Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: I want you to do something tonight, just you know,
Speaker 2: for a minute or two.
Speaker 3: Highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, step outside, look up at the night sky
Speaker 2: and just find the moon. I mean really look at it.
Speaker 3: Take a good long look.
Speaker 2: Because for our entire lives, and honestly, for all of
Speaker 2: human history, before this exact moment, that silver disc up
Speaker 2: there has just been well, a symbol.
Speaker 3: It's been poetry, basically.
Speaker 2: Exactly, a destination for dreamers, a subject for artists, and
Speaker 2: you know, for a very brief shining moment a few
Speaker 2: decades ago, a place we actually visited, a very quick
Speaker 2: camping trip. Yeah, camping trip. We went, we took some photos,
Speaker 2: we'll have some footprints, collected some rocks, and we came.
Speaker 3: Back and that was it for fifty years.
Speaker 2: But looking up at it right now today in May
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty six, everything has fundamentally changed. The Moon
Speaker 2: is no longer just a celestial body floating out there
Speaker 2: far from it. It is an active, heavily funded, rapidly
Speaker 2: developing construction site. I mean, humanity is officially packing its
Speaker 2: bags and we are not just visiting this time. We
Speaker 2: are moving in.
Speaker 3: We really are. And it is a profound psychological shift.
Speaker 3: You know, the difference between a camping trip and building
Speaker 3: a permanent homestead alter is literally every single engineering and
Speaker 3: logistical parameter you can think of.
Speaker 2: It changes the whole game completely.
Speaker 3: When you look at the sheer scale of what is
Speaker 3: unfolding right now. The blueprints aren't just theoretical anymore. They
Speaker 3: are funded, they're contracted, The checks have cleared exactly, and
Speaker 3: the hardware is actively being built, tested, and in some
Speaker 3: case is it's literally already sitting on the launch pad.
Speaker 3: We are watching the transition from exploration to sustained occupation
Speaker 3: in real time.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we're going to map out today.
Speaker 2: We're going to walk through this newly operational, three phase
Speaker 2: lunar base plan, which is frankly just mind blowing in
Speaker 2: its scope. It really is stagger we'll examine the commercial
Speaker 2: fleet that's actually making this possible, the specific architectural differences
Speaker 2: between the landers, the buggies, and the drones that have
Speaker 2: to somehow all work together.
Speaker 3: That integration is a massive puzzle.
Speaker 2: Huge puzzle. And then we're going to break down the
Speaker 2: sheer brutal physics of building a localized power grid in
Speaker 2: a vacuum.
Speaker 3: Oh, the dust, we have to talk about the dust.
Speaker 2: We'll definitely get into the razor dust. And finally we
Speaker 2: are going to unpack the incredibly thorny international space law
Speaker 2: involved here, the geopolitical side, right, the profound geopolitical implications
Speaker 2: of establishing actual offworld territory, because you don't just build
Speaker 2: a base that massive with out drawing a line in
Speaker 2: the lunar dust.
Speaker 3: And how you draw that line changes absolutely everything down
Speaker 3: here on Earth too, Exactly those lines are going to
Speaker 3: define the next century of human progress, really, both scientifically
Speaker 3: and politically. The decisions being made right now, like this month,
Speaker 3: are setting the precedent for how humanity will operate beyond
Speaker 3: Earth orbit forever. No pressure right right, there is no
Speaker 3: historical playbook for this, none to.
Speaker 2: Put this in perspective. For you, think about the early
Speaker 2: days of aviation, you had the right brothers. You had
Speaker 2: those barn Stormers doing these incredible death defying stunts in biplanes, landing.
Speaker 3: And cow pastures exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was spectacular, but it was fleeting. That was
Speaker 2: the Apollo era, incredible feats of human bravery and engineering,
Speaker 2: but essentially they were magnificent stunts designed to prove a point,
Speaker 2: to win a race. Yeah, have to beat the Soviets.
Speaker 2: But what we are looking at now, right now, in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, is the equivalent of someone walking onto
Speaker 2: an empty field and saying, we are building an international
Speaker 2: airport right here. Pour the concrete, pave the runways, build
Speaker 2: a terminal, set up the air traffic control. It's the
Speaker 2: shift from proving we can fly to building the actual
Speaker 2: infrastructure so we can stay. And the part that is
Speaker 2: just the timeline, the part that still breaks my brain
Speaker 2: is the timeline. The velocity this entire operation is staggering,
Speaker 2: it really is.
Speaker 3: I mean, we can't even begin to analyze the actual
Speaker 3: hardware they're building on the Moon until we understand the
Speaker 3: immense time pressure under which it's being developed.
Speaker 2: It's moving so fast.
Speaker 3: So fast. The operational strategy is entirely dictated by this
Speaker 3: highly aggressive cadence.
Speaker 2: Let's ground this in where we are right this second.
Speaker 2: Last month, April twenty twenty six, the Artemis the second
Speaker 2: mission blew everyone away.
Speaker 3: Oh it was gorgeous.
Speaker 2: We had four astronauts fly around the Moon, and they
Speaker 2: traveled deeper into space than any of the Apollo crews
Speaker 2: did back in the late sixties and early.
Speaker 3: Seventies, setting new distance records.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was that incredible moment on April sixth,
Speaker 2: the lunar eclipse of the Sun, captured right from lunar orbit.
Speaker 2: It just felt so historic.
Speaker 3: A genuinely iconic image.
Speaker 2: But the wild part is the space agencies aren't even
Speaker 2: pausing to take a breast. They're already looking at Artemis
Speaker 2: the Third, which is targeted for mid twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 2: just next year, right, And for that mission, they're going
Speaker 2: to be practicing docking the Orion capsule in Earth orbit
Speaker 2: with the commercial lunar landers. All of this is setting
Speaker 2: the stage for two astronauts to actually touch down on
Speaker 2: the lunar surface as early as twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Eight, which is just around the corner. To go from
Speaker 3: a deep space fly around right to orbital docking rehearsals
Speaker 3: to a crude surface landing and essentially a two to
Speaker 3: three year window. Is it's unprecedented?
