Both the U.S. and (the People’s Republic of) China are trying to establish the first lunar outposts, and it is possible that we will see lunar colonies within our lifetimes. When that happens, do you think there will be a movement towards independence, just as the colonies of Britain, France, Spain, etc. vyed for freedom? Would this be peaceful or violent, and how would either work? How realistic is an independent lunar nation, given the hostile living conditions? What would lunar culture look like? Would it be a mix of American and Chinese culture, or something new entirely?
Or do you think the Moon and other bodies in our Solar System will become internationally run (and protected) areas, a bit like how Antarctica is on Earth?
I like the setup for the Expanse, because it paints a very plausibly realistic future of how the movement to a solar species could turn out. Earth has the air humans need everywhere, and will always remain the birthplace of humanity and where to buy essentials for human life from. Mars has the potential to be turned back into a livable planet with enough scientific encouragement. The belt and outer planets is a source for ice(=water/air) and other useful materials both for sale to the inner planets, but essential for the outer regions, and the people here would naturally become a working class people. All in all it is a sad, but also fascinatingly plausible turn of events once beyond the moon is populated.
Long-term habitation of the moon is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible. The ground itself is hostile to human technology and life:
As the Moon’s fine surface layer, lunar regolith is picked up by even weak natural phenomena active at the Moon’s surface, allowing it to be part of the Moon’s scant atmosphere. It is easily disturbed and poses a significant hazard to exposed equipment and human health. The fine lunar regolith is made of sharp and very adhesive particles, with a distinct gunpowder taste and smell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_regolith
Basically there are no erosion processes on the moon. On Earth, rock gets worn down over time by wind and water, which tumbles all the small particles and rounds off the sharp esges. On the moon, rocks get pulverized by meteorite impacts, and then the dust settles back down and sits there because there’s not enough atmosphere for wind. Instead of soft rounded sand, you have very fine fragmented rock with sharp edges.
Even worse, it’s electrically charged so it tends to stick to surfaces and the astronauts found that it was very difficult to remove.
So, imagine all of the difficulties of maintaining mechanical equipment in the desert, with worse dust that will degrade equipment even faster than it does on Earth, plus you have to maintain all your exterior equipment while wearing a space suit which is at the same time collecting and being degraded by the lunar dust. The fine grit will get inside of every mechanical joint, every seal gap, and wear them down very quickly. It’s like chalk dust made of knives, with static cling.
It will be functionally impossible to keep it out of any long-term habitat completely. Breathing the fine particulates will probably result in silicosis-like symptoms, and:
Anecdotal reports of human exposures to lunar dust during the Apollo program suggest that lunar dust has toxic properties. After each EVA, the crew modules were heavily contaminated with dust; many astronauts reported coughs, throat irritation, watery eyes, and blurred vision that likely reduced their performance. A flight surgeon exposed to the capsule interiors after recovery developed what appeared to be allergic reactions to lunar dust that worsened after each exposure.
Machines and people will both break down in this environment. Keeping a presence there would require a constant stream of replacement parts, maintenance supplies, and personnel rotation.
Techniques for addressing the problems this will cause are all theoretical proposals. Personally, I think we’ll need another two or three generations of materials science before we can actually handle this problem.
It would depend on how much they needed external support from other countries.
Extremely unlikely. The moon lacks sufficient resources so any outposts established in our lifetimes will likely remain reliant on the Earth. Building the industrial capacity capable of sustaining a technological civilization on the moon is hard enough already on our planet. I would expect outposts on the moon to be culturally similar to those in Antarctica.
Fully agree. That said, the Antarctic research stations do have their own subculture and their own accent, so that much will likely occur on a lunar base, too.
Really? That’s really cool!
It really is :D ! Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_English
Not until they become self-sustaining with their own food supply.
Also manufacturing, mining for resources, and a bunch of other minimum things necessary to be self sufficient.
Oh, and they need a reason for being independent.
At first they will certainly be entirely reliant on their origin countries imports for basic survival and that’s a very easy lever to maintain control.
The moon is too close and I don’t think it will ever be self sustaining. Any attempt to rebel and they get starved out. The more likely thing is they defect to some other country that starts supplying them. (This is still highly unlikely). I don’t think people will live on the moon long enough to try that - they may spend a year there and someone will have a baby there, but they will all go home to earth.
Mars could potentially support a self sustaining outpost large enough to rebel. Mars is also far enough away that it wouldn’t be worth attacking. They will likely be let go as soon as they are self sustaining because earth will be bored by then and glad to not support them. Unlike the moon, going back home is a long trip so people will try to avoid it.
Very doubtful, at least for a long time. Barring some insane discoveries, sustaining any community worthy of calling “independent” on the Moon would take decades of constant trade.
The Moon also offers very little raw material opportunity too, it’s hard to even consider whatever might happen up there to be “colonizing”
Virginia was a colony for over 150 years before declaring independence. A century and a half may be long enough to build out an agricultural base.
