Lunar Industry: Lunar Gateway, Space Tourism, and Farming on the Moon

This is the final part of this three part series on the growing lunar economy. Previously we have looked at building a sustainable colony with ISRU and microgrids as well as how colonists will live on the Moon. This article will focus on the lunar industry, particularly tourism and farming as well as the Gateway space station, proposed to act as the Moon’s version of the ISS. 

What is the Gateway Space Station? 

ESA || Gateway

Gateway is a space station proposed by NASA to be in  orbit of the Moon, like the ISS with Earth. “The Gateway is intended to serve as a communication hub, science laboratory, and habitation module for astronauts as part of the Artemis program.” It will be able to store important modules and technology which can be brought down or collected by lunar colonists in situations where their technology may break. Gateway may also allow, in earlier stages, more specialised scientific instruments and laboratories for use by lunar colonists who may not have the availability of that setup on the Moon. Yet this is something of little use until a self-sustaining settlement is built on the Moon that can be further scaled and that will require a space station to serve as a servicing stopover and fuel depot as well as a place for robots, rovers and smaller spacecraft to be stored and stop by before either leaving or arriving at the Moon.

Will we see lunar tourism?  

Space tourism, which would begin on both the Moon and at space stations, promises to be a highly attractive industry. The experience of not just leaving Earth, which would probably be enough anyway, but walking on the surface of an extraterrestrial celestial body would be undoubtedly awesome. You could climb mountains on the Moon, jump up several metres high without being a high-jump athlete, look at Earth from afar – the attraction of lunar tourism is undeniable. Yet there would be some challenges, most notably for safety and cost. Many things can go wrong on the Moon or in space, and there is little help available, so there would need to be a very strong assurance of safety to convince potential tourists to go to the Moon and that there would be no rerun of the Challenger disaster. Furthermore, a problem which will exist for a long time is cost. The cost of sending people to the Moon and back in a rocket, and sustaining them while at the lunar base, would be astronomical. So it seems likely that tickets to the Moon over the next few decades would cost in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars and would gradually decrease as technology and frequency of lunar trips improves. Undoubtedly we will one day have regular people treating trips to the Moon as they now treat a vacation, but cost will restrict this for a fair while. Another alternative to staying on the Moon, which would likely be more feasible (at least initially) would be to have the Gateway space station serve as a space hotel. Tourists could still experience a trip to space and appreciate an up-close view of the Moon without needing them to be sustained in the lunar base. This could even be part of a package deal whereby one goes on a space trip around the Moon and back with stopovers at the ISS and Gateway, allowing spectacular views of the Earth and Moon respectively.

Farming on the Moon 

As part of building a sustainable colony on the Moon, there will need to be an efficient agricultural system in place. Unsurprisingly, it is proposed that lunar ice (turned to liquid) and regolith will be used to grow crops. Lunar regolith has been proposed as a sort of soil on the Moon which will have essential nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen added to it to support plant growth (and this will be watered with liquified lunar ice). The alternative, researched by a collaboration between the ESA and SolSys Mining, is to extract essential nutrients from lunar regolith and put it in water (as well as external nutrients like nitrogen), which the crops would grow in. This would give more direct nutrient and water access to the crops and solve the problem of regolith’s poor retention of water. Beyond the “soil” that the crops are grown in, there will also need to be an artificial environment for the farms as the Moon is far too inhospitable. This artificial environment will have to protect the crops from extreme heat (and cold) and radiation, yet will still need to give sunlight to the crops (likely with glass ceilings and walls). Furthermore, there will also need to be carbon dioxide in the artificial environment as this, along with sunlight, is necessary for photosynthesis.

 The next consideration that arises is which crops will be grown. Due to the lack of nutrition from the regolith and the far from ideal farming environment, crops will need to have high stress tolerance and be easily adaptable to environmental change. Potatoes are a promising option as they are hardy and will likely tolerate the Moon’s environment reasonably well. They are also rich in carbohydrates, making them a filling and nutritious form of sustenance. Another viable option is a crop with a short life cycle, which would require less sustained care for individual plants, such as radishes.