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 3: But that docking practice you mentioned for mid twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 3: that is the critical linchpin of the entire endeavor.
Speaker 2: See Okay, let's unpack this because I have to challenge
Speaker 2: this timeline a bit. To a lot of people, practicing
Speaker 2: docking in Earth orbit almost sounds like a step backward.
Speaker 2: How so, Well, we just flew hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: miles deeper into space than a hollow just a month ago.
Speaker 2: Now we're talking about hanging out in low Worth orbit
Speaker 2: next year just to practice connecting.
Speaker 3: Two ships together, right, I see what you mean.
Speaker 2: And then a crude surface landing the year after. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean trying to dock in Earth orbit right before
Speaker 2: you go to the Moon feels like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: practicing putting your seat belt on while you're already backing
Speaker 2: out of the driveway.
Speaker 3: That's a great visual.
Speaker 2: Is this timeline wildly optimistic? Or does having an entirely
Speaker 2: new operational model change the math?
Speaker 3: Oh? It changes the math completely. You have to remember
Speaker 3: how the Apollo architecture worked. It was a single monolithic,
Speaker 3: government driven.
Speaker 2: Design the giant Saturn V.
Speaker 3: The Saturn V launched everything at once, the command module,
Speaker 3: the service module, the lunar lander. They were all stacked
Speaker 3: on top of each.
Speaker 2: Other like a giant layered cake.
Speaker 3: Exactly built by the same core network of contractors under
Speaker 3: a single guiding agency. Everything was custom built for one
Speaker 3: specific linear sequence of events.
Speaker 2: So they just undocked and redocked with the right.
Speaker 3: But Artemis is entirely modular. You have an Orion capsule
Speaker 3: built by Lockheed Martin launching on a Space Launch System rocket,
Speaker 3: but it has to rendezvous and physically dock with a
Speaker 3: lunar lander built by entirely different commercial entities.
Speaker 2: Like SpaceX or Blue Origin.
Speaker 3: Yes, and those landers launched on their own separate rockets
Speaker 3: days or weeks prior.
Speaker 2: So it's not just one train leaving the station anymore.
Speaker 2: It's multiple vehicles leaving from different places, built by different
Speaker 2: companies that have to meet up mid journey precisely.
Speaker 3: And that modularity requires intense orchestration practicing that docking in
Speaker 3: Earth orbit isn't a step backward at all. It is
Speaker 3: an absolute physical.
Speaker 2: Necessity because the risk is so high.
Speaker 3: Think of it this way, Orbital docking is like trying
Speaker 3: to thread a needle while both you and the needle
Speaker 3: are riding a roller coaster traveling at seventeen thousan five
Speaker 3: hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 2: That is terrifying.
Speaker 3: And that's in Earth orbit. When you are two hundred
Speaker 3: and forty thousand miles away from Earth, in the vacuum
Speaker 3: of deep space, in a totally different gravity. Well, connecting
Speaker 3: two massive, complex vehicles requires absolute perfection.
Speaker 2: You can't just pull over a few miss No.
Speaker 3: You have latency in communications. And more importantly, if something
Speaker 3: goes wrong during docking and deep space, your abort options
Speaker 3: are severely limited.
Speaker 2: Oh, I get it, because if you're in lowerth orbit,
Speaker 2: you're only a few hours from splashing down in the
Speaker 2: ocean if you have to bail out.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Earth orbit provides a relatively safe, highly monitored parking lot.
Speaker 3: To ensure these distinct pieces of hardware with their totally
Speaker 3: distinct software ecosystems can physically.
Speaker 2: Integrate like a shakedown cruise.
Speaker 3: They are testing the avionics, the reaction control thrusters, the
Speaker 3: physical docking latches, and the life support and bilicles. They
Speaker 3: have to prove that the modular architecture works before they
Speaker 3: take it to the highway of translunar space.
Speaker 2: Which perfectly illustrates why the old way of doing logistics
Speaker 2: is completely out the window. The old way being where
Speaker 2: the astronauts basically bring everything they need in their own backpacks.
Speaker 2: This modular approach means you don't have to carry your
Speaker 2: house on your back. You can send the house ahead of.
Speaker 3: Time, which is a massive paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: We are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in
Speaker 2: contracts just awarded to major US companies to build what
Speaker 2: is effectively a commercial moving fleet. NASA is acting less
Speaker 2: like a manufacturer and more like a general contractor hiring
Speaker 2: out specialized firms.
Speaker 3: It is a profound shift in procurement and it's what
Speaker 3: enables the mass and scale required for a permanent base. Historically,
Speaker 3: human spaceflight involved the crew arriving with their equipment right,
Speaker 3: but the sheer tonnage required for sustained occupation makes that
Speaker 3: impossible to launch on a single rocket.
Speaker 2: So let's break down this fleet because the architecture is fascinating.
Speaker 2: You have Blue Origin tasked with providing a pair of
Speaker 2: cargo landers, big ones, too huge, and these landers aren't
Speaker 2: for the crew, at least not initially. Their job is
Speaker 2: precision delivery of heavy surface infrastructure. Specifically, they are delivering
Speaker 2: the moon buggies for normally called lunar terrain vehicles which
Speaker 2: are being built by Astrolab and lunar outposts, the surface rovers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then you have SpaceX utilizing their massive starship architecture developing
Speaker 2: the landers for the actual human crews.
Speaker 3: Which is a skyscraper of a ship, literally a skyscraper.
Speaker 2: And on top of all that, you have Firefly Aerospace
Speaker 2: delivering the first autonomous drones to the Moon. Firefly already
Speaker 2: proved they could do this when they successfully landed their
Speaker 2: Blue Ghost lander on the Moon last year in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Five, a huge milestone for them.
Speaker 2: And all of this hardware is being aimed at the
Speaker 2: lunar South Pole, and crucially, all these machines are scheduled
Speaker 2: to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts even get there
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 3: Sending the moving trucks first solves the most critical bottleneck
Speaker 3: of surface operations, which is astronaut time.
