Does an Artemis Base Camp on the Moon Represent the “New Wild West” Without Natives?
NASA targets early 2028 for the Artemis IV mission to land human astronauts on the South Pole of the Moon. This will constitute a major milestone towards establishing a long-term human presence on the lunar surface. Is this the beginning of a new Wild West frontier without natives?
A permanent Artemis base camp on the lunar South Pole would serve as a testbed for developing technologies of power supply and resource utilization, needed for future human missions to Mars. The base camp would offer a fresh start where a new community of astronauts may thrive, pioneering novel ways of living, similar to the American Wild West frontier.
As in the days of the Gold Rush, companies and nations will seek to exploit resources like water ice, helium-3 (a rare isotope on Earth suitable for future fusion reactors), and rare Earth elements like scandium, yttrium, and 15 lanthanides (essential for electronics and advanced technologies). Underground reserves of water ice are precious for producing drinking water, and breaking water molecules by electrolysis into their constituent oxygen (for breathing) and hydrogen (for rocket fuel).
Just as lawlessness prevailed in the American Old West, enforcement of international law will be difficult on the Moon. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (accessible here) provides a framework, but is inadequate for governing private activities or disputes (as discussed here). Early lunar outposts by separate commercial enterprises will likely be small, isolated, and operate with a high degree of autonomy, leading to an environment where rules are made on the go, akin to early, unorganized mining camps.
Unlike Mars, the Moon never had an atmosphere and liquid water on its surface. Hence, the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it did not give rise to indigenous species of organisms. The lunar surface may therefore be regarded as a truly virgin land, without a moral obligation to protect native occupants. This does not apply to Mars, which may have hosted a rich ecosystem of life before it lost its atmosphere two billion years ago (as discussed here).
Whereas the American Old West was settled by individuals who could survive on their own, the lethal lunar environment — as described in my recent essay here, requires technological interdependence and a major community effort. Unlike the old American pioneers who could move West with limited means, lunar exploration is a “billionaire’s game,” accessible only to large organizations.
The hazardous lunar environment is far more dangerous to human health than that encountered by early American settlers, as it is bombarded by energetic cosmic-rays and micrometeorites (as discussed here), exposes shadowed regions to extremely cold temperatures (down to several tens of degrees above absolute zero), possess a low surface -gravity which triggers substantial bone mass loss in the human body over periods of years (as discussed here), and is covered by sharp shards of rock akin to broken glass (as discussed here).
The international legal system must update its agreements for space exploration, beyond the 60-year-old Outer Space Treaty (available here).
A much more major update will be needed once humanity will become ambitious enough to pursue destinations beyond the Solar System. Such ambitions will likely be pursued by space robots with artificial intelligence. They will represent a completely “new Wild West,” since international law does not apply in interstellar space — which may belong to other technological civilizations. If we find out that our backyard in the Solar System was invaded by alien technological probes, we will be inspired to visit the backyard of their senders. The Galileo Project under my leadership searches for such probes in its data sets.
Yesterday, I was pleased to hear the background music of Starman by David Bowie in a video clip tweeted by congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna about her visit to the Galileo Project at Harvard, accessible here and here. There is no better description of my day job than `Starman’.
Within 7.6 billion years, the Moon will return back to Earth as a result of its drag on the envelope of the Sun, which will likely engulf the Earth-Moon system at that time (as discussed here). As a result, all of our technological assets on the Moon will crash on Earth and international law will have no meaning because all nations will cease to exist on our planet.
The Universe is under no contract to follow our international treaties. With a deep sense of humility, our descendants will be wise to embark on an interstellar journey by then, sailing towards the unknown just as the American settlers did in the Old West. Their survival will be our only way to be remembered in the history books of the Milky-Way galaxy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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