Developing the Moon: Economic Viability and Tourism Potential

Humanity can develop the Moon into a thriving economy through lunar tourism and innovative technology.

### Developing the Moon: A Vision for Lunar Tourism and Industry
* 🌕 "The best part about these electrolysis reactors is that the byproduct is **oxygen**, which can **supply habitats** and **produce rocket fuel** from lunar regolith."
* 🔬 Boston Metals is developing these reactors to not only support lunar operations but also to clean up the steel-making industry on Earth, which contributes **over 10% of industrial CO2 emissions annually**.
* 💰 The estimated cost for developing a lunar ship is **$50 million**, with an additional **$80 million for five launches**, totaling a lunar launch cost of **$100 million**.
* 🚀 A conservative analysis suggests that if lunar tourism tickets are priced at **$600,000**, potential profits could reach about **$517 million** within two years.
* 👨 To sustain operations, 20 employees would work on the Moon for six-month contracts, costing approximately **$8 million in wages**, which adds **$727 to each ticket price**.
* 🔋 The project requires **two nuclear reactors** to power the lunar outpost, with an estimated total development cost of around **$5 billion** over **8 to 10 years**.
* 📈 With a target market of over **30 million potential ticket buyers**, a ticket price of **$50,000** could yield a profit potential **exceeding $15 billion**, showcasing the **economic viability of lunar tourism**.
* 🌌 Ultimately, the goal is to **kickstart a lunar economy** that not only supports tourism but also lays the groundwork for **future industries and technologies** developed on the Moon.

### Building a Lunar Economy: From Outpost to Colony
* 🌕 To establish a lunar economy, a series of missions will be undertaken, including **transporting electrolysis reactors and human crews to the Moon** over a year with multiple trips costing around **$600 million**.
* 💰 The cost of nuclear reactors, estimated to be in the **tens of thousands**, will be compared to industrial furnace costs, which typically range from **$10,000 to $500,000**.
* 🚀 The transportation from low Earth orbit to the Moon is still uncertain, but each flight is expected to **cost less than $10 million**, potentially around **$1 million** due to the long lifespan of the nuclear ferry.
* 🏗 A significant task involves **burying a radiation shield** under **14,700 cubic meters of regolith**, which will take about **12 days** for a rover to excavate and transport.
* 🔧 Engineers will construct the outpost over two weeks, ensuring it can **withstand extreme lunar temperatures** before leaving it unoccupied for monitoring.
* 🌌 The goal is to develop a **lunar economy** that can support a **solar system-spanning civilization**, starting with the construction of a **lunar hotel** and expanding to a **shipyard**.
* 📊 With a projected cost of **$130 million for each lunar ship turned outpost**, the cumulative expenses for building multiple structures and transporting necessary equipment will be **substantial**.
* 📈 As lunar tourism grows, the potential for profit increases, and with a market of over **11,000 millionaires**, the demand for lunar trips could lead to a **significant economic boost for the Moon**.

[Music] This is the first of three animations showing in great detail how to take the first steps in developing the Moon. How to go from nothing to something. How to transform the Moon's magnificent desolation into useful and habitable territory. This and the subsequent animations follow the proposed methods laid out in the book How to Develop the Moon in order to establish an outpost. According to this method, six things need to happen. First, Starship or a Starship-like launch vehicle must exist as a mature technology. Through the efforts of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab, this is on track to exist sometime in the 2030s. SpaceX's Starship has a massive lead, but for fairness to all, we'll call them lunar ships. The second thing that needs to happen is Generation 4 Trio field micronuclear reactors must also exist as mature tech, able to fit into a standard 40ft shipping container. Through the efforts of X Energy, BWXT, Westinghouse Nuclear, and others, this tech is also on track for 2030. These

micro reactors will be able to deliver a whopping 2 megawatts of electricity. Third, research design and testing of a lunar environment excavating vehicle, such as a remote-controlled backhoe loader, will need to be undertaken. Fourth, some sort of initial survey missions need to happen, something like Artemis. Man has not stepped foot on the moon in over 51 years; we should not immediately jump to base creation, walk before running. Fifth, some of the cargo that needs to be delivered to the lunar surface, necessary for this undertaking, is so large that it makes the most sense to land a lunar ship sideways, doing a belly flop before touchdown. This will require some retrofitting and will need to be successfully demonstrated on the lunar surface before attempted with cargo. The fact that Starship is designed to belly flop during its Earth descent stage, where the gravity and turbulent forces of the atmosphere are much stronger than on the moon, bodes well for the viability of this maneuver. Finally, the outpost itself needs to be designed from a lunar ship capable of performing one.