Speaker 2: Because they're on the clock the second day land.
Speaker 3: Exactly when a human being is in a pressurized suit
Speaker 3: on the lunar surface. Every single second is a multimillion
Speaker 3: dollar resource.
Speaker 2: You don't want them doing chores.
Speaker 3: You do not want them. I'm spending their highly dangerous,
Speaker 3: precious initial days on the surface unpacking crates, assembling solar panels,
Speaker 3: or deploying basic transport.
Speaker 2: It makes total sense by relying on.
Speaker 3: Autonomous and remotely operated commercial hardware. The crew arrives to
Speaker 3: a site that is already precked, the buggies are charged,
Speaker 3: the science payloads are deployed, the communication relays are active.
Speaker 2: I keep thinking of this like having a service deliver
Speaker 2: your furniture, assemble all the Ikea beds, and set up
Speaker 2: your Wi Fi radder before you even get the keys
Speaker 2: to the new house.
Speaker 3: It's a luxury, but a necessary one up there.
Speaker 2: But looking at the hardware, the integration problem seems terrifying.
Speaker 2: I mean, Blue Origin is building the cargo landers, Astrolab
Speaker 2: is building the buggies, SpaceX is building the crew modules,
Speaker 2: Firefly is building the drones.
Speaker 3: Lots of different cooks in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: How do all these different commercial pieces seamlessly integrate in
Speaker 2: a lethal vacuum. Honestly, if I buy a smart light bulb,
Speaker 2: half the time, it won't connect to my phone.
Speaker 3: Right in your living room. Isn't trying to kill you?
Speaker 2: Exactly? What if the Firefly delivery drone uses a completely
Speaker 2: different telemetry standard than the Astra Lab buggy.
Speaker 3: That is the multi billion dollar engineering puzzle that keeps
Speaker 3: systems integrators awake at night. You are dealing with disparate
Speaker 3: corporate cultures, proprietary software stacks, and different engineering.
Speaker 2: Philosophies, So how do they manage it?
Speaker 3: However, this modular commercial approach is also the only way
Speaker 3: to foster rapid innovation. By relying on a diverse ecosystem,
Speaker 3: you eliminate the single points of failure that plagued government
Speaker 3: only programs.
Speaker 2: Oh like, if one thing breaks, the whole mission isn't scrapped.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if a specific component of the Astra Lab buggy
Speaker 3: is delayed, it doesn't ground the SpaceX crew lander or
Speaker 3: the Firefly drone. They operate on standardized interfaces, agreed upon
Speaker 3: mechanical and digital handshakes, and we are.
Speaker 2: Seeing the physical evidence that this commercial sector is spooling
Speaker 2: up to handle the mass requirements. Just look at the
Speaker 2: hardware tests happening right now. The pace of testing is
Speaker 2: relentless on May twenty third, just days ago, SpaceX launched
Speaker 2: its biggest, most beefed up Starship yet on a flight test.
Speaker 2: The payload capacity of that vehicle alone fundamentally changes what
Speaker 2: we can put on the surface.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 2: We aren't talking about tiny, delicate, little probes anymore. We
Speaker 2: are talking about hundreds of metric tons of steel, batteries
Speaker 2: and life support systems.
Speaker 3: The mass torbit capability of something like Starship, paired with
Speaker 3: the precision landing capabilities of the Blue Origin platforms, gives
Speaker 3: mission planners a toolkit they have just never had before.
Speaker 2: It's a whole new ballgame.
Speaker 3: But launching the mass is only half the battle. Navigating
Speaker 3: it to the destination efficiently is just as critical, which
Speaker 3: ties into the routing advancements, right.
Speaker 2: I was actually looking at that new mathematical method calculated
Speaker 2: on May fifteenth for the most efficient Earth Moon.
Speaker 3: Route yet the orbital mechanics side of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my initial thought was, don't we just point
Speaker 2: the rocket at where the moon is going to be
Speaker 2: and hit the gas. Why do we need new math
Speaker 2: for a route we've already flown.
Speaker 3: Because orbital mechanics is not about flying in a straight line.
Speaker 3: It's about surfing gravity wells surfing. Yeah, when Apalla went
Speaker 3: to the Moon, they used a direct, high energy trajectory.
Speaker 3: They burned a massive amount of fuel to get there
Speaker 3: in three days, and they burn a massive amount of
Speaker 3: fuel to break and enter lunar orbit.
Speaker 2: So they were just powering through it, right.
Speaker 3: That requires an enormous fuel fraction, meaning most of the
Speaker 3: rocket's weight is just propellant, leaving very little room for
Speaker 3: actual cargo.
Speaker 2: So high speed, low efficiency, kind of like driving a
Speaker 2: sports car on the highway but you're stuck in second gear.
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy. What mission planners are using now
Speaker 3: and what these new mathematical models optimize are concepts like
Speaker 3: ballistic lunar transfers or utilizing the weak stability boundary.
Speaker 2: Okay, what does that actually mean?
Speaker 3: Instead of brute forcing their way against Earth's gravity, they
Speaker 3: launched the spacecraft much further out, sometimes millions of miles,
Speaker 3: allowing the subtle gravitational pull of the Sun to alter
Speaker 3: the spacecraft's trajectory.
Speaker 2: Wait, they go out past the Moon to get to
Speaker 2: the Moon.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Sun's gravity effectively tugs the spacecraft's orbit, reshaping
Speaker 3: it so that it perfectly intersects with the Moon's orbit
Speaker 3: at the exact right velocity.
Speaker 2: So instead of slam on the brakes when you get
Speaker 2: to the Moon, you just sort of glide perfectly into
Speaker 2: its lane at the exact same speed it's already traveling precisely.
Speaker 3: It can take months instead of days. But the delta
Speaker 3: vse savings the amount of fuel required to execute the
Speaker 3: maneuvers is incredibly significant.
Speaker 2: And less fuel means more cardo exactly.
Speaker 3: And when you are a commercial company trying to deliver
Speaker 3: heavy infrastructure like a lunar buggy or a power station,
Speaker 3: fuel efficiency directly translates to payload capacity. You can carry
Speaker 3: more solar panels, more batteries, and more scientific gear if
Speaker 3: you don't have to carry as much propellant.
