EVALUATION OF POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS FOR A LUNAR BASE

There has been renewed interest for further space exploration beyond LEO (NASA's new Vision for Space Exploration, ESA's Aurora program, Chinese and Indian proposed lunar missions). Consequently, the workforce that will be undertaking this next stage of space exploration are either students in today’s schools and universities or just beginning their careers in the space sector. To represent this group of future program managers, engineers, physicists, biologists, and architects the MoonMars Workshop (MMW) was formed to act as a forum and showcase the visions and concerns of the next generation of space workforce focusing on the manned and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars. This paper presents the first steps in an investigation and assessment of lunar base designs and concepts, bringing up challenges, questions and some hypotheses that will be tackled over the coming years within these new national space initiatives. The added value of this MMW project is the combination of analysis of lunar base design concepts from various perspectives including: systems engineering, architectural design, and social-interaction analysis.