Amazon’s next shipping destination might be the moon

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From The Washington Post:

More than four decades after the last man walked on the lunar surface, several upstart space entrepreneurs are looking to capitalize on NASA’s renewed interest in returning to the moon, offering a variety of proposals with the ultimate goal of establishing a lasting human presence there.

. . . .

The latest to offer a proposal is Jeffrey P. Bezos, whose space company Blue Origin has been circulating a seven-page white paper to NASA leadership and President Trump’s transition team about the company’s interest in developing a lunar spacecraft with a lander that would touch down near a crater at the south pole where there is water and nearly continuous sunlight for solar energy. The memo urges the space agency to back an Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments, cargo and habitats by mid-2020, helping to enable “future human settlement” of the moon. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, owns The Washington Post.)

“It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. “A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.”

The Post obtained a copy of the white paper, marked “proprietary and confidential,” and the company then confirmed its authenticity and agreed to answer questions about it.

. . . .

Blue Origin’s proposal, dated Jan. 4, doesn’t involve flying humans, but rather is focused on a series of cargo missions. Those could deliver the equipment necessary to help establish a human colony on the moon — unlike the Apollo missions, in which the astronauts left “flags and footprints” and then came home.

Link to the rest at The Washington Post

10 thoughts on “Amazon’s next shipping destination might be the moon”

    • Bigelow’s Moonbase:

      http://spaceindustrynews.com/nasa-and-bigelow-aerospace-make-plans-for-moon-base/

      So it looks like it won’t be one man who sells the moon, but (maybe) two.

      Now, if only they can figure out how to seal up a lunar lava tube (spray-on foam?) we could quickly move from a moonbase to a moon city.

      As in:

      “One such area containing lava tubes and rilles is the Marius Hills region.[1] In 2008, an opening to such a lava tube in this area may have been discovered by the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft.[5] The skylight was photographed in more detail in 2011 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing both the 65-meter pit and the floor of the cave about 36 meters below.[4][6] The Hadley Rille may have been a partly roofed lava channel, some parts of which have since collapsed.[7] There may also be lava tubes in the Mare Serenitatis.[8][9][10][11]

      The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now imaged over 200 pits that show the signature of being skylights into subsurface voids or caverns, ranging in diameter from about 16 feet (5 meters) to more than 2,950 feet (900 m),[12] although some of these are likely to be post-flow features rather than volcanic skylights.[13]

      The Chandrayaan-1 orbiter imaged a lunar rille, formed by an ancient lunar lava flow, with an uncollapsed segment indicating the likely presence of a lava tube near the lunar equator, measuring about 2 km (1.2 mi) in length and 360 m (1,180 ft) in width.[14][15]

      Gravitometric observations by the GRAIL spacecraft suggest the presence of lunar lava tubes with widths of over a kilometer. Assuming a width-to-height ratio of 3:1, such a structure can remain stable with a ceiling that is 2m thick. Lava tubes at least 500 m underground can theoretically remain stable with widths of up to 5 km.”

      • I’m pretty sure SpaceX have said they’ve talked with Bigelow about a lunar base (and they’re talking about sending tourists around the Moon next year). So there are more than two involved.

        But it’s going to take more than just them. The big thing we need to make space colonization viable is a 3D printer capable of making most of the things we need, from local materials. That’s still some way off.

        • 3D printers can’t transmute elements. If you want local materials, you’ll have to mine them – which is a much bigger obstacle to colonization than 3D printing technology.

          • The moon has no shortage of silicon and aluminum.
            Plenty of other metals, too.

            http://www.permanent.com/lunar-geology-minerals.html

            With solar dish smelting in vacuum extreme purity aluminum can be produced easily. Grind it to dust and use laser sintering to build up your pieces and you’re good to go.

            Polymers can be produced off algae or other vegetable matter.
            The chemistry is well understood. Most processes are energy intensive but there’s no shortage of sunlight on the moon.

            The only reason a permanent moonbase is Science Fiction instead of science fact is political, not technical.

            • Yes. As some SF writer (Clarke, maybe?) put it decades ago, the lunar soil seems almost to have been designed to be ideal for making spaceships.

              What it’s lacking is hydrogen, but there’s probably quite a bit of that in ice near the poles.

              “The only reason a permanent moonbase is Science Fiction instead of science fact is political, not technical.”

              NASA’s plans, for example, have always seemed to be based on bringing everything from Earth. Maybe they’d go as far as dragging some soil on top of the habitat for radiation shielding, but building them from local materials? Nope. Too risky.

              That’s like deciding to colonize America by bringing all the food across the Atlantic and refusing to chop down trees or plant crops there.

              • There’s also all the helium-3.
                Odds are a colony could be self-funding in a generation.
                I keep thinking of THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS and the moon feeding a good chunk of the Earth.

        • That one is coming.
          They’ve been testing prototype 3D printers for space for years now. Local materials are no biggie, either, as long as they can grow plants on sight.

          https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/3-D-printing/archive.html

          The big holdup was water and now we know there’s tons (megatons) of water on the moon.
          The lesser holdup was secure living space and the lava tubes take care of that.

          Solar power is abundant and hard vacuum is cheap so metallurgy won’t be a long term issue.

          Fact is, we should’ve been on the moon to stay 20 years ago. The tech is manageable. The biggest problem is setting a policy that won’t be swept away by a luddite.

Comments are closed.