Speaker 2: And all of that heavy infrastructure is heading to a
Speaker 2: very specific destination. They aren't going back to the equatorial
Speaker 2: regions like the Sea of Tranquility where Apollo eleven land is.
Speaker 3: No, they're heading south right.
Speaker 2: They're aiming exclusively for the lunar south Pole, which applies
Speaker 2: this isn't just about exploration anymore. This is a massive
Speaker 2: hunt for resources.
Speaker 3: The lunar south pole is, without hyperbole, the most valuable
Speaker 3: real estate in the inner solar system right now.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: It is defined by its extreme lighting conditions. Because the
Speaker 3: Moon's axis is barely tilted relative to the sun, the
Speaker 3: sunlight hits the poles at a very shallow horizontal angle.
Speaker 2: So it casts really long shadows.
Speaker 3: Yes, it creates areas of permanent shadow at the bottom
Speaker 3: of deep impact craters, regions that literally haven't seen sunlight
Speaker 3: in billions of years.
Speaker 2: That's haunting to think about.
Speaker 3: In those cold traps, temperatures drop to nearly absolute zero,
Speaker 3: and they harbor immense reserves of volatile resources, most notably
Speaker 3: water ice, And.
Speaker 2: Right next to those freezing craters, you have the exact
Speaker 2: opposite extreme.
Speaker 3: Correct on the rims of those craters, and on adjacent
Speaker 3: mountain peaks you have areas of near eternal sunlight.
Speaker 2: Because they're elevated above the shadow.
Speaker 3: Exactly so, within a few few kilometers of each other,
Speaker 3: you have the two things necessary to sustain human presence
Speaker 3: water ice for drinking breathable oxygen, and rocket fuel juxtaposed
Speaker 3: with permanent sunlight for continuous solar power.
Speaker 2: It's like an oasis.
Speaker 3: That unique geography makes the South Pole the only logical
Speaker 3: place to establish a permanent foothold, which brings.
Speaker 2: Us to the most mind bending part of the timeline.
Speaker 2: What happens after the moving trucks arrive and the astronaut's
Speaker 2: land in twenty twenty eight the long term plan right,
Speaker 2: because twenty twenty eight is just the starting line. Once
Speaker 2: they are there, the narrative completely shifts from getting there
Speaker 2: to staying there. We move into Phase two and Phase
Speaker 2: three of the operational.
Speaker 3: Plan, and this is where the sheer audacity of the
Speaker 3: engineering required really comes into focus.
Speaker 2: Let's lay it out for everyone. Phase two kicks off
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty nine and runs into the early twenty thirties.
Speaker 2: The entire focus of this phase is building permanent infrastructure,
Speaker 2: heavy infrastructure, and the centerpiece of that infrastructure power grid,
Speaker 2: a literal physical power grid on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 3: It sounds like Sci Fi, but it's happening.
Speaker 2: Then, as we move into Phase three sometime in the
Speaker 2: twenty thirties, the plan shifts to constructing specialized permanent habitats
Speaker 2: to support astronauts for extended periods. There's this quote from
Speaker 2: Carlos Garcia Gullin, the executive of NASA's Moon Base program,
Speaker 2: that puts a pin in exactly what this means. He stated,
Speaker 2: then we'll be able to say, hey, we're permanently here
Speaker 2: and we're not giving it up.
Speaker 3: The gravity of that statement is immense. We're permanently here
Speaker 3: and we're not giving it up. It is a definitive
Speaker 3: policy shift.
Speaker 2: It's huge.
Speaker 3: It marks the end of the exploratory era where we
Speaker 3: plant a flag and return, and the beginning of the
Speaker 3: settlement era.
Speaker 2: See I hear power grid and my brain just stalls out.
Speaker 2: We go from remotely driving astrolab buggies around in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight to laying down a functional electrical grid in
Speaker 2: just a year or two.
Speaker 3: It's a steep curve.
Speaker 2: Setting aside the fact that we have a hard enough
Speaker 2: time keeping the power grid running during a bad winter
Speaker 2: storm here on Earth, how exactly do you build hard
Speaker 2: physical electrical infrastructure in a place with zero atmosphere, zero
Speaker 2: wind or water for cooling, and a surface made of
Speaker 2: microscopic razor blades.
Speaker 3: It's a hostile work environment, to say the least.
Speaker 2: What are the actual physics of building a grid there?
Speaker 3: A localized power grid is the ultimate dividing line between
Speaker 3: a temporary outpost and a permanent base. You simply cannot
Speaker 3: run long term life support systems or heavy drills for
Speaker 3: ice extraction or fuel processing plants on temporary batteries or
Speaker 3: small lander mounted solar panels.
Speaker 2: You need real juice.
Speaker 3: You need reliable, continuous, high kill WoT power. But the
Speaker 3: engineering environment is, as you said, actively hostile. Let's start
Speaker 3: with the dust, the lunar regoliths.
Speaker 2: Right, because it's not like sand at the beach. Sand
Speaker 2: on Earth has been tumbling around in oceans and blowing
Speaker 2: in the wind for millions of years.
Speaker 3: It's smooth exactly. Lunar regolith is created by billions of
Speaker 3: years of micrometeorite impacts smashing into the surface. There is
Speaker 3: no atmospheric weathering to smooth the edges.
Speaker 2: It's just sharp.
Speaker 3: It is essentially composed of microscopic, jagged, asymmetrical shards of
Speaker 3: glass and crush rock. It is incredibly abrasive.
Speaker 2: Like breathing in fiberglass or worse.
Speaker 3: It will degrade silicon seals, jam mechanical gears, and scratch
Speaker 3: the protective coatings right off of solar panels. But the
Speaker 3: shape of the dust isn't even the worst part. It's
Speaker 3: the electrical charge.
Speaker 2: I always forget about the charge. How does dust get
Speaker 2: a static charge in a vacuum.
