Lunar homes: Tiny rooms, but they repel dust and solar storms

Within 25 years, the Home and Garden Channel may need to add some new entries to its lineup, shows like "Designing for the Space Suits" and "Moonscapers Challenge."

While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration prepares to finish building the space station, a small team of architects and engineers here at the Johnson Space Center is exploring designs for living and working quarters on the moon and beyond.

At this point, future occupants of Rancho Luna can select from any style module they want, as long as it's a tube. Ultimately, habitats may include multistory vertical tubes as well as simpler horizontal ones, designers say. For now, they are working with astronauts who have spent months in tight quarters to learn how to make a lunar outpost livable, if not lovable.

The ideas are taking shape in plywood and foam board to test everything from the optimal size of crew quarters to the desirability of putting a half bath close to the air lock for last-minute pit stops before the crew suits up.

As with the push to finish the space station and retire the shuttles by 2010, the driving force behind the effort is President Bush's vision for space exploration. While fresh US bootprints on the moon aren't expected to appear for more than a decade, it's not too early to think about where astronauts will stay for long- duration visits, says Larry Toups, who heads the effort at the space center's Advanced Projects Office.

"Over the course of the next five years or so, we'll be using very low-tech things" to identify future needs, he says. These needs are as vital as radiation shielding and dust control, and as mundane as whether to include exercise treadmills.

When the center's health gurus found out that Mr. Toups's team was building mock-ups, they brought over exercise equipment. After all, the space station has exercise gear to help astronauts blunt the effects of weightlessness.

But on the moon, Toups points out, gravity – as low as it is – means moonwalks will be more strenuous than spacewalks, where everything is weightless. "The debate becomes: Do we really need this amount of equipment? Won't they be getting exercise based on their EVAs?" he asks. If such extra-vehicular activity isn't enough, must exercise equipment be stowed immediately after use or should the living space be designed to allow astronauts to leave it out?

"I don't know how you are at home, but usually when something gets pulled out" in many homes, "it stays that way," he adds. "We're using the mock-ups to drive those kinds of discussions. That's the value that you get."

For those who don't demand a panoramic view of, say, the Mare Imbrium, Toups's colleague George Rains is pleased to show a hori-zontal version of a habitat module, complete with life-size photos of equipment racks hanging on the walls. Like a low-key realtor exploring possibilities with prospective buyers, he walks a small group of visitors through the two-floor tube, which measures 37 feet long and 15 feet in diameter. It's 9 feet longer and a foot wider than the main space-station modules.

Page: 1 | 2