Can the Moon be inhabited by people in 50-100 years or so?

Question

I'm curious about people living on the moons and planets in our solar system and how would they survive.

Answer 1

The way this world is going I hope so,the middle east,North Koreans etc...I would move to the moon and see how screwed up humanity could get again.

Answer 2

The moon will eventually be inhabited. It’s not so much a matter of technology as it is a question of the will of the society. There is an innate drive in humanity to reach out and explore places we have not been. Despite the fact that we have already "been there" the moon and all the other worlds in our solar system will hold an attraction for people. Right now, our technology is sufficient to allow humans to live on the moon. As our technology advances, the reasons for not going will rapidly diminish and the reasons to go will rapidly increase. For those who say that the money spent on a lunar colony would be better spent here on the Earth, consider this: The act of forming a lunar colony and making it self-sufficient will teach us more about maintaining and protecting an environment than any trillions of dollars spent here on the Earth. The reason: The necessity of conservation, recycling, and maintenance of an enclosed lunar biosphere will give us the tools to efficiently maintain any biosphere - whether a space station, enclosed colony, terraformed planet, or even our own Earth. The Earth is too large a place to notice the damage we are doing to our biosphere - people tend to think that just because they cannot see the damage it is not happening. However a self-contained colony will show us exactly how delicate a biosphere is, allowing us to learn the best way to maintain a healthy environment. Plus the nearness of the moon to Earth means that help is only a few days away, making it a perfect test bed to shape such technologies. Even if the colony was to fail, and thousands of people were to die... the lessons we would walk away with would be worth the price. Remember - the people who would inhabit such a colony would choose to be there. And there would always be more people willing to try even knowing the risks because the potential rewards are far greater than the potential loss.

Answer 3

I believe that the moon could safely be colonized/inhabited within the next 20 years if a private consortium like the competitors for the X prize would turn their attentions towards that singular goal. We already have permanent settlements at the South Pole, an extended presence at the International Space Station, and the technology available to maintain at least the barest living conditions. The spirit of the early explorers would be required as creature comforts would be non existent. A return visit to the moon is long overdue. A permanent base of operations would be required to make further expansion possible. This could be the model for further colonization of other places, ie, Mars. I do remember hearing of a plan where a self sustaining base could be erected to manufacture oxygen and water, arguably the 2 most pressing needs, on the surface of a given outpost whether it be the Moon or Mars. We have the technology available today, if only resources were made available. Whereas the United States government will not allocate the required funds to establish such a project, it would fall almost exclusively to the private sector to acquire the funding and person power to make any of this possible. I am not a scientist, just a humble citizen of Earth. We MUST do something to stem the unchecked expansion of development on our planet with limited resources. We MUST seek out alternative energy sources and alternative living arrangements. This would be the starting point of such an exploration to find these new resources. It has been the stated goal of the US space program to eventually put what we have learned from past missions into the Solar System to expand our presence into other areas. Why not use this knowledge to expand, explore and help to provide a more stable and productive, yet safer Earth for all of it's citizens.

Answer 4

I don't think that we have the ability to create an artificial atmosphere to encircle the entire moon, although a dome would work fairly nicely. Unfortunately, the moon rotates around the earth, making siphoning oxygen to such a dome extremely difficult. Even if we did, the chance that some form of space debris would hit either the dome or whatever object that is used to siphon the oxygen is fairly great.

However, rather than allow humans to live on the moon, it could be more of an ecological restoration center, of sorts. Very few people will even think about going all the way to the moon to hunt animals, even if they had the resources to do so. Because of that, if we could create an artificial biosphere, it might make a habitable location for endangered plants and animals.

However, the question was whether or not Humans could live on the moon in the next 50-100 years, not whether or not animals and plants would. To that, I say yes, if we allocate the required resources to such things. Of course, rocket technology that could be researched through military science could also be used to bring the initial "colony" to the moon.

There are a lot of problems that would have to be worked out, but I believe that it is possible, but only if we allocate the resources to the field.

I've seen people focusing on the moral and philisophical problems that would have to be worked out, and I agree that many nations would have to work together to do something like this. However, I'm focusing on what would have to be done; not the political repercussions of the event.

Answer 5

The moon has gravity, every thing in the universe has gravity as long as it is matter. While there is no water that has been found at this point that doesn't mean that there isn't underground. Establishing a biosphere is one of the only ways to actually live on the moon, and it wouldn't be too hard. If the station was built underground that would protect from the harmful UV rays (not that the glass couldn't do that with enough work) and the micrometeorites which would normally burn up in the earth's atmosphere, but because the moon has a very very very small amount of atmosphere this couldn't protect from that. While growing food would be a hassle, it could be done with a 'bubble' that houses the plants which would take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen while making food for the colony (but ships would be coming in from earth all the time supplying the colony). Water is easily created when hydrogen and oxygen are compressed together (they already do that on the space shuttles). At this point the colonization of the moon is only billions of dollars away....
This moon colonization should be undertaken by several countries and not by a single country. But they're too tied up with the International Space Station...