Speaker 3: It's driven by the environment itself. On the sunlit side
Speaker 3: of the Moon, there is no atmosphere to block the
Speaker 3: Sun's ultraviolet radiation. That intense UV light hits the silicate
Speaker 3: regolith and actually knocks electrons off the dust particles through
Speaker 3: the photoelectric effect.
Speaker 2: Wow, just strip some right off.
Speaker 3: Leaves the sunlit dust with a strong positive charge. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: on the night side, the solar wind, which is a
Speaker 3: stream of charged particles from the Sun, sweeps past the
Speaker 3: Moon and electrons from that plasma hit the dark side,
Speaker 3: giving the dust there a strong negative charge.
Speaker 2: So the dust literally clings to everything magnetically electrostatically.
Speaker 3: Yes, because it's charged. It sticks to spacesuits, it coats
Speaker 3: camera lenses, and crucially, it will coat the solar arrays
Speaker 3: and thermal radiators of a power grid.
Speaker 2: That's a nightmare for maintenance.
Speaker 3: It gets crazier near the terminator line, the boundary between
Speaker 3: day and night. The difference in charge can be so
Speaker 3: strong that the dust actually levitates off the surface.
Speaker 2: Wait, really levitating dust?
Speaker 3: Yes? When you are trying to lay miles of power
Speaker 3: cables to connect a solar array situated on a sunlit
Speaker 3: peak down into a shadowed crater where the water ice
Speaker 3: operations are. You have to engineer the cable shielding and
Speaker 3: the mechanical connectors to survive being dragged through an abrasive,
Speaker 3: highly charged levitating field of glass.
Speaker 2: That is just wow. And what about the temperature swings
Speaker 2: Because a power grid implies metal, cables, transformers, physical connections.
Speaker 3: Oh, the thermal dynamics are brutal.
Speaker 2: I know, heat causes metal to expand and coals causes
Speaker 2: it to contract. What kind of temperatures are these cables?
Speaker 3: Dealing with thermal dynamics are arguably the hardest physical constraint.
Speaker 3: In direct sunlight at the lunar equator, temperatures can reach
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit, boiling. Beyond boiling, in
Speaker 3: the permanent shadows of the polar craters, they plunge to
Speaker 3: minus three hundred degrees fahrenheit or even colder.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: If your power cable runs from a sunlit peak into
Speaker 3: a shadowed crater, the coefficient of thermal expansion means the
Speaker 3: sunlit portion of the cable is trying to aggressively expand
Speaker 3: while this shadowed portion is violently contracting that sounds.
Speaker 2: Like the metal would literally just shear itself apart over time.
Speaker 3: It absolutely causes extreme material fatigue. It requires alloys and
Speaker 3: composite materials that simply don't see typical use in Earth
Speaker 3: based construction. Furthermore, without an atmosphere, there is no convective cooling.
Speaker 2: What does it mean for the electronics.
Speaker 3: Well, if a transformer or a power distribution node on
Speaker 3: Earth gets hot, the air around it absorbs the heat
Speaker 3: and carries it.
Speaker 2: Away, ween just cools it down.
Speaker 3: Right on the Moon in a vacuum. The only way
Speaker 3: to show at excess heat from electrical resistance is through
Speaker 3: thermal radiation, which requires large, heavy, highly specialized radiator panels.
Speaker 3: And those panels, of course have to be kept clean
Speaker 3: of the charged insulating lunar dust.
Speaker 2: So to recap here we need highly specialized thermally resilient
Speaker 2: cables that won't snap when half of them are freezing
Speaker 2: and half are boiling, coded and shielding that won't get
Speaker 2: shredded by static glass dust laid down by autonomous commercial
Speaker 2: buggies across miles of jagged craters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that songs it up.
Speaker 2: And this is just phase two.
Speaker 3: It is a monumental undertaking, but it is the necessary
Speaker 3: prerequisite for phase three. Once you have a stable localized grid,
Speaker 3: you can begin constructing the specialized habitats designed for extended habitation.
Speaker 2: And the phrase extended periods does a lot of heavy
Speaker 2: lifting in these plans. We aren't talking about Apollo astronauts
Speaker 2: spending seventy two hours in a tin can, taking some
Speaker 2: rocks and leaving.
Speaker 3: No, these are long duration stays.
Speaker 2: We are talking about crews living months at a time
Speaker 2: on the surface. That fundamentally shifts the engineering from simple
Speaker 2: survival to long term sustainability. You mentioned radiation earlier. I
Speaker 2: imagine a thin aluminum hull isn't going to cut it
Speaker 2: if you're staying for six months.
Speaker 3: It absolutely won't without a thick atmosphere or a strong
Speaker 3: global magnetic field like Earth has. The surface of the
Speaker 3: Moon is bombarded by lethal radiation from the Sun. Partially,
Speaker 3: you have solar proton events, which are sudden, massive bursts
Speaker 3: of radiation from solar flares, but you also have galactic
Speaker 3: cosmic rays, which are incredibly high energy particles from outside
Speaker 3: our solar system.
Speaker 2: Entirely just constantly pelting the surface.
Speaker 3: Yes, if a crew is on the surface during a
Speaker 3: major solar flare. Without proper shielding, it is a fatal event.
Speaker 2: So how do you shield a habitat if you can't launch,
Speaker 2: you know, feet thick walls of lead or water from Earth.
Speaker 3: You use what is already there. The most viable architectural
Speaker 3: plans for phase three involve utilizing the lunar regolith itself
Speaker 3: sharp dust, the very same. The cargo landers or autonomous
Speaker 3: rovers will likely use microwave centering to melt the regolith
Speaker 3: into solid blocks, or use three D printing techniques to
Speaker 3: construct thick protective shells over the pressurized habitat modules.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they bury themselves.
Speaker 3: By burying the habitats under several meters of lunar soil,
Speaker 3: you provide excellent shielding against both radiation and micrometeorite impacts,
Speaker 3: while also insulating the habitat against those wild thermal swings
Speaker 3: we talked about.
Speaker 2: It's essentially building a high tech bunker. But even if
Speaker 2: you solve the physical shielding, what about the human element.
