What?

What is the Luna Project?

The Luna Project is a cooperative effort, directed toward the foundation of a permanent human settlement on Terra's planetary companion, with the objective that the first party of settlers should depart no later than 31 July 2012.

No, seriously, what is this all about?

Just what it says — going to the Moon, soon and to stay, with your help. No joke, no catch, no ifs, ands, or buts.

What about the pressing problems we need to solve on Earth?

War, poverty, and all the rest have been around for a long time now, and people have sunk immense resources in trying to do something about them. Diverting the relatively modest effort required for lunar settlement to such purposes could hardly make much difference, and time may show that new horizons and new wealth from new worlds will do more to solve those problems than "putting Earth first" ever could.

Why?

Why go to the Moon?

The Moon is our best first step towards space development. It provides us a readily-accessible source of supply and base of operations to support all kinds of space activity, & it is accessible with existing capabilities.

So why develop space?

There are many reasons for space development, and the most urgent are economic and cultural. The growing industries of Earth require energy and raw materials which can no longer be easily supplied from Earth's own resources. At the same time, civilization needs new horizons and a sense of possibility, in order to escape turning inward on itself and becoming moribund.

Why begin with settlement?

Fundamentally, if we intend to settle eventually, there is no strong reason for not doing it immediately. The logistical problem of supplying a party of settlers as they set up their facilities is simpler than that of performing the same work using rotating crews. Furthermore, a settlement is committed to permanence from the outset, and is more difficult to abandon halfway.

Why are you doing this yourselves?

Because nobody is doing it for us. In the thirty-five years since Apollo 17, we have waited for others to build our roads to the stars, and told anyone who would listen that space development was inevitable. And maybe we believed that — why else would we have acted as though we need do nothing to ensure it?

How?

How will you get there?

Rockets. Since we are committed to settlement and to a long-term effort, we do not need the ability to get to the Moon and back to Earth in a single launch. Thus, we can get by without the great Saturn V rockets used for Apollo. Also, because we can use lunar resources, our payload requirement is much smaller than for any other large-scale space project, and we do not need to wait for the development of radically cheaper launch systems such as space-planes. Current rocket engines, and even some current launch vehicles, already have the capabilities we need.

How can you survive on the Moon, where there's no air?

We will build pressurized, sealed shelters to live in, and on the surface we will wear space-suits. Our breathing-air can mostly be supplied locally : the rocks of the Moon, like those of Earth, are composed mostly of the oxides of silicon and iron, aluminum, and other metals, making them about half oxygen by mass. Extracting oxygen from rocks is a major industry on Earth (under the name of metal smelting), and we know that we can apply the plentiful solar heat and electricity to produce oxygen on the Moon.

And what about water? I heard there might be ice…

There is some evidence of ice in one or two locations, but no proof as yet. Recent studies of the Apollo rock samples suggest that, despite the extreme dryness of the surface, there may be native water in the lunar interior. Whether there is water as such to be found or not, we can produce oxygen in any quantity desired, and that is eight-ninths of the mass of water. Even if the hydrogen had to be imported, the logistical problem is much smaller, and in fact there is some hydrogen in the lunar soil (along with carbon and nitrogen, which are also needed for life). In any case, the human metabolism actually produces (from the hydrogen in food) more water than it consumes, and with recycling environmental systems the main difficulty tends to be dealing with accumulations of water, not shortages.

Isn't there deadly radiation?

Not all the time, any more than there are deadly thunderstorms all the time in the American Midwest. Except during a solar flare, the background of cosmic rays is not strong enough to be dangerous over a period of less than several months' uninterrupted exposure. A few meters of rock and soil will absorb the radiation of even the worst flare, and by burying our habitats, limiting time spent on the surface, & consuming plenty of antioxidants, we will be in no more danger from radiation than we would be in Denver or Mexico City.

What about the intense heat & cold?

The same layer of rock and soil which shields our habitat from radiation will furnish an insulating blanket — the lunar soil, or regolith, is very like Styrofoam in texture — and protect against meteorites for good measure. Meanwhile, we will be at an advantage regarding the many industrial processes which require extreme temperatures, especially since we will not have to deal with air moving the heat around inconveniently.

How much experience do we have on the Moon?

From 1969 to 1972, six manned lunar landings were conducted as part of the Apollo Program. A summary table is presented below. As can be seen, the total comes to about 160 man-hours of EVA & 600 total man-hours of occupation.

	Apollo 11	Apollo 12	Apollo 14	Apollo 15	Apollo 16	Apollo 17
			†Deceased
	Information is taken largely from A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin. A more extensive chart (.PDF) is available.
Dates	16-24 July 1969	14-24 November 1969	31 January — 9 February 1971	26 July — 7 August 1971	16-27 April 1972	7-19 December 1972
Commander	Neil Armstrong†	Charles Conrad†	Alan Shepard†	David Scott	John Young	Eugene Cernan
Lunar Module Pilot	Edwin Aldrin	Alan Bean	Edgar Mitchell	James Irwin†	Charles Duke	Harrison Schmitt
Time on Lunar Surface	21h 36m	31h 31m	33h 30m	66h 54m	71h 2m	74h 59m
Total EVA Time	2h 31m	7h 45m	9h 21m	19h 6m	20h 14m	22h 2m

Experience with robotic & teleoperated systems on the lunar surface comes from various American and Soviet unmanned programs of the 1960s and 1970s. The American work, although less extensive, is well documented in publicly-available reports.

