real problem.
10:28
When a rocket descends to the lunar surface, its exhaust blasts regolith outward at extreme speeds.
10:34
During Apollo 12, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft - just 525 feet (160 meters) away - sustained surface
10:40
damage from the landing debris. In a future Moon settlement, with multiple landers nearby,
10:44
each touchdown could hurl high-velocity debris, damaging nearby habitats and infrastructure.
10:50
So…that’s a problem.
10:51
For long-term habitation, you need a landing pad. But you can’t build a landing pad without
10:56
landing construction equipment. And you can’t land construction equipment without a landing
11:00
pad. This is the catch-22 that could halt lunar exploration before it begins.
11:05
What’s the solution?
11:06
Enter NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture Planning program. It’s a comprehensive
11:10
framework that can fundamentally change how we think about space exploration.
11:14
The gist of it is simple but revolutionary. Stop visiting; start building. Apollo was
11:19
flags-and-footprints. Artemis is different. The long-term goal is to incrementally build
11:24
the infrastructure to use the Moon as a proving ground and launching point for Mars.
11:29
The Mars to Moon Architecture breaks down into 5 key elements. Transportation, using rockets,
11:34
landers, and pressurized rovers for long-distance travel. Surface habitation, meaning actual living
11:39
quarters, storage facilities, and places where humans can work for months - not just days.
11:44
This is the real game-changer.
11:46
NASA’s Artemis missions have planned lunar landings and construction roles through the
11:50
late 2020s. These include early moon landings and the orbital Gateway assembly. But their long-term
11:56
plans for building key surface infrastructure extends through the 2030s and beyond.
12:00
Feels like forever away, right? But these plans are coming together in real time.
12:05
But to get to lunar habitation and Moon bases, we have to go back to the stick
12:10
problem of those landing pads. The problem of actually building stuff on the Moon.
12:14
So let’s talk about concrete for a second.
12:16
On Earth, making concrete is simple. Mix sand,
12:19
water, cement, and aggregate, pour it, wait for it to harden,
12:23
and you’re done. We’ve been making concrete for millennia. It’s the bedrock of civilization.
12:27
But on the Moon, it’s a completely different game.
12:30
NASA believes it will need something akin to concrete to make reliable,
12:33
regolith-free landing pads and structures for long-term living on the Moon. The costs
12:38
of flying the equivalent of dirt and water would be economically impossible.
12:42
So NASA did something clever. They partnered with ICON, a construction technology company
12:47
that specializes in 3D printing buildings, and BIG Architects, the firm behind some of the
12:53
world’s most innovative structures. Together, they launched Project Olympus in October 2020, backed
12:58
by a $57.2 million contract awarded in 2022. This is the start of what NASA hopes will be the key
13:05
to building roads, landing pads, and habitats on the Moon without any imported materials.
13:10
Just pure regolith, and energy.
13:13
You can’t just mix regolith with water, even if you had the water to spare. It wouldn’t work.
13:18
The Moon’s low-pressure environment means water either freezes solid or boils away instantly.
13:23
Chemical reactions that require liquid water, yeah, they simply don’t happen.
13:28
NASA soon started experimenting with heat, not water. Specifically, high-powered lasers.
13:33
Scientists and experts believe you can take the lunar regolith and shape it into whatever form
13:38
you want using a robotic 3D printer. Just stack it up, layer by layer, like lego bricks. Then
13:44
you blast it with a focused laser beam that heats the regolith to temperatures between
13:48
1,200 and 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,192 - 2,732 Fahrenheit). Hot enough to melt the particles,
13:53
fusing them together. It’s a process called sintering. The particles don’t fully liquify,
13:58
they just get hot enough that their surfaces melt and bond to each other.
14:02
When it cools, you’ve got solid,
14:04
rock-like material. Strong enough to support structures in the Moon’s gravity.
14:08
Tough enough to withstand temperature extremes. Dense enough to block radiation.
14:12
It works because the lunar regolith has metallic iron particles in it that are
14:16
actually excellent at absorbing laser energy. The stuff that is
14:20
abrasive and clingy is actually perfect for this application.
14:23
The sintered regolith’s compressive strength is comparable to weaker forms of concrete on Earth.
14:28
But the lunar gravity helps, since that means you don’t need the same structural strength.
14:33
Stack a couple feet of this stuff around your habitat,
14:36
and you’ve just blocked the vast majority of cosmic radiation.
14:39
NASA hopes to use this sintering process to build its lunar landing pads first. The design
14:44
calls for hexagonal pads about 33 - 40 feet (10-15 meters) in diameter. Big enough for a
14:49
lunar lander with some margin for error. Building this pad could be almost fully
14:53
autonomous. A robotic lander could touch down - and that first landing? Risky,
14:58
no question about it. History has already shown just how dangerous it can be. During Apollo 11,
15:03
Neil Armstrong had about 45 to 50 seconds of fuel remaining as he manually guided Eagle
15:09
to the surface, skimming over a hazardous boulder field the computer had targeted.
