I Never Promised You the Moon

Investigating prospects for lunar exploration and colonization in the immediate future.

Image Courtesy of NASA

Back in 1958, at the dawn of the space race, the USAF made a proposal for a secret project to beat the Soviets even before they had even launched a single astronaut into suborbital flight. The aim of Project A119 was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon. Top secret for more than 30 years, it only became known when Carl Sagan leaked the 1959 paper 'Radiological Contamination of the Moon by Nuclear Weapons Detonations'. ¹

Nowadays this all seems obscene and futile - why nuke the Moon? And it even struck people within the loop as disgustingly vile, though not of course the military men, who were all for it. Ten years after Sagan's leak, another leak out of Russia confirmed that the Soviet Union had their own plan to nuke our nearest neighbouring celestial object. If things had gone just a little differently, then, the history of the space race would have been of the major powers using the Moon as a nuclear battleground just for show, a cosmic pissing contest of tragi-comic proportions. ²

Later, in 1969, when Apollo 12 landed next to the Surveyor 3 probe, commander Pete Conrad sawed a piece off and took it back to Earth. Though the piece had been on the Moon for two years, viable streptococcus bacteria were found on it, presumably dating from before launch. We had contaminated the Moon with our microbes. Strict biological controls were put in place by NASA for future missions.

All of this is to emphasise that the Moon is presently an all-but-pristine environment. It doesn't have a biosphere (yet), but it is already part of our ecosystem. An ecosystem is defined as “a system that environments and their organisms form through their interaction,” and the Moon already interacts with us through its gravitational influence. The ecosphere of the Earth is traditionally described as being the planetary surface and the ocean depths, and extends up to the heights that life can exist. But once human life, or even our industrial products, start moving to and from the Moon, then it can be clearly seen that a significant interaction is taking place beyond just the tidal pull.

Too often the rhetoric of Moon (and Interplanetary) colonization just skates over this awkward fact of interdependency without a thought. It is a holdover from the days of colonization of the European conquistadores and settlers from the 16th to 19th centuries, a time when explorers imagined that 'virgin lands' were there, unoccupied, just for the taking. Though it's true that the Moon is indeed unoccupied (unless the rumours of a secret Nazi base on the darkside are correct), it still behooves us to pause a little and take stock before we trample over the last untouched territory within our Earth-Moon system. ³ ⁴ ⁵

Quick Fixes for Slow Problems

Another danger with regard to exploiting the Moon, though this is shared with space exploration more generally and in fact with all high-tech enterprises, is the temptation of illusory 'quick fix' solutions to our urgent Earth-bound problems. Energy crunch? Just set up solar power stations that beam energy down via microwave, no matter that nobody can see how that might work in practice. Global warming? Just seed the polar zones with something reflective to boost albedo (tonal lightness), making the lighter-colored surface reflect more heat.

Well-meaning, and also fraudulent, technical solutions like this have seen the media and investors obsess about carbon-fixing gizmos while cutting down the forests, which have naturally regulated carbon since the dawn of time without need for lithium batteries or miniaturization/pressurization technologies that don't yet exist. ⁶

I swear, if I hear another "tech start-up" telling us they have a way of making diamonds from the atmosphere, I'm gonna burn my copy of the Alchemist's Manual, carbon emissions be damned. Yet that's one of the curses of ecological discourse: the problem is known, the fixes too, but nobody wants to take those steps, so the magical thinking of 'tech progress' intervenes.

If there's one thing that is more attractive to news media than catastrophe, it's gleamy Blender animations where glossy white pieces of apparatus work unknown wonders. CNBC is almost wall-to-wall vaporware by now.

I digress, but not by very much, for the slick Blender animation is also a speciality of both NASA and SpaceX, and both august organizations have gone to the Moon many times now, if only in animated form. At present NASA is announcing with a straight face that the Artemis III mission will deliver humans to the lunar surface in 2026, despite the lack of a lunar lander. This latter space vehicle is a modified version of the SpaceX starship, which is yet to make a successful flight, and many years from being approved for human flight, or crew-rated.