Speaker 2: A closed loop life support system for months on end
Speaker 2: is completely different from a short mission.
Speaker 3: The life support engineering is incredibly complex. The International Space
Speaker 3: Station has taught us a lot about water reclamation and
Speaker 3: oxygen generation, but the ISS is in low Earth orbit.
Speaker 3: They get grocery delivery, y it receives frequent resupply shipments.
Speaker 3: A lunar habitat must achieve a much higher degree of
Speaker 3: closed loop autonomy. Every month molecule of water, every breath
Speaker 3: of oxygen has to be scrubbed, recycled, and reused with
Speaker 3: near perfect efficiency.
Speaker 2: You sweat it out, you drink it later.
Speaker 3: That's the reality of it, and the mental health protocols
Speaker 3: will be just as rigorous. Living in a confined subterranean
Speaker 3: space in a lethal environment with communication delays and no
Speaker 3: immediate rescue option requires a profound level of psychological resilience.
Speaker 2: Which naturally leads us to a deeply fascinating and I
Speaker 2: think highly controversial aspect of this entire plant, Because if
Speaker 2: you have specialized buried habitats and you have a sprawling
Speaker 2: power grid connecting solar rays to creater floors, you suddenly
Speaker 2: have a massive physical footprint. You're taking a real estate,
Speaker 2: You are occupying and actively modifying a large chunk of
Speaker 2: physical space, and that brings us to the moonfall perimeter
Speaker 2: and the incredible geopolitical friction. This is creating right now.
Speaker 3: This is where the extreme engineering challenges intersect with the
Speaker 3: ambiguities of international space law. It is arguably the most
Speaker 3: complex and delicate part of the.
Speaker 2: Entire endeavor because there was no Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Of Space exactly, no police force, no zoning board.
Speaker 2: Let me lay out what they're actually planning here, because
Speaker 2: when I first read it it sounded like science fiction.
Speaker 2: Carlos Garcia Galon envisions this lunar base eventually sprawling over
Speaker 2: hundreds of square miles. It's massive, hundreds of square miles.
Speaker 2: That is not a little research station. That is the
Speaker 2: footprint of a major metropolitan city. And to mark the
Speaker 2: perimeter of this massive operational area, they're planning to use
Speaker 2: those firefly drones we talked about earlier.
Speaker 3: The autonomous landers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these drones are dubbed Moonfall, and they will be
Speaker 2: stationed at the corners of this territory. Now. NASA Administrator
Speaker 2: Jared Isaacman was very careful with his words when discussing this.
Speaker 2: He framed it with heavy diplomatic.
Speaker 3: Language, very intentional wording.
Speaker 2: He said, these territory markers are meant to be respectful
Speaker 2: of other countries spacecraft and equipment that might be operating nearby,
Speaker 2: and then he added critical phrase that the US expects
Speaker 2: reciprocity in the matter.
Speaker 3: That statement is a masterclass in diplomatic framing and legal maneuvering.
Speaker 3: To understand why it's so provocative, you really have to
Speaker 3: look at the foundational text of international space law, which
Speaker 3: is the nineteen sixty seven Outer Space Treaty, the Big
Speaker 3: One right. Article two of the treaty explicitly states that
Speaker 3: outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is
Speaker 3: not subject to national appropriation by a claim of sovereignty,
Speaker 3: by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Speaker 2: So nobody owns it.
Speaker 3: No nation can legally claim that a piece of the
Speaker 3: Moon belongs to them.
Speaker 2: But wait, if you draw a perimeter of drones around
Speaker 2: one hundred square miles of the most valuable resource rich
Speaker 2: real estate at the South Pole, and you tell everyone else, hey,
Speaker 2: please respect our equipment inside this giant box, haven't you
Speaker 2: just effectively claimed that box.
Speaker 3: It sure looks that way.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds exactly like putting up a digital
Speaker 2: white picket fence and enforcing lunar zoning laws. Yeah, how
Speaker 2: does expecting reciprocity not just quietly turn into an international land.
Speaker 3: Grap It is the exact tension that international space lawyers
Speaker 3: are debating right now. What Isacman is outlining is a nuanced,
Speaker 3: very deliberate sidestep of the sovereignty limitation, a loophole. By
Speaker 3: using the language of respecting equipment, he is invoking Article
Speaker 3: NIES of that same Outer Space Treaty, which requires states
Speaker 3: to conduct activities with due regard to the corresponding interests
Speaker 3: of others and to avoid harmful interference.
Speaker 2: Ah So they are arguing that they need the massive
Speaker 2: perimeter not because they own the land, but because their
Speaker 2: equipment is so sensitive or dangerous that anyone coming close
Speaker 2: would cause harmful interference.
Speaker 3: Precisely, and from an engineering standpoint, it is a highly
Speaker 3: legitimate argument.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: We touched on the physics of the lunar environment earlier,
Speaker 3: but consider what happens when a heavy spacecraft lands or
Speaker 3: takes off in a vacuum. This is known as plume
Speaker 3: surface interaction cloud. On Earth, when a rocket fires, the
Speaker 3: atmosphere slows down the exhaust and the dust billows into
Speaker 3: a cloud. In the vacuum of the Moon, there is
Speaker 3: no air resistance when a massive multiton lander fires its
Speaker 3: descent engines, it accelerates the jagged, abrasive lunar regolith outward
Speaker 3: horizontally at velocities exceeding three thousand meters per second.
Speaker 2: That's basically the speed of a bullet.
Speaker 3: It's faster than many bullets. And because the Moon's gravity
Speaker 3: is only one sixth of earths, that ejecta can travel
Speaker 3: for kilometers. Some of it can even achieve lunar orbit,
Speaker 3: just keeps going. If a competing space agency or a
Speaker 3: commercial rival lands their spacecraft two kilometers away from your
Speaker 3: multi billion dollar solar array, the ejecta from their landing
Speaker 3: could completely shred your equipment.
Speaker 2: Oh I see. So the physics of landing on the
Speaker 2: Moon literally mandate that you keep your distance exactly.
