South Korea enters the lunar base race

South Korea has said it wants to establish a lunar base by 2045. The proposal - which is part of a wider roadmap unveiled by the Korea AeroSpace Administration - will include missions in low Earth orbit, microgravity research, and solar science. With renewed lunar ambitions from the US, China and others, it appears that the new space race is accelerating. But is this a realistic prospect? Here’s Richard Hollingham from the Space Boffins Podcast…

Richard - South Korea has got a track record in space. In fact, it has a satellite around the Moon right now, and it has had one astronaut—but only one astronaut. It doesn't actually have a human space programme at the moment. Of course, the US has its plan to go to the Moon, but no firm plans to build a Moon base yet. There's Russia. I think the most serious contender is probably China, and then other nations like India, the Arab nations—and remember, they have a huge amount of money—are also keen on exploiting and exploring the Moon. So I think this will happen. It's just that I don't think it's going to happen immediately.

Chris - What is the draw, though? What is it about the Moon that they are potentially seeking to exploit?

Richard - I think, as much as anything, it's a political ambition to go to the Moon. It's a political ambition to put the flag there, to explore beyond the Earth and to exploit beyond the Earth. It's also a stepping stone. So if we imagine humanity leaving the Earth, heading to the Moon, then maybe exploiting asteroids—now, there is money to be made potentially with rare earth minerals and just metal in asteroids—and then the next stepping stone on to Mars. If you can't live on the Moon, there's no way we can sensibly look to go to Mars and move beyond the Earth. A new golden age of exploration, of—use the word hesitantly—colonisation, and just moving out beyond the Earth into the wider solar system.

Chris - Have we got the first clue, though, how to actually build a viable, sustainable base on another celestial body like the Moon?

Richard - Sort of, yes. One thing that's been talked about—but we don't know these exist, or we don't have exact proof they exist, we haven't seen them—is that there are probably lava tubes on the Moon. So we could live in lava tubes, effectively living deep underground on the Moon. The European Space Agency has actually done a lot of work on Moon bricks—sintering bricks, essentially making bricks out of lunar dust, very much like you'd make a brick on Earth. And using the power of the Sun on the Moon, focusing that—I've actually been to the facility in Germany, and it does look like a sort of Bond villain lair, with this giant mirror focusing a beam of light. I think it's The Man with the Golden Gun, actually. Very similar to that—focusing a beam of light to create really intense heat, and just blending together—sintering, they call it—Moon dust into these quite ugly bricks. And then the idea is you sort of join them together. You have kind of bricklayers on the Moon—probably robotic bricklayers—that join all these up, perhaps over some sort of airtight inflatable. So an airtight inflatable they live underneath, and then these bricks around the outside. And, I mean, maybe a window so you can see out and see the view of Earth. So there has been a lot done on this, and it would make sense. And it's what they say about either living on the Moon or living on Mars—you've got to live off the land. Otherwise, you've got to carry everything from Earth. That's going to cost a huge amount of money to take something to the Moon. Whereas if you can live off the land—if you can use lunar dust, if you can use water on the Moon to drink and maybe provide oxygen—and then recycle as well. So any bits of stray spacecraft kicking around, you rip them up, melt them down, and make something else out of them. So that is the potential. So we sort of do know how to do it, and I think we could, but it's going to take a lot of will and an awful lot of money.

Chris - Well, on that point, most space activity is collaborative—because it involves a lot of know-how, it involves a lot of risk, and people like to share that risk, both in terms of sharing the brainpower and the cost, and the technological demands. So is South Korea just throwing its cap in the ring and saying, “We'll team up with people,” or are they saying, “We want to go this alone—this is our single-minded, single-country ambition”?

Richard - I wonder if it's sort of saying, “Well, look, we want to be in this as well,” and they will join with one of these blocs that's emerging. So at the moment, we've got the Artemis bloc, which is NASA's funded project to return to the Moon with astronauts—Europe is part of that. Of course, the US used to collaborate and work with Russia—I mean, it still does on the space station—that's not going to continue with the Moon. So you've got China as this other bloc, and then where does South Korea go? You could imagine a third bloc emerging, where you had South Korea, India, African nations, and maybe Arab nations—with all the money—as this third bloc also going to the Moon. Or maybe South Korea will partner with China or with Artemis. So it's really interesting—these geopolitical blocs on Earth joining together to work in space.

Chris - And on that, when they get there, who owns the Moon? Do we have a sort of legal framework for this, or is this literally a race, and whoever plants their flag—that's their bit?

Richard - Yeah, it's a really interesting question, actually. A lot of lawyers are working on that. When you look at the various agreements—there are lunar agreements, there's the Artemis Accords—and you look at who the signatories are, and it's always all the signatures apart from the key people who are actually doing the things. So the Artemis Accords, for example—which is peaceful cooperation in space, the way we would operate on the Moon—that's not been signed by Russia or China. So potentially, they're all aiming for the same place—the Shackleton Crater on the south pole of the Moon. You could actually imagine a US base with maybe some Japanese astronauts there, European astronauts, Canadian astronauts—and then on the other side of the crater, or a few hundred metres away, a Chinese base with Russians—and neither talking to each other. I mean, that's exactly what's going to emerge at the moment.