Answer 6

There could be people 'living' on the moon in 50 to 100 years very easily, just as there are people living on the International Space station.
Can people permantly move to the moon? That is a totally different question. It appears - but not confirmed - that there may be water at the south polar extreme of the moon. If there is water, that would make it much more feasible, but there still are alot of questions.
We have only had people in space for a short period of time. No human has lived a life time in space. We have had insects live an entire lifetime is space and we have seen some abnormalities. Part of the problem is probably gravity. In space there is no gravity, on the moon a 180 lb man would way 30 lbs. That would probalby have some impact on developement. There is the problem of radiation. Our Earth's atmosphere shields us from that. Astronauts who have lived in low earth orbit for a year or so, seem right now to be fine, but will they develop cancers later on in life? Is there some other health problems further down the road that we don't know of yet?
A permenant settlement on the moon is probably a long time off, I sorry to say. But, if NASA wants to build a base there and promises to keep it up, I'll gladly except a vacation home there - in the interest of science!

Answer 7

Of course this is a complicated question. The answer is yes. But, will we ever actually inhabit the moon should be the question. As a race we could inhabit the moon but once we lived there for a certain amount of time we would not be able to survive here on Earth anymore due to the physiological changes that would take place. We would lose bone and muscle mass due to the lower gravity. Those born on the moon would never have the ability to live here on Earth. It would be like trying to walk around on the surface of Jupiter, (if we could, gas giant and all) the enormous gravitational and atmospheric pressure would crush us instantly. Back to the question at hand. If the question was meant to be would we develop an inhabitable colony on our moon? Well then I like to think the answer would be yes. WE NEED TO. If we are to overcome the limits of what we have now, i.e. Earth, then the only place to go is up. The resources that we so greatly need are up there ready for the taking, We just need to figure out how to get them economically. Think, what is the most abundant resource in the universe? Hydrogen. What is the only actual clean power source with H2O as the by-product? Hydrogen fuel cell. Why isn't it clean right now? We extract it from Natural gas... When we could be collecting it up there in many places. So, can we live on the moon, yes but not indefinitely for physiological reasons. Will we live on the moon, hopefully, is it possible to live up there today? OH YEA, your digital watch has a more powerful processing computer in it than any of the Apollo ship's computers had.

Answer 8

We probably won't live on the moon, but rather operate some sort of space base that will serve as a rocket port or something. Since we can only reach so far from Earth, chances are if we launch from the moon we could reach further, and therefore accomplish more.
Mars would be more inhabitable than the moon because with the proper equipment we can convert the elements in the soil into breathable air. We might even find the face!
But the problem is, if we do move to another planet, will this one just rot, or will people continue to live here as well? Will we have learned our lesson about the envronment and take care of our new home, or will we ultimately move to another planet because we've ruined this one to unihabitable status?
Maybe we could build a prison on the moon, that would ease overcrowding.

Answer 9

I'm already on the moon and I gotta say it's not all that great!
Mars would definately be much better.It's depressing here because the sky is always black and the light is dim because we live in between the light and dark side of the moon.Keeping water is not an issue like most of you would think, it's when the recyclers break down that we really have a problem.They were out for almost six days one time.Lukily we have 100 gallons of drinking water as a backup.The next shuttle mission at the end of the month is bringing some vitamin supplements and various spare parts for our recyclers.
pollution isn't an issue when you expel everything into space.
The issue of gravity was solved some 20 years ago! An article was released on the 3rd of august about some ESA researchers who created a small gravitational field. Just type in (ESA researchers create gravity) into your search engine. Do you really think that they were the first? Haha! So to answer your question "is it possible?" Yes, however don't expect there to be real estate for sale anytime soon. This is merely a test site for future efforts to colonize Mars. we figure it'll be a little bit like living in southern Arizona or New Mexico. Until we have figured out a way to teraform the planet, the domes we have been testing will be more than enough to sustain life now if we could just figure out a way to make space travel faster it might not take 25 years to get the first one built! The one thing I do miss is beer
as you can imagine drunk people and space don't mix very well.

- Bob -

Answer 10

I should hope not. It would screw up every human emotion since most of them vary from the moons phases. Nothing would be the same. I would say if our planet completely died then as an only choice but until that day ( hopefully very far away from now) i plan to spend my life on earth. And as someone stated earlier people do like to see 50 - 100s years in the future but really when that times actually comes the things we thought we could get are so from it that the 50-100 years may be more like 500- 1000. And how are we suppose to survive on such a moon? Maybe a giant air bubble around the moon or around us perhaps....okay I hope we dont it will be a disaster the moon has nothing for us to survive on there except dirt and rocks and plus all the animals that help even everything out where will they be? They would not adapt so fast and the moon has nothing for them same for us too

Answer 11

I believe we can establish a moon base within the next 50 - 100 years to carry out scientific studies and maybe use the moon as a launching pad to other planets, but I sincerely doubt if mankind can establish a full fledged community.

The cost of supplying food, fuel and sustainable shelter containing air would be prohibitive. Furthermore, as history has shown us many times, man cannot live peaceably. Look what is happening right now in the Middle East. It wouldn't be long before some radical facet of the moon society would want to blow up the biosphere or dome or whatever edfice is constructed because of religious beliefs.

Maybe if we screened everyone and only allowed athiests to inhabit the moon we might have a chance. Then there would then be no chance of religious wars since everyone there would mentally be on the same level.