In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing this week came a news report that it would be possible to use 3D printing technology to establish a colony on the moon.
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The notion of creating human habitation on the lunar surface is not new. It's been around since before the Apollo moon missions. The idea gained traction in the 1990s with the establishment of the Artemis Project: a private spaceflight venture, constituted as a non-profit organisation, which aimed to establish a permanent settlement on the moon by 2002.
When President Kennedy announced that the USA would put a man on the moon it was pure Cold War one-upmanship. The Apollo missions to the moon ceased in 1972. They were expensive but achieved the aim of giving the USA the unassailable lead in the so-called 'space race'. The missions also contributed vastly to the body of scientific knowledge about space in general and the moon in particular. One of the conclusions drawn from the scientific data was that the moon is not habitable. Lack of oxygen and water are seen by most scientists as being slight drawbacks to human habitation.
These apparent minor deficiencies, however, don't seem to deter the would-be space colonists, with a NASA spokesperson excitedly announcing this week that "3D printing offers a potential means of facilitating lunar settlement with reduced logistics from Earth".
But why go to the moon when we are already creating similar conditions here on Earth? We can create our very own lunar settlement much cheaper and faster simply through our current business-as-usual approach to resource management.
The current average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 413.92ppm and rising. Once that figure hits around 2000 the air will start to become toxic to humans. Yes, we'll need breathing apparatus just to go outside. That figure is more alarming for plant growth, which is affected when CO2ppm hits around 600-1000ppm. Food? We won't be able to grow it without artificially controlled conditions.
We've already seen the effects of gross water mismanagement in our own Murray-Darling system, but privatising water resources on a global scale will soon have the world's land masses looking like the Sea of Tranquility.
Who needs to move to the moon when we can have the moon's landscape right here? Only with gravity. How good is gravity?