The New Space Race and the Moon Scramble

So the moon race is on, 2020s style, with confused goals, multiple players and wavering interest among an apathetic public. Unlike the clear two-way sprint of the 1960s, which was designed only to touch base, this madcap dash is more similar to the 19th-century "Scramble for Africa" where multiple powers are contending to claim territory so they can exploit its resources. Only the lack of a native population at the other end is different.

At present the US, both public and private agencies, China, India, and possibly Russia, are headed for the Moon. Japan and the Gulf Arab states are not far behind. The US is ahead in CGI simulations and projected completion dates for projects that haven't yet started, while China and India are ahead in actual hardware touched down on the lunar regolith. The following short video from PBS is an excellent primer both as to the importance of the Moon (which is mostly forgotten) and the present state of play in the scramble itself:

What's there to exploit? A few things, in fact: water to facilitate life in space itself, which can be invaluable in further human exploration. Then there’s lunar soil for construction materials, allowing (with water) concrete constructions of space stations and even huge O'Neill colonies and Stanford Tori, space cities in Earth-Moon orbit, as well as the aforementioned space power stations. And finally, and arguably most importantly: He-3, a rare isotope of helium which if fusion power becomes a reality promises almost unlimited energy at little cost.

Though rare and impossibly expensive to synthesize, He-3 is relatively common on the lunar surface. It's what Sam Rockwell was harvesting in Duncan Jones's excellent sci-fi black comedy “Moon” (2009). It's of such potential value that it may well one day be commercially justified to send not one operative but an unlimited series of clones to exploit this almost-magical resource.

Four Outcomes for Moon Exploration

Given that the scramble is on, and nothing is likely to stop it short of global catastrophe (which, well... never mind), it's clearly an appropriate moment to look ahead and try to envision likely scenarios for the New Lunar Age of Exploitation/Exploration.

Image Courtesy of NASA

Preserve the Moon as a virgin reserve, with only scientific missions permitted and no colonies or mining operations.

The Moon stays just about as she is today. Only an international agreement is required for this to take effect. You might assume that this is the de facto state of the Moon today, and it more-or-less is, but it really needs a formal global declaration for this outcome to become ironclad.

The existing Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly includes the Moon, states that "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." But if history teaches us anything, it's that such provisions fall by the wayside when valuable resources are up for grabs. And while it forbids claims of sovereignty, it doesn't explicitly outlaw "use", meaning the exploitation of resources. For this Virgin Reservation concept to have any effect it needs to become restated more explicitly regarding the Moon and ratified by all countries, not only the major powers. ⁷

Parcel out territories according to internationally-agreed criteria through a central planning authority.

The UN, or an adjacent international body agreed upon by the international community, allocates parcels of lunar territory that individual states would be allowed to settle and exploit.

Those states would then presumably be free to license private enterprises to exploit those resources, or not, as they see fit. Though in principle this seems easy to implement, and is of course the preferred option for statists everywhere, it has formidable obstacles in practice, nearly all of them political. These include but are not limited to: diminished authority and prestige of international bodies like the UN, the fact that some lunar territories (such as the South Polar Shackleton Crater zone) are infinitely more valuable than others, and the need for ongoing political will of nation-states to enforce the authority's dictates. Any cursory look at an international body like the UN, NATO, or the EU, will immediately reveal how difficult this last issue may become. On the other hand, the example of the Antarctic as a territory administered in this way shows that the obstacles are far from insuperable. All that’s required is leadership and goodwill between nations. ⁸

Market-based systems drive equitable outcomes for the international community’s exploration of the Moon and its economic benefits.

This brings us to author and space activist Michael Turner's proposal, A Rawlsian approach to Lunar Equity (forthcoming, unpublished). ⁹

Wisely, it doesn't promise us the Moon; what it offers is a way of using lunar exploration as a wedge issue to introduce equity on Earth, a framework for introducing "market mechanisms for ensuring fairness in the equity of lunar enterprises".