of these belly flop landing maneuvers, you see everything a lunar outpost would need. The lunar ship already has, except for adequate radiation shielding. You could just send a lunar ship to the moon and use it as a base, but to protect it from radiation, it needs to be buried under 3 m or about 10 ft of regolith, hence why it needs to land sideways. Unmanned, one arrives ahead of any [Music] astronauts. Here it will stay. It is no longer a vehicle but a vessel, a ship turned structure. This will be the outpost once the dust has settled. Another unmanned ship [Music] arrives [Music]. Its payload is so large it must also land sideways. Inside is a lunar excavation vehicle and a lunar lorry, but most importantly, it carries a 2 megawatt micronuclear reactor housed in a 40-ft shipping container. Like the outpost before it, this ship too will never leave. Of course, it would be cheaper if this ship were reusable, able to unload its cargo and then return to Earth. However,

due to the geometry of its payloads, it must land sideways so the vehicles may be unloaded in a similar fashion to that of a cargo plane. Even though launching from this position is technically possible, it would increase risk, complexity, and require an increased fuel allowance, decreasing the payload weight capacity such that a second cargo ship launch and return would be necessary, greatly reducing the cost that would be saved through reusing it. As if that were not enough, the nuclear reactor, despite being housed in a 40ft shipping container, does still need to be housed in an exterior shelter buried under regolith to protect it from the harsh lunar environment and allow for maintenance access. So, like the ship-turned-Outpost, this ship is not wasted in a one-way trip as it maintains reusability through its use as a now shelter for the nuclear reactor that will power not only this initial Outpost but all future expansions as well. Both the lunar Lori and the excavator are primarily remote-controlled, but the Lori also has a cabin allowing it to function

as a transport vehicle for humans, its size may seem like overkill, but it will be of great use to us in the future. A third ship arrives; this one lands normally, vertically. This one is a human lander, carrying the lunar engineers' task to construct this outpost. Most of their work can be accomplished from the comfort of their ship, controlling the vehicles remotely. This ship effectively acts as a construction headquarters, but here they are not safe. The ship's steel hull is not thick enough to protect them from the ambient radiation. It is safe for no more than 14 days; therefore, their mission will only last 2 weeks. 2 weeks to turn these ships into a permanent outpost. The engineers get to work. The first task is to remove the nose cone, revealing an airlock inside. The now-empty fuel tanks have to be off-gassed and cut open to make room for habitation panels. Stowed inside the fairing are laid out like floorboards, creating a flat surface to stand on. Outside, the ship's engines need to be removed and transported into the

human lander, which will return them to Earth for reuse, greatly reducing costs. A radiator array is erected and integrated to shield the outpost from radiation, making it habitable for more than 2 weeks. It will need to be buried under roughly 14,700 cubic meters of regolith. This is by far the largest task this small backhoe rover can excavate and transport 50 cubic meters of regolith every hour. It needs to move 14,700 cubic meters. This will take 12 days, the majority of the 2E mission duration. Once accomplished, final inspections are undertaken. The engineers then depart here. The outpost will remain unoccupied for more than 2 months, where it will be constantly monitored during two lunar day-night cycles to see how the structural integrity holds up to the drastically fluctuating temperatures between the freezing cold night and the scorching hot day. If there is a failure or breach in the hole, it is best that it happens before humans are present. During this time, the ship housing the nuclear

reactor is also buried. The back ho remotely controlled from Earth. The rear of the structure is left exposed. Later the engines will be removed and the hole cut open for access. It may not look like much now but it's a start. A life-bearing stainless steel Stellar seed planted in Barren lunar soil. When at last the sun breaks over the Tranquil lunar Horizon man will return this time to stay. Now that you've got yourself a Nifty little lunar Outpost what comes after. How do you go from an outpost to a fully-fledged lunar Colony. Do you just continue to build a lunar settlement one sideways Landing ship at a time. No if we're talking about developing the moon rather than just visiting then we're going to need to start building on the moon using local resources. Here on Earth we build buildings out of resources found on Earth. Earth is a big ball of resources. Earth buildings are made out of the earth and we need to do the same on the moon. Build structures out of the Moon. Moon buildings made on the moon of

