Can We Live On the Moon?
Welcome to humanity’s return to the Moon, where NASA’s Artemis III mission plans to land astronauts at the South Pole by 2028 whilst China independently pursues its own crewed landing by 2030, and the question has evolved from “can we go?” to “can we actually stay?” In this examination of permanent lunar habitation, we discover how living on the Moon requires solving simultaneous challenges of dust mitigation, radiation shielding, partial gravity physiology, and resource extraction whilst maintaining human psychology in an environment that remains profoundly indifferent to organic survival.
Our quantum-coherent correspondent guides us from Apollo’s fifty-year legacy through Artemis mission profiles and Chinese ILRS timelines, examining how Lunar Gateway stations and orbital refuelling enable regular access, why water-ice mining at permanently shadowed craters transforms the Moon from expensive destination to cosmic petrol station, and how future lunar residents might spend their days supervising autonomous mining rigs, maintaining far-side radio arrays, and playing low-gravity volleyball whilst monitoring their bone density metrics. Meanwhile, the real science reveals why living underground in ancient lava tubes provides essential radiation protection, how ISRU converts frozen regolith into breathable oxygen and rocket propellant, and why the greatest unknown remains what happens when someone gives birth at one-sixth Earth gravity.
Lunar Habitability Warning: This episode contains concepts such as “electrostatic dust with particle sizes below twenty micrometres that generates hydroxyl radicals in lung tissue,” “galactic cosmic ray exposure without magnetic field protection,” and “bone demineralisation rates in partial gravity environments that remain inadequately characterised.” Listeners may experience side effects including appreciation for Earth’s atmosphere, understanding why lava tubes make excellent radiation shelters, and the uncomfortable realisation that every breath on the Moon is recycled, every drop of water is extracted from ice or reclaimed from waste, and the first lunar-born generation may never be able to visit their ancestral planet due to crushing gravitational intolerance. Side effects are considered normal and may persist until you properly value the improbable habitability of your current location.
The Engineering Challenges: Dust, Radiation, and Gravity
The Moon presents a gauntlet of environmental hazards that make sustained habitation extraordinarily demanding. Lunar regolith—pulverized rock never weathered by wind or water—retains razor-sharp edges that abrade spacesuit materials, clog mechanisms, and scratch optical instruments. Particles smaller than twenty micrometres carry electrostatic charges that make them cling to virtually any surface whilst generating reactive hydroxyl radicals that damage DNA when inhaled.
Without a magnetic field or substantial atmosphere, the lunar surface experiences full exposure to galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. Annual radiation doses can reach 380 millisieverts—roughly seventy-six times higher than Earth’s surface background. Living underground in lava tubes or beneath metres of regolith provides shielding, but surface operations remain inherently hazardous.
The partial gravity question represents perhaps the greatest physiological unknown. The Moon’s one-sixth gravity sits precisely between microgravity—which we know causes bone loss, muscle atrophy, and cardiovascular changes—and Earth gravity, where humans evolved. Whether daily centrifuge sessions can maintain bone density during months-long rotations remains uncertain. Whether foetal development proceeds normally at one-sixth gravity remains entirely unstudied.
The ISRU Revolution: In-Situ Resource Utilisation fundamentally alters lunar economics. Water ice extracted from permanently shadowed craters and electrolysed into liquid hydrogen and oxygen becomes breathable air, potable water, and rocket propellant. Every kilogram of fuel produced on the Moon is a kilogram that doesn’t require launching from Earth’s gravity well at thousands of dollars per kilogram. The Moon transforms from barren destination into waystation—a critical node in cislunar transportation infrastructure.
A Day in Lunar Life (Circa 2046)
Imagine Selene Base, population fifty, built into an ancient lava tube near the South Pole. Residents wake to artificial dawn simulations—there’s no actual sunrise for another week given the polar location—and begin with mandatory centrifuge sessions to prevent skeletal demineralisation. Breakfast features hydroponically-grown vegetables and cultured proteins from on-site bioreactors, supplemented by quarterly resupply flights from Earth.
Work shifts involve supervising autonomous mining rigs in Shackleton Crater, where temperatures reach minus-two-hundred-and-thirty Celsius and robots scoop, heat, and sublimate ice for the ISRU Processing Plant. Surface excursions require fourth-generation spacesuits with electrostatic dust-repelling surfaces and enhanced radiation monitoring, whether maintaining the Tsiolkovsky Far-Side Radio Array or conducting geological surveys in unexplored lava tube branches.
Leisure time includes low-gravity volleyball—players leaping three metres into impossibly long volleys—and Earth-gazing from pressurised observation blisters, watching their home planet hang motionless in the black sky. Many describe this inverse Overview Effect as profoundly moving: Earth as constant, humbling presence rather than fleeting glimpse from orbit.
But this is not comfortable living. It’s analogous to a submarine or Antarctic research station—constant technological mediation between human biology and an environment that offers no forgiveness for equipment failure. Everything is recycled. Everyone is monitored. And the greatest unknown haunts the medical team: what happens when someone gives birth here?
The First Lunar Generation: Gestation in one-sixth gravity remains unstudied. Foetal bone development, cardiovascular formation, muscle growth—all evolved for Earth’s gravity. Would a child born on the Moon ever be able to visit Earth, or would our planet’s gravity prove physiologically crushing? Would they consider the Moon home and Earth the alien world? The ethical questions are vast. The scientific questions are vaster. Humanity’s first truly extraterrestrial generation might not consider themselves human settlers on the Moon—they might simply be lunar.
The Verdict: Training Ground, Filling Station, or Home?
Can we live on the Moon? The honest answer: not yet, but the path is becoming visible. The engineering challenges are formidable but tractable. Dust can be mitigated through electrostatic shielding and rigorous protocols. Radiation can be addressed by living subsurface. ISRU water-ice mining provides life support and fuel. The physiological unknowns of partial gravity remain the wildcard, but daily centrifuge training offers a plausible countermeasure.
The economic argument is compelling. A lunar base producing its own propellant fundamentally alters deep-space exploration economics. The Moon becomes not just destination but waystation—critical infrastructure enabling missions to Mars, asteroids, and beyond.
But is the Moon a permanent home? That depends on definition. It will likely never support open-air, self-sustaining biospheres. It will remain a place demanding constant technological mediation—more submarine than city. Its value lies not in replacing Earth but in extending humanity’s reach beyond it.
The strongest case for permanent lunar habitation is paradoxically not about the Moon at all. It’s about what the Moon teaches us. If we can solve dust, radiation, gravity, food production, and psychological resilience on a world three days from home, we develop the essential toolkit for surviving on Mars—six months away. The Moon is humanity’s training ground, filling station, and first true extraterrestrial community.
Whether it becomes more than that—whether children are born and raised under grey skies—depends on whether we invest not just in survival technology but in the infrastructure of belonging. That is a question not of engineering, but of will.
Join us for this exploration of lunar ambition and practical reality, where Artemis missions and Chinese programmes race to establish permanent presence, impossible dust and radiation challenges yield to underground habitats and ISRU processing, and the real science demonstrates why living on the Moon means redefining what “home” means for a species that evolved under very different gravitational and atmospheric conditions. Because in the multiverse of lunar habitation, we’re all just highly-evolved primates attempting to inhabit an airless rock through sheer determination and advanced life support systems whilst learning precisely how extraordinary Earth actually is.
Source: Multiple sources including NASA Artemis programme documentation, China Manned Space Agency publications, and peer-reviewed research on lunar environmental hazards and ISRU technologies.