Basically, it posits a "Rawlsian" bidding system where the participants - in theory again nation-states but also including the possibility of private enterprises - bid for territory on the Moon. Proceeds are used to fund offsets in environmental damage (including the diminished lunar gravity on Earth that results from massive extraction) and also generate sovereign wealth funds for fair distribution. It's a complex system which is difficult to summarize in few words, but does at least offer some way of bringing order to the chaos which would otherwise result.

Because of course, if none of these aforementioned solutions are acceptable or brought into effect in time, then by default the outcome will be...

Wild West Free-for-All

This is the option that seems easiest to understand. We’ve seen it often enough in the previous history of colonization, most famously in the Wild West of the US in the 19th century. Pitch your tent, stake your claim, mine or farm your stake. This time there are no Native peoples to displace, no herds of buffalo to extinguish. What could go wrong?

But in fact, it's far more complex than it appears, and there is plenty that can go wrong. First is the sheer danger of space exploration. Absent angry native resistance, hostile wildlife or virulent disease, the life of a settler might not seem so bad. Arduous, maybe, but not much more dangerous than staying at home. But flying space missions is hazardous in the extreme, even for uncrewed missions where absurdly valuable hardware is in play. Any added disorder in this system simply magnifies the risk by unknown increments.

Then there is the unknown consequence factor. Already there’s been mention of the fact that extreme exploitation of lunar material will have an effect in the diminishing of lunar gravity, including tides, on the Earth. What if one zone, the South Polar Region, for example, were mined to the exclusion of all other areas? Would the resulting lunar wobble be trivial or serious? The time to wonder about that is now, not after the oscillations begin. Finally, there is the sheer ugliness and lack of fairness that a scramble like this represents. Wealth distribution on Earth is already absurdly unfair and unproductive. What would we gain if the exploitation of the Moon simply made the oligarchs we already have that much incrementally richer?

Maybe my early sci-fi consumption has influenced my thinking on this issue. When I was a kid, the Gerry Anderson TV series “Space 1999” was a great draw for the youthful viewing public of the UK. In the pilot episode, Moonbase Alpha’s nuclear waste dump explodes after an industrial accident, sending the Moon spinning off its orbit and into deep space adventures. Nonsense of course, but the idea of some kind of environmental catastrophe following extreme exploitation of the Moon is not so far-fetched. Perhaps we should consider more seriously our responsibility to our closest celestial body and most ancient goddess before we sully her beyond remedy.

Conclusion

It seems clear that one's preference for how lunar exploration will develop - and make no mistake, it will develop whether we think about it or not - is based on one's existing political beliefs and concerns about the environment. My own preference would be for the first option, in the words of a famous orange statesman, "a complete shutdown until we can figure out just what the hell is going on here." The Moon will always be there, and options for exploring and even exploiting her may well develop that are not so flagrantly damaging. But at the same time, I accept that there is a lot of impatience to get the whole space-exploration behemoth underway, and the Moon is logically the place to go, many many decades before Mars is anything other than a lethal fantasy.

Perhaps then Turner's Rawlsian scheme? If this plan, or something like it, can actually work out on the far-off Lunar surface, then it promises a way to reintroduce Rawlsian fairness or equity everywhere. Time and again the study returns to this point: "What we are concerned with here is fair global social welfare from lunar exploitation." And it's absolutely true that if off-Earth exploration, whether to the Moon or Mars or anywhere else, is going to mean something, it shouldn't just be a repeat of Wild-West style rape of resources, where private enterprise is allowed to plunder at will, merely making the absurdly rich that much pointlessly richer. Either we all benefit - but really, not from nonsensical trickle-down fairytales, but from real equitable outcomes - or we mustn't go at all.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119

2. http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/E3/E3orig.htm

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem

4. Chapin, F. Stuart III (2011). "Glossary". Principles of terrestrial ecosystem ecology. P. A. Matson, Peter Morrison Vitousek, Melissa C. Chapin (2nd ed.). New York: Springer

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_(planetary)

6. https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/surface-albedo-modification.pdf

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Politics

9. Turner at Project Persephone. Understand: http://www.projectpersephone.org/, Join: http://www.facebook.com/groups/ProjectPersephone/, Donate: http://www.patreon.com/ProjectPersephone, Volunteer: https://github.com/ProjectPersephone