How Much Would it Cost to Live on the Moon? | Wendover Productions

0:00Moon colonization is something that humans have dreamt about for centuries, and it's entirely possible. It's just a matter of cost. Bringing both humans and supplies the 234,000 miles to the lunar surface costs an enormous amount of money, and it's difficult to justify the cost of taxpayers. So how much would it cost? Well, that's a complicated question. For the sake of simplicity, let's say we're doing a one-year return mission with four astronauts using NASA technology. The first thing we'll calculate is the cost of getting there, and we'll need a rocket. The Saturn 5 is the only rocket to have ever existed that is powerful enough to take humans beyond low Earth orbit. The problem is, all 15 of them are long retired. The Saturn 5 had a lunar payload capacity of 90,000 pounds, and a per launch cost of 189 million 1971 dollars, or $1 billion 123 million 2016 dollars, which works out to $12,500 per pound transported to the moon. That may seem like a lot, but that would mean that the average American, weighing 159 pounds, could travel to the moon on technology that existed when computers looked like this for a mere $2 million dollars.

1:04I know you know that that's not right. There are two problems in that calculation. First off, that doesn't include research and development costs. A staggering $6.4 billion was spent to develop the Saturn 5, which is $38 billion in 2016 dollars. So, considering that the Saturn 5 was launched 13 times, that works out to just over $4 billion per launch, or $44,000 per pound. But, to colonize the moon, you don't just need to get things to the moon, you need to get them on the moon. The budget allocated to develop and build 12 lunar landers back in the Apollo days was $18 billion 2016 dollars, or $1.5 billion per lander. Once again, the lunar landers are no longer in service, so we're including the R&D costs and our calculations. We need two landers to bring our four astronauts to the moon, and these have to be able to return, so they need to land with both launch systems and fuel. So that's $1.5 billion per lander, plus $4 billion per Saturn 5 launch, so $11 billion total to carry our astronauts to the moon and back. During the Apollo days, NASA also developed a module called the LMTruck, which was designed to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon without a crew.

2:08Not only could these land with 11,000 pounds of cargo, but a Saturn 5 rocket could launch with two of them. Using the truck, we can bring our per pound cost of bringing cargo to the lunar surface down to a reasonable $318,000. Believe it or not, that's a bargain. So, once our four astronauts get to the moon, they need somewhere to live. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC did a super detailed study on how much the development and construction of a lunar base would cost. For our four person base, it would cost $20 billion to develop, plus one of our $4 billion launches, equaling $24 billion. That's a little steep. For a budget option, we could go with something like Bigelow Airspace's B-330 spacecraft. These are essentially inflatable buildings that work in space, and with a bit of modification, they could conceivably be altered to work on the surface of the moon. Bigelow Airspace is a commercial company. They've said that the B-330 would rent out for $1.25 million per day, or $465 million for a one-year mission. Considering that's the first time I've said million when talking about a current day cost, that's practically nothing.

3:11Until you consider the problem of getting the B-330 to the moon, it weighs 43,000 pounds, so it'd take four LM truck landings and two Saturn V launches for a total of $14 billion. Well, that's a little better than $24 billion. Let's move on to food. For food, the best, but not simplest, solution, is to just grow it. One lunar greenhouse developed by the University of Arizona could produce about 5.5 pounds of food per day. In order to have variety, NASA would probably choose a few different crops that would do well on the moon. For our calculations, we'll see that the greenhouse would be filled with 76% sweet potato, 16% tomato, and 10% strawberry. That'll come out to 4.3 pounds of sweet potato, 0.8 pounds of tomato, and 0.4 pounds of strawberries per day. Sweet potatoes have 389 calories per pound, or 1,675 calories per day per greenhouse. The tomatoes and strawberries will make 65 and 60 calories per day per greenhouse, respectively, so that's 1800 calories per day per greenhouse total. Each of our four astronauts would need about 3,000 calories per day, equaling 12,000 total per day, so we'll need 6.67 greenhouses total, and since you can't really bring two thirds of greenhouse, we'll bring 7, and have surplus food, which is great for backup.