the Moon. Let's get straight to the point. These need to be made of steel, not aluminum domes or some other material. Strong, tried-and-true steel. The moon's fluctuating temperatures impart material stresses that only steel can tolerate. Luckily, we have the technology now to make steel on the moon, out of the Moon, using these chromium anode electrolysis reactors developed by Boston Metals, a company located in, yep, you guessed it, Wurn, Massachusetts. This reactor can melt lunar regolith into high-purity molten iron. Adding carbon and some other alloy to this molten iron will yield various types of steel. You can then cast and press the steel into useful shapes. Let's keep it simple and just go with panels and beams. Panels and beams make dreams. You're going to need two of these reactors. I don't have time to explain why. It's basically a step distinction. Just trust me or don't. I don't care. I'll put the long explanation in the description of this video for you untrusting, pedantic nerds out there. You

know who you are. You'll also need a caster and press and ladle and shelves and tools and a rolling table and a few other things I'm not going to animate, so just use your imagination. All right, so it will take two lunar ship launches to deliver these reactors and all the corresponding supplies I was too lazy to animate, and you have way more than enough juice to power them using the nuclear reactor powering the Outpost. But where do you put them? Well, since these reactors will be dealing with sharp radiated regolith, it's probably best to keep them outside the shelter. You could literally just plop them down exposed on the dusty lunar surface. They'd be fine, but it would be ideal to shelter them a little so the people working with them will be exposed to less radiation and can work more hours, long grueling productive hours, just like steel meals here on Earth. Fortunately, there is a bunch of unused space in the empty fuel tanks of that nuclear reactor ship, so just cut them open and pop these bad

boys into the back there and you're off. Oh, and I almost forgot. You know what the best part about these electrolysis reactors is? The byproduct is oxygen. That's right. You can supply all your habitats with oxygen and make rocket fuel by using this oxygen produced from turning reg lith into steel. That's actually how these reactors were invented originally, an attempt to extract oxygen from lunar regolith. Now they're being developed by Boston Metals to clean up the dirty, polluting steel-making industry here on Earth, which accounts for over 10% of industrial CO2 emissions annually. This is because on Earth, to make steel instead of cast iron, you have to actually remove the carbon from the molten iron to get the carbon content down to something like 2%. And this is done during lateral metallurgy, where the removed carbon is emitted as CO2 gas. Earth has quintillions of tons of carbon. It's one major reason why life exists here. Here and so the iron ore from which steel is made has naturally

high carbon content, but on the moon, we actually have the opposite problem: almost no carbon whatsoever. The Moon instead has tons and tons of oxygen. Lunar regolith is roughly 40% oxygen, which is why we yield lots of oxygen when melting the regolith to make this steel. But to actually make steel instead of raw iron, we actually need to add carbon back into the mix, which we will need to import from Earth. So, we'll need to import lots and lots of coke. No, not that kind of coke, the other kind, as well as some other alloys for use during lateral metallurgy later. We can get our additive alloys from other sources like asteroids or craters made by asteroids, but for now, in these very early infantile stages, it's more practical to just import them. All right, now you can make steel from the Moon, and soon we can build a moon-made building. But before we can do that, we're going to need to create one last structure from a ways landing lunar ship: a machine shop. It will come

equipped with a 5x CNC machine and a 3D printer and tools and work surfaces. Now that we have steel, we can use this facility to machine it into useful shapes, amenities, things, struts, nuts, and bolts, whatever the less we have to import, the better. Dig a big hole, slap in a scaffolding from those beams you produced, and then slap on those panels to those beams to make it a big steel box. That's what buildings are, right? Big steel boxes. Well, at least on the moon they are, since you're going to have a damned hard time finding enough trees and plaster to do anything else. Add an airlock, make it habitable by filling this steel box with gas and polymers and stuff, lights, life support, ventilation, ducts, copper wiring, gaskets, pipes, pumps, rails, nozzles, crown molding. Most of these will have to be imported from Earth, but a lot of things can be made in our fancy 3D printer-equipped lunar machine shop. However, these details and what shade of white carpet we should

put in the bathrooms, and where we should eat out tonight, are all items I'll leave to the engineers. Remember all that regolith that used to be in this hole before it was a hole by which a hole was made via the relocation of said regolith? Well, now that you made this hole no longer a hole by filling it with other things, you can now move that regolith back onto the top of the not-hole, where it will function as the upper radiation shield. In other words, bury it. Why? Because of radiation. Aren't you paying attention? Some more quick notes I'm too lazy to animate. We have liftoff. The golden question: what is the cost to deliver a 200-ton payload to the lunar surface using a Starship? As of the making of this video, nobody knows for sure, but we can guess. Fortunately, we don't have to guess because the people at Payload Research have guessed really educatedly for us in a 36-page report, which breaks down Starship's costs piece by piece and explains both how much Starship costs to build and launch.

