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Current Projects
Current Projects
Lunar Analog Research
Activities
To determine whether or not the Moon Society should undertake Lunar Analog Research Activities, we proposed to rent the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) for the purpose of conducting lunar outpost simulation exercises. Moon Society crews of six persons each would undertake a variety or research projects over two week periods at this facility outside of Hanksville, Utah. The experiences and lessons learned by our crews will allow us to better design and outfit our own research station as part of Project Leto. This project will be undertaken in collaboration with the Mars Society.In order to become familiar with the Mars Society's Utah facility, Society President Peter Kokh joined MDRS crew #34 in February, 2005. This experience was essential to serve as a reality check for what kinds of projects a Moon Society Crew could fruitfully undertake at MDRS.
The following field season, we rented MDRS for two weeks, February 26 - March 12, 2006, and conducted our first "Artemis Moonbase Simulation" exercise there as MDRS Crew #45.
Latest Updates and News Our Mission is a "Success"
Our PowerPoint Slide Show: Download this 11.7 mb production graciously created for us by one of our mission volunteer CapComs, Gerry Williams of Mars Society San Diego.
Or Download the pdf file version of this slide show.
.
Read our 8/13/2006 Blog post:
Five months after our 1st Moonbase Exercise
Candidate Analog Sites for a Lunar Research Station
We have now clearly defined the logical differences between a lunar analog research program and a Mars analog research program, and have set out to "define" and "design" what a Moon Society Lunar Analog Program might be like.
Check out our PowerPoint Slide show (pdf version) which continues to be a "work in progress." This effort will continue until we have a well-thought out and fully costed multiphase program to show to potential financial sponsors.
Artemis
Data Book [ADB] Improvement
Project
In the summer of 2006, a student intern group operating under Dr. Peter J. Schubert, a Moon Society Board member, endeavored to fill some of the gaps in the Artemis Data Book. The project was conducted at the Packer Engineering offices in Naperville, Illinois.
Check out their work - some articles will need revision before posting to the Artemis Data Book, or to our newly launched MoonWiki Lunarpedia
Lunarpedia
- Our
Moon-Wiki
Project
October 5, 2006: This is an initiative that a circle of members have discussed during much of 2006 before deciding in September to make it happen. We had our grand unveiling in January 2007.The Lunarpedia is an open-source, wiki-type replacement for the proprietary Artemis Data Book. We know many of our older members who joined us in the Artemis Society years, 1994-2000, have missed working on the Artemis Reference Mission™ and the Artemis Data Book™. We are betting that without proprietary limitations, www.Lunarpedia.org will be much more successful.
The object is to create a "buffet" of options that will allow enterprises with funding to pick and choose whatever suits their own mission plan. In other words, we care more that there is a first for-profit lunar outpost than we care who builds it.
The
University of Luna Project
First conceived in early 1991, and the subject of a poorly attended workshop at the 1998 International Space Development Conference in Milwaukee, this project has been the object of considerable development since June 2006, and made its grand debut at the 2007 ISDC in Dallas, TX.The work of Society President, Peter Kokh and Director of Project Development David A. Dunlop, the University of Luna Project will seek to engage students and enterprise in advancing the readiness state of the many technologies that will be needed for human presence on the Moon to become truly permanent and self-supporting as part of an expanded Earth-Moon economy. The "ULP" will be a Moon Society "spin-off" in that it will have its own website, officers, and Board of Directors.
However, the effect of the University of Luna Project will be to keep al other Moon Society projects on focus and on target, for maximum effectiveness, advancing the day when human civilians will be on the Moon to stay.
The
Moon Miners' Manifesto Archive
Project
The editor of the society's newsletter, now past its 20th anniversary of continuous publication, ten issues a year, has embarked on an ambitious project to archive the non-time sensitive material from past issues, one year at a time, up to three years shy of the current year. As of January 2008, the first eighteen volumes of the MMM Classics are online, as freely accessible pdf files.
Videotaping Project at ISDC
2007
At the 2007 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) held in Dallas, Texas, we began an ambitious project to videotape interviews with various people connected to the Back to the Moon movement. The brainchild of Director James Gholston, videotaping was done by member Chip Proser and son Noah, with David Dunlop and James Gholston asking initial and follow-up questions. Over seven hours of video was shot, all of it against a green screen so that we could add appropriate backgrounds later.Thirty-some videos are now online, created from this material that promote the Moon Society, its vision and its goals! You need to have Flash player downloaded to your computer to see them. One of them is also on our MySpace.com website. We are greatly indebted to Moon Society member and Advisor Chip Proser for all his work and effort in creating these outstanding promotional Moon Colony Videos, and to Board member James Gholston for having the vision to suggest we undertake this effort.
Railroading on the Moon
& Mars Design Project
In 1993, Moon Miners' Manifesto sponsored a brainstorming project on the possibilities for Railroads on the Moon. Eight persons from around the country had input. The paper was published on the Lunar Reclamation Society (publishers of MMM for the Moon Society and other clients) website. Read Railroading on the Moon.Now, fifteen years later, it is time to revisit this exciting possibility. As railroads are a surface transportation option for Mars as well, we turned to a Mars-focused organization that had already signaled its interest in collaborating with the Moon Society, MarsDrive. They immediately accepted our proposal and within two days we had put up a jointly sponsored Google Group: Railroading on Moon & Mars. We welcome widespread involvement.
