Popular Mechanics - USA (2019-07-Special)

The Moon

Will Sport

a Permanent

Launch Pad

No single trip will

deliver every-

thing humans will

need to colonize.

So, we’ll build a

dedicated area for

vertical takeoffs

and landings. All

we need is a flat

area of stable rego-

lith surrounded by

berms to mitigate

the spray of lunar

dust when retro-

rockets fire.

4

Moon Ubers
Will Taxi
People and
Cargo

The Jet Propul-
sion Laboratory’s
All-Terrain Hex-
Limbed Extra-
Terrestrial Explorer
(yes, ATHLETE) has
already demon-
strated the ability
to grip pallet cargo
like two burly
movers carrying
a dining room table
into a house. The
six articulated
limbs of the robotic
vehicle can roll or
step over obstacles
and switch out
quick-connect dig-
ging and gripping
tools as needed.
Ideally, these large
vehicles would also
carry passengers
to and from the
launch pad, making
it a lunar airport
Uber.

5

Lunar

Landers

Will Be

Light,

Fast, and

Reusable

From major aero-

space behemoths

to scrappy start-

ups, companies

are scrambling to

develop the next

lunar landers.

Just this past May,

Amazon CEO Jeff

Bezos, founder of

the private space-

flight company Blue

Origin, revealed

Blue Moon, a

lunar lander to be

deployed as early

as 2024. Because

lunar landers like

these won’t re-enter

Earth’s punish-

ing atmosphere,

they will be reus-

able, transporting

crew and cargo

to and from the

moon many times.

Lockheed Martin’s

concept is designed

to dock with the

Orion spacecraft

and will launch

on NASA’s Space

Launch System

(SLS) heavy-lift

megarocket.

6

We’ll Mine

Ice for Fuel

The moon has

two things going

for it as a way-

station to Mars: It

has one-sixth the

gravity of Earth,

so it won’t take

as much power

to break through

moon’s grip, and

it has ice, which

we can make into

hydrogen-oxygen

rocket propellant.

Water, after all, is

the oil of the solar

system. One way

to get at the raw

material is The

Regolith and Ice

Drill for Exploration

of New Terrains

(TRIDENT), a

rotary-percussive

drill designed for

drilling into ice-

cemented regolith

and rock. Other

robotic contrap-

tions would process

the fuel and trans-

port it to an orbiting

“gas station” where

rockets heading

to Mars could dock

to top up.

—Joe Pappalardo

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APO

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