page_title: Colonization of the Moon
section_title: On the surface
hierarchical_section_title: Colonization of the Moon / Transport / On the surface
caption_attribution_description: Artist's concept of possible exploration programs. A pressurized lunar rover is unloaded from a cargo lander. The rover will provide habitation volume for lunar crews, as well as extended exploration capabilities.
context_page_description: Colonization of the Moon is the proposed establishment of a permanent human community or robotic industries on the Moon, the closest astronomical body to Earth.
  Discovery of water in the soil at the lunar poles by Chandrayaan-1 in 2008–09 renewed interest in the Moon, after NASA missions in the 1990s suggested the presence of lunar ice. Locating a colony at one of the lunar poles would also avoid the problem of long lunar nights—about 354 hours long, half a lunar month—and allow the colony to take advantage of the continuous sunlight there for generating solar power.
  Permanent human habitation on a planetary body other than the Earth is one of science fiction's most prevalent themes. As technology has advanced, and concerns about the future of humanity on Earth have increased, the vision of space colonization as an achievable and worthwhile goal has gained momentum. Because of its proximity to Earth, the Moon is seen by many as the best and most obvious location for the first permanent human space colony. Currently, the main problem hindering the development of such a colony is the high cost of human spaceflight.
context_section_description: Lunar colonists would need the ability to transport cargo and people to and from modules and spacecraft, and to carry out scientific study of a larger area of the lunar surface for long periods of time. Proposed concepts include a variety of vehicle designs, from small open rovers to large pressurized modules with lab equipment, such as the Toyota rover concept.
  Rovers could be useful if the terrain is not too steep or hilly. The only rovers to have operated on the surface of the Moon (as of 2008) are the three Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRV), developed by Boeing, the two robotic Soviet Lunokhods and the Chinese Yutu rover in 2013. The LRV was an open rover for a crew of two, and a range of 92 km during one lunar day. One NASA study resulted in the Mobile Lunar Laboratory concept, a crewed pressurized rover for a crew of two, with a range of 396 km. The Soviet Union developed different rover concepts in the Lunokhod series and the L5 for possible use on future crewed missions to the Moon or Mars. These rover designs were all pressurized for longer sorties.
  If multiple bases were established on the lunar surface, they could be linked together by permanent railway systems. Both conventional and magnetic levitation (Maglev) systems have been proposed for the transport lines. Mag-Lev systems are particularly attractive as there is no atmosphere on the surface to slow down the train, so the vehicles could achieve velocities comparable to aircraft on the Earth. One significant difference with lunar trains, however, is that the cars would need to be individually sealed and possess their own life support systems.
  For difficult areas, a flying vehicle may be more suitable. Bell Aerosystems proposed their design for the Lunar Flying Vehicle as part of a study for NASA, while Bell proposed the Manned Flying System, a similar concept.
caption: Artist's concept of a lunar rover being unloaded from a cargo spacecraft
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