Space Solar Power Beaming Demonstration
We have undertaken to design and build a table top demonstration of a solar power satellite beaming microwave power to a rectenna as part of our promotion of the National Space Security Office report, released October 10, 2007, that concluded that erecting a Solar Power Satellite network in GEO could provide the only pathway to true energy independence for the United States, further suggesting that the only affordable way to do that would be to use construction materials made on the Moon, or made in space from lunar materials. Together with the National Space Society we joined a thirteen member alliance to promote this goal. This is our first "hands on" "bending metal" project. We hope to have it ready to demonstrate at ISDC 2008 in Washington DC in late May. We are fortunate to have the critical expertise needed within the society. You can track our progress here.
with other organizations can be an effective strategy and tool in producing successful projects.
Project
Guidelines for Success
top.
Completed, Deferred, and
Discontinued Projects
Completed, Deferred, and Discontinued Projects
The flagship project of the Artemis Society was The Artemis Project™, an effort ongoing since 1994 to design, fund, and deploy the first private lunar base for commerce and tourism. Here is a brief overview of The Artemis Project. ASI members were enthusiastic about it and helped develop the Artemis Project Reference Mission™.When the membership was transitioned to the new Moon Society, after its founding in July, 2000, there was an effort to continue focus on The Artemis Project™, as a "Flagship Project." However, the proprietary character of the Project made this impractical, and all further progress came to a halt as one ASI team after another disbanded in discouragement.
The Moon Society and Artemis Society International remain affiliated (but separate) organizations. The Artemis Society International website has unfortunately become fossilized with no one to maintain it. In January, 2007, members of The Moon Society launched an open-source substitute for the Artemis Project Reference Mission™, an online Wiki-type encyclopedia of all things "Moon, past, present, and future. This project is the Lunarpedia at www.Lunarpedia.org - see Lunarpedia entry above.
Project LETO [L.E.T.O. = Lunar Exploration & Tourist Organization] was to have been the first major long term project for the Moon Society. This is a strategic plan to build a full-scale simulation of an initial lunar exploration base. It would be marketed for outreach purposes, analog research, and as a tourist destination.A "full-scale simulation of an initial lunar exploration base" is not necessarily the same as a Lunar Analog Research Station. In the latter, to avoid costs irrelevant to the research program, it is not necessary to exactly model a first lunar exploration base, except where needed to support the research program. If money were no object, we could do both. Instead, we must pick our battles, choose which aspects and features to simulate, and which to ignore as irrelevant to the research.
As a proposal to combine a tourist center with research station activities, Project LETO presupposes that these two different types of activity are compatible. Every indication is that tourist activity would shatter the concentration of research station crews, there being ample anecdotal evidence from the Mars Society's experiences at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. But a mockup station at the visitors center, where the pubic can watch activities at a remote research station via live web cams, might be the better solution. Such a solution would make it unnecessary to make compromises either as to the location of the tourist center or as to the geologically appropriate location of the research station. Further, under this plan, the research station could have web cam access to a multiplicity of research stations scattered around the globe.
The Project LETO plan also begs the question of which should come first: a tourist center to bring in money and new members, or a research station. There can be no question about the paramount importance of both. As to which should come first, perhaps the best answer is both, with tourist center and research station both being built in phases, growing in parallel, however closely or remotely collocated. Our priority is to define and design exactly the kind of Analog Research Station that we need to pursue our goals of research, development, and demonstration, find an appropriate site, with hard choices being made with due consideration to land cost and logistics of construction and support. Then we can take up the idea of visitors centers, and yes, why not more than one. If the connection is made via web-cams, an inexpensive visitors mockup moonbase could be replicated in several tourist traffic nodes or wherever donor-sponsors wanted to place them.
Because money is an object, and Project Leto as conceived would cost an order of magnitude larger capitalization, our focus is on continuing to refine our design for a phase by phase realization of an initial lunar Analog station. See a presentiton on the current state of this work-in-progress brainstorming effort. PDF file Slide Show- PowerPoint Slide Show
The first project announced by the Moon Society was a design contest for a lunar flag. This contest was closed after several months, as only one entry had been submitted.
The
Moon-Mars Homestead Project
This was to have been a collaboration with a new initiative begun by members of the Mars Society in the summer of 2004 to "identify and demonstrate the technologies" that, using local resources, would allow us to move swiftly from an initial outpost to permanent settlement. A significant number of the technologies needed on Mars will be of relevance to establishing settlements on the Moon as well. There will, of course, be some technologies needed on the Moon that will not apply to Mars, and vice versa.However, Moon Society members had access only to the high-noise level general discussion list, and not to the inner circle of brainstorming activity, which would have been necessary if we were to learn anything from this activity. At some time in the future we could embark on our own parallel project. As the University of Luna Project (above) makes progress, the Research & Development that it promotes and supports would lay the foundations for such an endeavor.
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