Earth To All Home Builders...

For all real estate developers who have been affected by the housing market, do I have news for you:  NASA announced that they are looking outside the agency for home-builders to assist them in constructing the lunar space station! 
    
When I first saw MSNBC's article "Wanted: Home-builders for the moon," I immediately thought of my father, a home-builder in the DC area who has complained about slowing real estate construction.  After shooting him a quick email {Dad,  NASA is looking for home-builders to build the space station on the moon!  Interested? (Click on the blue underlined link to see the article)Colleen} and receiving his response {Colleen, A little too far to commute. Dad}, I decided to share with the blogosphere the construction opportunities that lay outside the stratosphere, where the lack of an atmosphere and the uncertain state of the moon's hydrosphere present significant challenges to the spacestationbuilding-sphere.

As I discussed earlier in "Are you from Outer Space?," NASA announced their plans to construct the first lunar space station that will be able to able to house astronauts for up to 180 days a stretch.  Building will begin in 2010 and the moon's first inhabitants should be ready to move in by 2020.  However, this is the first attempt to construct a permanent structure on the moon and, as NASA's  "Exploring the Moon: Teacher's Guide" puts it, "The moon is not like Earth." In other words, there are a couple of details that make building an architectural structure in outer space a little more complicated than you might have thought and these are the challenges that have prompted NASA to seek assistance from outside the agency for the construction of this moon base.

Where Shall We Build It?

Before construction on the lunar station can begin, they must first decide where they should build the station.  Unfortunately, the moon is not quite as hospitable to human life as, say, Planet Earth.  Temperatures fluctuate between -387 and 253°F, water resources are questionable, sunlight reaches only select locations, and there's little atmosphere.  Nonetheless, NASA engineers have reportedly selected the future address of the station, on a rim of a northern crater, picked for its proximity to potential water reserves, relatively nice temperature, and reception of sunlight. 

What Shall We Build? 

Building a structure on the moon that is capable of sustaining human life for up to six months at a time has its difficulties, especially because NASA hopes to use this permanent structure to conduct research and head the exploration of Mars, too. Since there's no Home Depot on the moon, yet, all the materials used to create this structure must be brought from earth.  Therefore, rather than using heavier metals and previously used building structures, MSNBC reports that they are looking into building an inflatable structure instead.

Bienhoff explained that the metal-hulled modules used on the international space station couldn't make it to the moon because they're too heavy.  The typical space station module weighs 30,000 pounds — but NASA's moonships, as currently planned, would have a maximum payload capacity of only 13,000 pounds.

For more details on how NASA foresees the actual construction process, check out this slide show:  How to build a moon base.

For More Information...

If you think you might be interested in joining such companies as Boeing and Lockheed Martin in assisting NASA's construction efforts, you may want to take a test run with the "Virtual Astronaut."  I'm not sure how helpful this activity actually is because a) after choosing my astronaut name (Skeeter110), I quickly lost interest during the Neurosensory Jeopardy Activity and b) I've never been to outer space.

And if you want to see an example of an astronaut's experience, might I recommend looking into U.S. Navy Capt. Lisa Nowak.  Her story has it all: an outer space love affair, an earthly lover's quarrel, a cross country journey to confront the other woman, and attempted murder charges. 

Comments

[Drew M from Zillow]

Fantastic post Colleen! Makes me wonder -- when will wal-mart expand to the moon? :)