15:13
Once it lands safely, the robotic lander would deploy a mobile 3D printing system.
15:17
It would move across the landing zone, laying down regolith layer by layer,
15:21
fusing it solid with lasers, and constructing the pad in sections over just a few days.
15:26
Once that first pad is complete, the robot could move to a new location and build the second.
15:30
The second landing would already be safer because nearby infrastructure is
15:34
protected. The third will be even safer; the fourth, safer still.
15:40
MMPACT–that’s Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology–aims for a proof of
15:44
concept mission by the end of this decade. Its ambitions lay far beyond the landing pad.
15:50
Habitat walls, curved for structural strength and maximum radiation protection.
15:54
Roads connecting different base facilities, giving rovers smooth
15:57
surfaces to travel on instead of churning up dusty, corrosive regolith trails. Blast
16:02
walls positioned around critical equipment to shield from debris during landings and
16:06
launches. Berms and embankments to direct regolith spray away from critical areas.
16:11
Eventually? Vertical structures. Hangars for spacecraft maintenance. Garages for
16:15
rovers. Safe havens for astronauts during solar storms when radiation spikes to deadly levels.
16:21
The MMPACT team is already thinking ahead.
16:24
They’re dreaming bigger.
16:25
"I want there to be sufficient structures there to make things safe for crew so if
16:29
we want to build a hotel on the Moon, we could," remarked Jennifer Edmunson, the
16:33
geologist managing this project. "We could have tourists going there, mining districts pulling
16:38
rare Earth elements from the Moon. We could do that and get a lot of resources that way."
16:42
It would be a lunar economy, in essence. Mining operations. Research stations. Radio
16:47
telescopes on the far side where there’s zero interference from Earth’s radio noise.
16:52
All of it enabled by the ability to build using what’s already there.
16:55
There’s enough regolith scattered across the Moon to build xcities. Multiple cities. But to do that,
17:00
you’d need the power. This takes us back to the wisdom of landing at the lunar south pole,
17:05
near the Shackleton Crater rim. There,
17:08
NASA will harness the eternal sun’s energy to power its regolith-hardening lasers.
17:12
If NASA can position itself along the right ridge near those Peaks
17:16
of Eternal Light and catch that endless low-angle sunlight, it might have a shot.
17:20
Solar panel efficiency is the same on Earth as it is on the Moon,
17:24
between 15-22% conversion of sunlight to electricity. But on the Moon, you don’t
17:29
have clouds, seasonal variation, or atmosphere to scatter light.
17:33
NASA’s design uses vertical solar arrays like walls facing the sun as it circles
17:38
the horizon. You can even have multiple arrays on different peaks for redundancy. If one dips
17:43
into the shadows, others compensate. For a small lunar base supporting 4-6 people,
17:48
you’d need about 40 kilowatts of continuous power, covering life support, heating, cooling,
17:53
scientific equipment, and everything else required to keep humans alive.
17:56
It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s basically enough to power 30 average American homes.
18:01
NASA thinks its vertical solar farms armed with native “follow-the-sun” rotational
18:06
capabilities might just do the trick. But in those rare moments when the sun goes
18:11
down at the south pole or equipment breaks, you’d need a reliable backup.
18:15
You’d need nuclear power. And NASA’s got a solution.
18:19
They call it the Fission Surface Power Project, a 40kw reactor ready for deployment in the early
18:24
2030s. The entire system masses under 6 metric tons and runs for a minimum of
18:29
10 years without refueling. That’s enough to power 30 American homes for a decade.
18:34
It works in total darkness, through dust storms and equipment failures.
18:38
And the best part? It’s Mars-ready. Since Martian dust-storms can last
18:42
months, the nuclear reactor has to operate independently and reliably.
18:46
The complete system - 30-40 kW of solar,
18:49
and backup fission reactors of 40 kW each, would be enough for a 10-20 person base.
18:54
To make that a reality, NASA would have to solve one more problem.
18:58
Water and life support.
18:59
A single person needs roughly 3-4 liters of drinking water per day,
19:03
plus things like water for hygiene, food prep, equipment cooling,
19:06
and oxygen generation. Do the math on a 4-person crew staying for 6 months - it’s
19:11
thousands of liters, translating to millions of dollars in launch costs.
19:15
Again, it’s logistically and economically unsustainable.
19:18
A running theme of humanity’s lunar dreams, it would seem.
19:21
The solution utilizes the same approach as the problem of laser-concrete. Autonomous rovers.
19:26
Why send a human into those permanently shadow regions within 1 to 2 miles (1.6 - 3.2 km) of
19:31
the base when you can send a robot to do the work for you?
19:34
The rovers carry drills or scopes, depending on the terrain. They dig down, targeting the
19:39
zones where orbital sensors suggest water ice concentrations between 5 and 30% by weight.
