Abstract
Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of small sites of interest on the Moon's surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. The Moon presents finite and scarce areas with rare topography or concentrations of resources of special value. Locations of interest to science, notably for astronomy, include the Peaks of Eternal Light, the coldest of the cold traps and smooth areas on the far side. Regions richest in physical resources could also be uniquely suited to settlement and commerce. Such sites of interest are both few and small. Typically, there are fewer than ten key sites of each type, each site spanning a few kilometres across. We survey the implications for different kinds of mission and find that the diverse actors pursuing incompatible ends at these sites could soon crowd and interfere with each other, leaving almost all actors worse off. Without proactive measures to prevent these outcomes, lunar actors are likely to experience significant losses of opportunity. We highlight the legal, policy and ethical ramifications. Insights from research on comparable sites on Earth present a path toward managing lunar crowding and interference grounded in ethical and practical near-term considerations.
This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades'.
Recommended Citation
Elvis, M., Krolikowski, A., & Milligan, T. (2021). Concentrated Lunar Resources: Imminent Implications for Governance and Justice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 379(2188) Royal Society.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0563
Department(s)
History and Political Science
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for Science, Technology, and Society
Second Research Center/Lab
Intelligent Systems Center
Keywords and Phrases
Moon; Resources; Astronomy; Law; Policy; Governance; Space Exploration
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1364-503X; 1471-2962
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2021 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
11 Jan 2021
Included in
Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons, Geology Commons, Political Science Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, The Sun and the Solar System Commons
Comments
The T.M. contribution to the publication was supported by King’s College London, with an International Collaborations grant connected to the Cosmological Visionaries project. M.E. thanks the Aspen Center for Physics, funded by NSF grant no. 1066293, for their hospitality when this paper was initiated. A.K.’s contribution was enabled by a 2018 University of Missouri Research Board grant for the Aircraft, Spacecraft, and Statecraft project.