Meet the men on the moon

– By 2040, a hundred people will live on the Moon, melting ice for water, 3D-printing homes and tools, eating plants grown in lunar soil, and competing in low-gravity, “flying” sports.

To those who mock such talk as science fiction, experts such as Bernard Foing, ambassador of the European Space Agency-driven “Moon Village” scheme, reply the goal is feasible.

At a European Planetary Science Congress in Riga this week, Foing spelt out how humanity could gain a permanent foothold on Earth’s satellite, and then expand.

He likened it to the growth of the railways, when villages grew around train stations.

By 2030, there could be an initial lunar settlement of six to 10 pioneers – scientists, technicians and engineers – which could grow to 100 by 2040, he predicted.

“In 2050, you could have a thousand and then ... naturally you could envisage to have family” joining crews there, Foing said.

Mere decades from now, “there may be the possibility to have children born on the Moon.”

ESA boss Jan Woerner has mooted replacing the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) with a permanent lunar colony – a futuristic idea that was high on the agenda at this week’s expert meeting in the Latvian capital.

The ISS is due to be decommissioned in 2024 – the end of an era of unprecedented cooperation in space after the Cold War rivalry between the US and Soviet Union.

Forty years after humankind set foot on Earth’s satellite as a result of that fierce contest of one-upmanship, Woerner has proposed a village on the long-abandoned Moon as the next phase in space teamwork.

Scientists and commercial prospectors are keen on the concept, but politicians have yet to bite – a reluctance that, for now, cripples the idea.

“It is highly frustrating... We still don’t have the top leaders interested,” said physicist Vidvuds Beldavs of the University of Latvia, who runs a project called the International Lunar Decade, advocating joint exploration of the Moon.

Potential Moon resources include basalt, a volcanic rock Beldavs said could be used as a raw material for 3D-printing satellites to be deployed from the Moon at a fraction of the cost of a launch from high-gravity Earth. – AFP