	Landing Date	Type	Operational Period	Notable Results
	Information is taken largely from National Space Science Data Center.
Luna 9	3 February 1966	Hard lander	Shut down 6 February 1966	First landing, panoramic photographs
Surveyor 1	2 June 1966	Soft lander	Shut down 13 July 1966	First soft landing, 11 240 photographs
Luna 13	24 December 1966	Hard lander	Shut down ca. 28 December 1966	Measured soil properties
Surveyor 3	20 April 1967	Soft lander	Shut down 4 May 1967	Dug in soil with scoop Components returned on Apollo 12
Surveyor 5	11 September 1967	Soft lander	Shut down 17 December 1967	Measured soil composition
Surveyor 6	10 November 1967	Soft lander	Shut down 14 December 1967	First takeoff from Luna in "hop" experiment
Surveyor 7	10 January 1968	Soft lander	Shut down 21 February 1968	Landed in Tycho crater Repeated scoop experiment
Luna 16	20 September 1970	Automated sample return	Lifted off after 26.5 hr	Returned 100 gm lunar soil
Luna 17 Lunokhod	18 November 1970	Teleoperated rover	Shut down 4 October 1971	Travelled 10.5 km
Luna 20	14 February 1972	Automated sample return	Lifted off 22 February 1972	Returned 30 gm lunar soil
Luna 21 Lunokhod	15 January 1973	Teleoperated rover	End of mission reported 4 June 1973	Travelled 37 km
Luna 24	18 August 1976	Automated sample return	Lifted off 19 August 1976	Returned 170 gm lunar soil

Who?

Who is this "we" you keep referring to?

The Luna Project is less a body than an action, and one that anyone is welcome to participate in. By design, it is one action which advances practically any objective in space, and any space enthusiast has a reason to to adopt it ; and there will be phases of the work which appeal even to those with no strong interest in space.

I would love to be involved, but where would I find the money?

While it is true that accomplishing our goals will require a great deal of money, we can make a great deal of progress on limited funds by substituting work and other equivalent economic effort. For example, if we can get aerospace engineers to adopt the design of our spacecraft as a hobby activity, we can develop them more easily and in less time than if we had to raise money and then use it to hire the same services.

But what can I do? I'm not an engineer!

And you don't have to be. Even the technical work of planning and design demands many specialties, including horticulturists, physicians, and sociologists as well as engineers. Since we actually plan to go, and not merely talk about it, there is plenty of work for everyone. There are promotional materials to be written and drawn, organizations to be set up and managed, contracts to be negotiated, funds to be raised, meetings to be arranged, rockets to be assembled, concrete to be poured, welds to be inspected, machines to be maintained, meals to be cooked, floors to be waxed. It is hard to imagine a skill set which the Project might not require at some juncture.

When?

When do you plan to leave?

The process of settlement will proceed by stages, requiring several years before Luna City can be considered properly established. The necessary steps toward "boots on the ground", including a series of unmannned cargo launches, will occupy eighteen to thirty months. We had initially proposed that the first pioneers would depart before the end of July, 2012 (and created a projected timeline on that basis), but as that date has already overtaken us, we can only say "without further delay".

Why so soon?

When President Kennedy declared the goal of a manned lunar expedition, the United States had not even put a human being into orbit of the Earth. The Apollo Project achieved the first manned lunar landing in only eight years, despite having to prove all the concepts and invent all the technology. What we propose is in some ways easier, and we can apply "off-the-shelf" solutions to many of the problems. An uncomfortably close deadline is encouragement to actually do something, rather than talk interminably.

Why now?

The demand for raw materials and energy increases constantly, even as terrestrial resources draw closer to exhaustion. Meanwhile, political and economic structures grow daily less flexible and well adapted to the dynamics of society. The need for new sources of supply, and the need for the safety valve of a new frontier, grow ever more urgent.
The present moment presents us with an opportunity we would be fools not to seize. The generation which grew up with Apollo has succeeded to wealth and power, and there is uneasiness in some quarters over the unfulfilled dreams of youth. The rise of the Internet has furnished powerful new tools for organization and collaboration. If we miss this chance, it is hard to see when we will get another.

Doesn't it make more sense to wait until the advance of technology makes things easier?

Technology doesn't develop itself. In 1972, four men walked on the Moon. After thirty-five years of not going, the flight hardware which made that possible has been replaced, not by something better, but by nothing at all. To suppose that the trend will reverse itself, and that our goal will become easier to reach as long as we avoid trying it, is to fly in the face of the evidence as well as common sense.