1,000 people and a park
Approximately 1000 people
One possible vision
The following five pages briefly outline my vision for building a comfortable, safe, and beautiful small city on the Moon.
It is my belief that we must not think of a human presence on the Moon in terms of a 'laboratory' or 'space station' type of environment. No, no. We must think of it in terms of a fully realized community with all of the beauty, art, greenery, comfort, and convenience that we expect from our most attractive communities on Earth. The Moon is a canvas. Let us paint something both practical and beautiful. And let us prepare it for the children who will be born there.
So, why 1,000 people particularly? And why a park?
Simply put, one thousand people (all adults at this point, all working) is more than enough to provide the complexity we have come to expect from a 'town'. It will be possible to NOT "know everyone", or at least to not know them well. This is comfortable for most people.
Also, as simple-minded as it may sound, big round numbers are attractive; they have force. In a lunar setting, one thousand people sounds 'big' and setting down a practical plan for achieving it will motivate us. And the number certainly is nice and round.
It is a number both impressive and doable.
And a park? For two reasons: because the natural world of our native planet is very important for our mental health and because seriously proposing putting a park on the Moon - and having a practical plan for bringing it about - will blow our minds. It will energize us.
When President Kennedy first declared that our national mission would be to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, it blew our minds. It energized us and filled the whole nation and, at some level, the whole world, with pride and wonder.
We can do it again.
But now we need a bigger goal.
At the same time, it must be a sober and realistic goal.
You will find no vast craters covered over with glass or plastic domes within these pages. Glass or plastic thin enough to let in light are also thin enough to let in dangerous amounts of radiation. And while crater bottoms make an excellent location for a colony, covering the entire crater over merely exposes ourselves to the danger of meteorites. Let the walls of the crater protect us. We are going to be underground anyway.
Here you will find proven technologies capable of providing comfortable and safe living and working quarters on the Moon with minimal additional engineering.
A doable but exciting goal.
So, what goal, exactly?
The goal of creating a home on the Moon for ourselves and other Earth life, piece-by-piece, in manageable steps.
We must take the natural biomes of the Earth, the life of land and water and air, and transfer them to the Moon.
Why? Because we can. Because it will blow our minds, energize us, and carry us into a better future.
The old 'Space Race' had many sequelae, many sturdy and talented children who were born from the effort to put 'Man on the Moon'.
The most notable was the computer industry. The modern computer industry, which continues to blow our minds on an almost daily basis, was and is a child of the Space Race.
This new adventure will have consequences just as amazing, just as unpredictable in their details, and just as rich in possibilities.
So, here is my vision of How We Can Do It.
I hope you enjoy it.
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