Speaker 3: You physically require a massive safety zone to prevent destroying
Speaker 3: each other's infrastructure. You aren't claiming the land belongs to
Speaker 3: the United States and the way that say Texas does.
Speaker 3: You are claiming that the operations within this perimeter require
Speaker 3: a vast safety buffer. But the g so political reality
Speaker 3: is that it achieves the exact same result.
Speaker 2: It's a de facto territory.
Speaker 3: It is a highly strategic way to monopolize the optimal
Speaker 3: landing sites, the sunlit power peaks, and the deepest ice
Speaker 3: craters without technically violating the letter of the law regarding sovereignty.
Speaker 2: It's like calling shotgun on the best seat in the car,
Speaker 2: but arguing you only need it because your legs are long,
Speaker 2: not because you own the car.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect way to put it.
Speaker 2: But if I'm playing devil's advocate here from the perspective
Speaker 2: of the European Space Agency or the China National Space Administration,
Speaker 2: the physical result is a monopoly. If the US establishes
Speaker 2: one hundred square mile safety zone around the Shackleton Crater,
Speaker 2: neutral law or not, they have locked down the most
Speaker 2: critical resources.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly how competing powers view it. The
Speaker 3: Moonfall drones serve a dual purpose. On the surface, they
Speaker 3: are scientific tools, communication relays, or navigation beacons, but practically
Speaker 3: they are digital boundary markers.
Speaker 2: They're border guards.
Speaker 3: When Isaacman demands ciprocity, he is setting a legal precedent.
Speaker 3: He's saying, we respect your small safety zone over there,
Speaker 3: so you are legally obligated under the treaty to respect
Speaker 3: our massive hundreds of square mile safety zone right here.
Speaker 2: Check me.
Speaker 3: It forces the international community to accept the US operational
Speaker 3: footprint as a de facto exclusion zone.
Speaker 2: It's breathtaking when you really think about this scale and
Speaker 2: the audacity of it. One hundred square miles of lunar
Speaker 2: surface ringed by autonomous drones enforcing a legal loophole driven
Speaker 2: by the physics of rocket exhausts.
Speaker 3: That's quite the sentence.
Speaker 2: It forces us to step back from the granular details,
Speaker 2: the power cables, the regulates, the drones, and ask the
Speaker 2: biggest question of all, why. What is the ultimate endgame
Speaker 2: driving this unprecedented expenditure of capital and engineering.
Speaker 3: The endgame is multifaceted, but it ultimately points entirely away
Speaker 3: from the Moon. The space agencies have laid out three
Speaker 3: primary goals for this architecture.
Speaker 2: Let's walk through them. The stated goals are one, encourage
Speaker 2: a lunar economy to conducting deep scientific research, and three,
Speaker 2: which is the foundational goal preparing for a Mars expedition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, third one is the real driver, right.
Speaker 2: Administrator Isaacman put it incredibly bluntly. He said, for those
Speaker 2: waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand, and
Speaker 2: we will not slow down. We are really just getting started.
Speaker 3: We are really just getting started, is the key phrase.
Speaker 3: It points directly to the future, specifically to Mars and
Speaker 3: the broader solar system. But to get there they have
Speaker 3: to solve the first goal, the lunar economy.
Speaker 2: Let's focus on that first goal, because when I hear
Speaker 2: lunar economy, my mind immediately defaults to sci fi tropes
Speaker 2: like what space billboards? Incredibly expensive lunar tourism, maybe mining
Speaker 2: some rare isotopes. But what does a lunar economy actually
Speaker 2: look like in practice over the next decade.
Speaker 3: It looks like heavy industry. The immediate lunar economy isn't
Speaker 3: about tourism. It is about in situ resource utilization or
Speaker 3: issru using what's already there exactly. It is about extracting
Speaker 3: that water from the shadowed craters at the South Pole.
Speaker 3: Once you have water H two and you have that
Speaker 3: localized power grid generating continuous solar electricity, you can use
Speaker 3: electrolysis to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 2: Okay, basic chemistry.
Speaker 3: If you liquefy those gases, you have liquid hydrogen and
Speaker 3: liquid oxygen. That is hydrolocks that is premium rocket fuel.
Speaker 2: So the goal isn't just to survive on the Moon,
Speaker 2: it's to manufacture fuel on the Moon.
Speaker 3: Precisely, If you can manufacture fuel on the Moon, the
Speaker 3: Moon becomes a massive gas station for the rest of
Speaker 3: the Solar System.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: To understand why this is an economic game changer, you
Speaker 3: have to look at the tyranny of the rocket equation.
Speaker 3: Launching anything from Earth requires escaping a massive gravity well
Speaker 3: and pushing through a thick atmosphere.
Speaker 2: It takes a lot of effort.
Speaker 3: The vast majority of a rocket's mass when it sits
Speaker 3: on a launch pad in Florida is just the fuel
Speaker 3: required to lift its own weight into low Earth orbit.
Speaker 2: Right, it takes a building sized rocket just to put
Speaker 2: a car sized payload into space.
Speaker 3: But the Moon's gravity is only one sixth of Earth's
Speaker 3: and it has no atmosphere. Launching a massive payload from
Speaker 3: the lunar surface requires a tiny fraction of the energy
Speaker 3: because you.
Speaker 2: Aren't fighting the air or the heavy gravity.
Speaker 3: If you can launch a spacecraft from Earth empty, or
Speaker 3: refuel it in orbit using propellant manufactured on the Moon
Speaker 3: and launched out of the shallow lunar gravity well, the
Speaker 3: economics of deep space travel completely.
Speaker 2: Flatt It makes everything cheaper.
Speaker 3: You can send massive payloads to Mars, to the asteroid
Speaker 3: belt or to the outer planets for a fraction of
Speaker 3: the cost. The Moon isn't just a destination, It's a
Speaker 3: strategic logistical hub.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the Moon becomes an industrial port city. But
Speaker 2: regarding that third goal, laying the foundation from Mars, does
Speaker 2: that mean the Moon is just a pit stop?