4:19Each lunar greenhouse will require 0.2 pounds of fertilizer per day, which adds up to 1.4 pounds of fertilizer per day for our seven greenhouses and 510 pounds for the year. So, for the greenhouses growing scheme, we'll need to physically bring the greenhouses, which each way a full metric ton, or 2,200 pounds, which, for the seven of them, is 15,400 pounds, or 4.9 billion dollars, plus another 162 million dollars for fertilizer. The International Space Station is a really good example of how water resources could be managed on the moon. Every bit used on the ISS is recycled. That includes water from condensation, showers, sweat, and yes, urine. It of course gets filtered heavily, but the water in astronauts' food is the same that came from, you know, other stuff. NASA says that without water recycling, 40,000 pounds of water would be needed to sustain four astronauts on the moon. That would cost 12.7 billion dollars to transport. With water recycling, we can bring that down to 5,110 pounds of water for the year. Except, we have our greenhouse. Quite a bit of water is needed to grow the plants. 6,920 pounds worth to be specific.

5:24So that's 12,030 pounds of water for the year, which would cost 3.825 billion dollars to bring. So, next we need air, as an oxygen to breathe. A human at moderate activity levels needs 1.85 pounds of oxygen per day. So that means we need 7.4 pounds of oxygen per day for our four astronauts, 2,701 pounds per year, which would cost 860 million dollars. But wait, because of our greenhouses and the amazing process of photosynthesis, we don't. One lunar greenhouse produces 0.75 pounds of oxygen per day. So our 7 create 5.25 pounds of oxygen each day. So we only need to bring 2.15 pounds of oxygen per day, or 785 pounds for the year, which will cost a mere 250 million dollars. You may ask why we don't use an oxygen scrubber, and the simple answer is that it would cost quite a bit more to develop, build, and deliver a scrubber capable of creating enough clean air for our crew of four. It's just cheaper and less risky to bring all the necessary oxygen there. In terms of power, it's been proposed that the best way to bring electricity to the moon is to literally bring a nuclear reactor.

6:27It'd be a little one, but it would carry out fission reactions on the surface of the moon. NASA has only proposed not developed this system, but they said it could be developed, flight tested, and delivered to the moon for only 1.4 billion dollars. Now, we have everything we need. So, to answer the question you came here for, how much would it cost to live a year on the moon? I'll just say before giving my answer that these were all estimates, and far from perfect. For example, it's likely that if NASA ever actually colonized the moon, it would be decades in the future, when commercial space companies are far more developed, and the cost of transport would be much less. Spaceflight industries already sells cargo space to lunar orbit for a mere 10 million dollars per 220 pounds. With prices that low, it may not be long until living on the moon and other celestial bodies becomes commercially advantageous through mining and tourism. The very day this video goes up, Elon Musk is anticipated to announce SpaceX's plans to get to Mars, including a massive rocket they'll be able to carry as many as 220 thousand pounds to Mars, for less than any previous rocket, which could make Martian colonization economically feasible.

7:32So, after adding everything up, my conservative estimate for one year with four astronauts on the moon comes out to $36 billion. That's 98 million per day, 4.1 million per hour, 68,300 dollars per minute, or 1,138 dollars per second, more than an average family makes in a year in Madagascar. Is it worth it? Maybe. If we ever have to leave Earth because of the environmental change that we've started, that 36 billion dollars might be the best investment we've ever made. After all, living on the moon, or Mars, or some other celestial body is a crucial first step in learning how to survive when the Earth is no longer. I hope you enjoyed this Went Over Productions video. Make sure to click subscribe to get all my future videos right when they come out. I've noticed that whenever I say something unique or clever about my Twitter, like I did two weeks ago, loads more people follow me. And now that I've said this, my guess is that more people follow me over at my account, at Went Over Pro.

8:32There's also a fan moderated subreddit for my channel, which you can find at www.reddit.com slash r slash Went Over Productions. I'd also like to give a quick thanks to Shutterstock.com for giving me a bunch of free footage to make this video better. Lastly, this video topic was suggested to me by Twitter user at the Boomer, so big thanks to them. If you have an idea for a video, tweet it at me, and if I use it, I'll credit you and be eternally grateful. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in two weeks for another Went Over Productions video. Bye.