19:44
Again, this isn’t some frozen lake caught in a pitch-black crater. It’s more like
19:49
cosmic permafrost - tiny fragments of ice, maybe a few inches across,
19:53
scattered through the dust. And some of that water isn’t even ice at all.
19:57
It’s chemically bonded to minerals at the molecular level. Meaning…
20:01
You don’t mine the ice. You mine dirt. Very, very cold dirt.
20:05
The rover has to scoop up the regolith at roughly -238ºC (-396 Fahrenheit). The soil gets hauled
20:12
to a mobile processing unit, where it’s heated to 100-200º C (212 - 392 Fahrenheit) and from there,
20:17
the ice doesn’t melt. It sublimates. Straight from solid to vapor.
20:21
That vapor is captured, funneled into cold traps, and condensed back into usable water.
20:26
Congratulations. You’ve just made drinking water out of Moon dust. Insulated tanks
20:31
then shuttle that water back to base, covering a few miles before the cargo freezes solid again.
20:36
On the Moon, even your supply chain is fighting physics.
20:39
The yield for one ton of processed regolith is anywhere from 110 to
20:43
168 pounds (50 to 76 kilograms) of water, or about a hundred bottles of water,
20:46
depending on the ice concentration. That sounds manageable - until you remember that even with
20:52
aggressive recycling, a large lunar habitat could require hundreds of liters of water
20:56
every single day for life support, food prep, hygiene, oxygen production, and thermal control.
21:02
So, to stay alive, you’re mining anywhere between one and ten tons of lunar soil, every day. That’s
21:07
a full-blown industrial operation, all in one of the most hostile environments in the solar system.
21:12
But once that water starts flowing into the base,
21:15
the real magic begins and survival stops being fragile.
21:18
NASA’s decades aboard the ISS have turned recycling into an
21:22
art form. Modern systems recover 98% of all wastewater - urine,
21:26
sweat, even humidity from every breath - purifying it into water cleaner than
21:30
most supplies on Earth. As astronauts like to joke: Today’s coffee becomes tomorrow’s coffee.
21:36
Inside the habitat, conditions must remain relentlessly Earth-like:
21:39
stable pressure, balanced gases, microscope leak tolerances. Outside is a vacuum. There’s
21:45
radiation and lethal extremes. Shielding made from compacted regolith keeps space
21:50
itself at bay. But everything outside is a system at its most unforgiving.
21:54
Which raises the ultimate question:
21:56
Can humans truly thrive here? And if so, who would actually go?
22:00
Early Artemis crews may stay only a week. Brief missions where crewed landers touch,
22:05
test, and return. But by the mid-2030s, NASA is already projecting missions of 6
22:10
to 12 months - the same length as an ISS tour - only this time with no emergency ride home.
22:16
So who volunteers? Not the thrill-seekers, or tourists.
22:20
Scientists chasing discoveries that rewrite textbooks will volunteer, as will engineers who
22:25
want their work stamped across history. Geologists studying planetary origins, physicians exploring
22:31
low-gravity medicine, and people wired with that deeply human defect of an insatiable curiosity.
22:37
NASA astronauts earn respectable salaries,
22:39
comfortable, not extravagant. Even private lunar contractors won’t
22:43
be handing out billionaire lifestyles. But nobody goes for wealth. They go for meaning.
22:48
A day in the lunar life won’t be anything to write home about. Personal space will
22:53
be modest. Probably about the size of a large walk-in closet.
22:56
Schedules would be unrelentingly unforgiving: Wake, eat, work, maintain, exercise, sleep
23:02
The 2-hour daily workout is non-negotiable. In one-sixth gravity,
23:06
bones quietly lose density. Muscles follow suit. Astronauts often undergo
23:10
intense rehabilitation after returning to Earth to rebuild muscle strength.
23:15
Food is vastly better than the Apollo era, though “better” remains relative.
23:19
Hundreds of meal options will be available, though none of them fresh.
23:23
Hydroponic lettuce becomes less a vegetable and more a morale strategy.
23:27
And the water?
23:28
It’s recycled…thoroughly…repeatedly…probably from your own urine. Astronauts learn to appreciate
23:33
phrases like “molecularly purified.” Living on the moon would be a psychological gauntlet. Isolation
23:39
would be the real adversary, with a social circle of just 2 to 6 humans. But ask anyone involved,
23:45
and the complaints about food, the regolith, and the solar flares will seem inconsequential.
23:50
The next decade may quietly reshape humanity’s future. Artemis will
23:54
not mark a return to the Moon, but an arrival. The foundation for permanence,
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the gateway to Mars, and the first true step beyond Earth.
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And yet, for something this tangible, this historic,
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this close, we’re barely talking about it.
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Apollo gave us footprints;
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Artemis may give us an extra-terrestrial civilization. And that’s worth exploring.
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If you thought building a city on the Moon was wild,
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watch ‘50 Surprising Facts About Space You Didn't Know’. Or click on this video instead.