Speaker 3: Not exactly.
Speaker 2: Is it just a training ground or is it the
Speaker 2: main attraction for the rest of this century? Because building
Speaker 2: one hundred square mile base seems like a lot of
Speaker 2: effort for a practice run.
Speaker 3: It has to be both. It is an economic engine
Speaker 3: in its own right, driving technological advancements and generating wealth
Speaker 3: through that commercial ecosystem. But simultaneously it serves as the
Speaker 3: most unforgiving, high stake simulation possible for Mars.
Speaker 2: To make sure we don't fail when we go further.
Speaker 3: Think about everything we just discussed, the life support systems,
Speaker 3: the power grids, surviving thermal extremes, the radiation shielding using
Speaker 3: local regolith, the integration of autonomous commercial fleets.
Speaker 2: All of that applies directly to Mars exactly.
Speaker 3: The systems being tested in the twenty thirties on the
Speaker 3: Moon are the exact architectures needed to survive on Mars.
Speaker 3: You cannot test a life support system designed for a
Speaker 3: three year Mars mission in a sterile lab on Earth
Speaker 3: right or even on the International Space Station where you
Speaker 3: can get an emergency resupply in a few hours. You
Speaker 3: have to test it in the brutal, abrasive reality of
Speaker 3: a deep space environment, and.
Speaker 2: The margin for error on Mars is essentially zero compared
Speaker 2: to the Moon.
Speaker 3: That is the crux of it. If a transformer blows
Speaker 3: out on the lunar power grid, or a habitat seal
Speaker 3: begins to leak, it is an emergent and see but
Speaker 3: you are only a three to five day journey from Earth.
Speaker 2: You can call for a tow truck.
Speaker 3: Essentially you have near real time communication with mission control.
Speaker 3: But if a power grid fails on Mars, you are
Speaker 3: millions of miles away. The communication delay can be up
Speaker 3: to twenty minutes each way.
Speaker 2: You say help, and forty minutes later you hear.
Speaker 3: What's wrong exactly. There is no immediate rescue, no rapid resupply.
Speaker 3: The systems have to be autonomous, redundant, and flawlessly reliable.
Speaker 3: The Moon base is the proving ground where humanity learns
Speaker 3: how to survive long term offworld, where we shake out
Speaker 3: the bugs in the hardware and the psychology before we
Speaker 3: dare take the leap.
Speaker 2: To another planet that makes total sense.
Speaker 3: In many ways. The Moon is the harder environment. Mars
Speaker 3: has a thin atmosphere and a day night cycle of
Speaker 3: about twenty four and a half hours, pretty similar to Earth.
Speaker 3: But the Moon has no atmosphere and a night that
Speaker 3: lasts fourteen Earth days. If your power and thermal systems
Speaker 3: can survive a lunar night, they can definitely survive Mars.
Speaker 2: Let's take a breath and recap this year scale of
Speaker 2: the reality we've just mapped out, because it is moving
Speaker 2: faster than most people realize.
Speaker 3: It's moving at light speed.
Speaker 2: We started with the immediate present, that record breaking Artemis,
Speaker 2: the second fly around that just happened in April twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six, pushing humanity deeper into the gravity well than
Speaker 2: ever before. We looked at the rapid fire timeline moving
Speaker 2: toward orbital docking rehearsals in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Seven, threading the needle on a roller coaster.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and an actual crude landing in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 2: we broke down the massive, decentralized commercial fleet making it happen.
Speaker 2: The blue Origin cargo haulers, the astrolab surface buggies, the
Speaker 2: towering SpaceX crew modules, all acting as the vanguard moving trucks,
Speaker 2: utilizing incredibly complex ballistic orbital.
Speaker 3: Routing, surfing the gravity wells.
Speaker 2: We envisioned the twenty thirties, the brutal physical reality of
Speaker 2: constructing power grids, battling abrasive electrostatically charged lunar dust, and
Speaker 2: burying specialized habitats under regolith to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation.
Speaker 3: So a lot to take in.
Speaker 2: And then we looked at the moonfall drones sitting at
Speaker 2: the corners of one hundreds of square mile perimeter, quietly
Speaker 2: enforcing massive safety zones to protect against rocket ejecta, and
Speaker 2: in doing so, redefining the geopolitics of outer space under
Speaker 2: the banner of respectful.
Speaker 3: Reciprocity, creating de facto borders, all of.
Speaker 2: It driving toward a heavy industry, lunary economy, manufacturing hydrolox
Speaker 2: fuel to conquer the tyranny of the rocket equation and
Speaker 2: make the ultimate leap to Mars.
Speaker 3: It is a phenomenal acceleration of human capability. We are
Speaker 3: watching the foundation of a multiplanetary infrastructure being laid in
Speaker 3: real time. The contracts are sign the metal is being cut,
Speaker 3: the physics have been calculated, and the hardware is flying.
Speaker 2: Which brings me back to what I asked you to
Speaker 2: do at the very beginning of our conversation tonight. When
Speaker 2: you step outside and look up at the moon, I
Speaker 2: want you to remember everything we've talked about today.
Speaker 3: It's not just a rock anymore.
Speaker 2: The hardware that will permanently mark humanity's first off world
Speaker 2: borders has already been built. The funds have been cleared,
Speaker 2: the timeline is locked in. The shift from visiting the
Speaker 2: moon to residing on the Moon is happening right now
Speaker 2: above your head.
Speaker 3: It's a brand new era.
Speaker 2: But as you look at that silver disk, I want
Speaker 2: to leave you with one lingering question to chew on.
Speaker 2: As we build these sprawling bases, lay down complex power
Speaker 2: grids in the regolith, and set up our digital boundary
Speaker 2: markers with autonomous drones to protect our multi billion dollar investments,
Speaker 2: are we truly ready for the philosophical and moral complexities
Speaker 2: of becoming a multiplanetary species or in our rush to
Speaker 2: claim the resources of the South Pole. Are we simply
Speaker 2: exporting our earthly borders, our industrial friction, and our geopolitical
Speaker 2: conflicts straight to the stars