The Moon also has some benefits to colonization, including an easier place to launch spaceships beyond Earth.
This is true and I was mostly just being pedantic. What I was trying to say is that 99% of modern colonization as been mercantilism. Even the few exceptions to this aren’t relevant because self-reliance on the Moon is almost nonexistent. There’s very little “dogmatic” justification for it, too. There’s no fresh continent of non-believers to convert and the Church is certainly in no position to sponsor missions regardless.
The moon offers very little cost-effective extractive industry, at least not without some wild discoveries or decades (centuries?) of infrastructure buildout. There is an almost-garaunteed $0 immediate ROI.
Whatever happens there would probably be closer to Antarcitc research outposts than the New World colonial craze. Nonnational scientific stations whose funding ebbs and flows with the geopolitical dickwagging of a handful of terrestial superpowers.
Most of the colonization of the Americas was mercantilist in origin. The initial discovery was started as a way to find a trade route to China and many colonization efforts were more about resource extraction than anything else; it took a century before colonies started popping up focused on religious freedom.
As for the comparison to Antarctica, there was an intentional pause put on colonization as it became apparent that colonization was finally within humanity’s technological grasp and there were possible mineral rights that would make colonization worth it.
Colonization will likely be slow, but I expect that economic uses for the Moon will be found.
Heinlein explored how a lunar colony could develop in “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”. He thinks it will move towards some kind of anarcho-capitalist society that will fight for independence from earth. His ideas on how a predominantly male society will result in polygamy are somewhat weird but fascinating.
On one hand, it’s a really good. On the other, the future it predicted failed.
Let’s start with the author’s ideas about prison. When the book was written, cartels and prison gangs were nowhere near as prevalent as they are today. The idea that there’d be no gangs running the Lunar prisons might have made sense in 1966, but not today.
I also get a chuckle out of the idea that it’s easier for a computer to achieve self-awareness than it is for that same computer to create a realistic video image.
I use the term ‘antique science fiction’ for older books that are fun to read but can’t be taken seriously.
I’m most amused to discover they had two computers total on the moon. Almost as amusing as 1930s sicfi where computers were humans
“The Man Who Sold The Moon” is wrong about pretty much everything, but it’s still a great read.
HG Wells and Jules Verne are never going to go away, because their books are still fun.
The martians in Heinlein’s “Red Planet” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” are really interesting, even tho we now know the planet is nothing like that.
See also The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin
Granted it’s Mars not the Moon but the breakaway – and how it affects Earth politics – is a central plotnpoint
The Dispossessed is set on Anarres and Urras, the twin inhabited worlds of Tau Ceti.
Dammit, that’s what I get for going on 25-year old memory of last reading the book. In my defense, one of the main character narrators captains a space ship that goes between Earth and Mars and this provides insight into the two cultures.
Oh and BTW he’s got a wife on both worlds. Spicy
Are you sure you’re not thinking of “Triton”?
Nope, never read anything by Samuel R. Delany
I did read a lot of L Ron Hubbard, for a moment I thought you were referencing his short story collection
I do not see how they could be independant from earth. No athmosphere, extreme temperatures, constantly bathed in radiation. Maybe an antartic style base but nothing more than that.
The cost of supplying food is going to push colony owners to make the colonies self sufficient with food.
We have Arctic and Polynesian parts of the world imported food prices are already insanely expensive. When you Antarctica like research bases, the food cost gets borne by government entities because the cost is even higher due to shipping. Now, add a zero or two to the shipping cost to get food to the Moon.
So, once a Moon base gets to the size of a McMurdo station, someone is likely going to figure it will be cheaper to build the ability to grow food on the Moon rather than ship everything from Earth.
It doesn’t even have to be a complete meal at first. The Moon could start with basic starches like potatoes and rice to supplement dehydrated meat and vegetables. Over time, more crops get added and some protein like shrimp and chicken are able to be grown on the Moon. You might not get a steak, but it could be enough to make some colonies mostly self sufficient.
We’ll see, I might be very uneducated but I find it very unlikely that we ever get anything of suffient scale built up on the moon. Let alone the fact that humans can’t be in space for very long considering the detrimental effects it has on our bodies.
If you’re asking this question you may very much enjoy Isaac Arthur
Moon colony playlist:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0Lv5kr9vrX8DJjlF1A3QWJ3D&ra=mMy vote is for Le Guin-style moon anarchy à la The Dispossessed
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote an excellent trilogy about the colonization of Mars that goes through the evolution of colony of earthlings that eventually grow to view themselves as martians and seek independence. Highly recommend!
Sorta happens in the newest season of For All Mankind too, but they have leverage.
Only if the colonists manage to produce food and other necessary resources on the Moon. If they don’t, the colonial power can cut off their supplies and crush any such ideas.
Imagine living under Emperor Musk of the Moon & Mars…
