The Moon: Humanity's Next Gas Station?
To colonize the Solar System, humanity needs a lunar base — not just a scientific station, but a real spaceport. Launching rockets from the Moon requires six times less fuel than from Earth, making it an ideal place to send interplanetary ships into space.
"As a general rule, rockets launched from Earth must burn about 25 kg of fuel to transport one kg of payload, whereas rockets launched from the Moon need to burn only about 4 kg of fuel to transport one kg of payload," the scientists write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
However, the idea of turning the Moon into a "space gas station" is hardly feasible yet — there are too many technological and logistical difficulties.
The regolith contains various minerals containing oxygen in their composition (for example, ilmenite — FeTiO3), but in order to extract oxygen, the soil must first be cleaned and then heated to high temperatures. The synthesis of one kilogram of liquid oxygen on the Moon requires about 24 kWh of energy — a significant cost even by Earth standards. Solar panels, despite their efficiency, do not provide sufficient power for large-scale fuel production. Even the ISS solar panels (about 100 kW) allow to obtain only about 90 kg of fuel per day, which is negligible for launching, for example, a fully loaded SpaceX Starship, which requires more than 80 tons of fuel.
Therefore, powerful energy sources are needed, such as nuclear reactors — and these technologies have not yet been developed even on Earth. So the transformation of the Moon into a "space gas station" is possible only in the very distant future.