as well as how much SpaceX might charge for it. Their conclusions are 90 million falling to 35 million after a few years. This is the build cost and does not include R&D amortization, which will increase the cost of the initial Starships to hundreds of millions. But those initial Starships, which are basically going to be prototypes, will be used by SpaceX to build out their Starlink constellation. So, the extra cost will be mostly internal. The report also estimates a 10 million flight cost for fuel, inspections, refurbishment, and other miscellaneous items like ground control operations. Importantly, the report estimates a 5-use lifespan for each Starship, although this is highly conservative and it is likely to be much, much higher. Currently, Starship has an internal fairing volume of 1,000 cubic meters and can deliver 200 tons to low Earth orbit. But SpaceX plans to extend the size of the fairing in future ships to reach 300 tons to LEO. So, with fairly high confidence, I believe that we can at least expect these values: a 50 million

build cost 10 million, flight cost to low earth orbit 5, use lifespan 200 tons of payload capacity, and a 1,000 cubic met fairing. The issue, however, is we are not talking about developing low earth orbit; we are talking about developing the moon, and thus the flight cost will be higher. Currently, once such a large and heavy rocket reaches low earth orbit, it has exhausted most of its fuel. SpaceX's solution to this is to set up an orbital refueling depot, basically a Starship retrofitted to be a tanker that remains in orbit and receives the leftover fuel from 5 to 8 launches until its tanks are full. Then, any ship designated to carry people and cargo to the moon or elsewhere launches into orbit and rendezvous with the full tanker, which then transfers its fuel into the lunar-bound ship, giving it enough juice to get to its destination and back. So, for each launch to the Moon, 5 to 8 fuel launches and orbital docking sequences have to be performed. If we take the

higher number eight, and each of those costs 10 million. Then our flight cost to the moon and back is 80 million, 50 million build cost, 80 million flight cost to the Moon, 5 use lifespan, 200 ton, 1,000 cuic M payload capacity. Our per flight cost is 90 million. Our cost per kilogram to the lunar surface is $450. Let's round up to 100 million per launch and $500 per kilogram. Now I'm going to attempt The Impossible and try to calculate how much this strategy would cost to underscore its viability in concrete terms. This may sound like a boring topic, but this video is worth your time and attention because it will illustrate just how close we are to taking that first Monumental step towards a future in which we inhabit solar system-spanning civilization. But take that hope with a grain of salt because this is going to be some pretty serious back-of-the-envelope educated guesstimating. The first thing we need to estimate are our research and development costs R&D UPF front. We are

not looking at the R&D cost of developing a Starship SL lunar ship type launch vehicle. These are separate because while being able to develop the moon does depend on this technology existing, this technology isn't being developed with the sole intent of developing the Moon. Starship's use as a vehicle for building out and maintaining the Starling constellation alone is justification enough for its development, not even counting NASA and other government or military contract missions or the entire private market earning potential or any of our lunar development use cases. Caravels weren't developed to cross the Atlantic; they were developed to sell down the coast of Africa. But once they existed, they made crossing the Atlantic possible. Same with Starship-like launch vehicles. So then, what exactly are we researching and developing? Two vehicles: the process of burying a lunar ship under 3 m of regolith using one of these vehicles, lower gravity adjustments to the steel-making electrolysis cell, vacuum steel casting, and biggest of them all, the lunar structure construction methods building.

big steel boxes in big holes on the moon may seem simple enough, but you can be sure there will be lots of devils found in those details. Usually, to estimate R&D cost, a team of analysts are paid a few 00,000 to perform a deep investigation, typically taking several months. But this analysis always takes longer, and cost overruns are to be expected. And so, the cost analysis costs more than originally expected, and when it's finally complete, they come to some conclusion that a project will take x amount of time and money. But that project always takes longer than x, as cost overruns are to be expected. And so, the cost is more than the cost analysis originally expected. So, a performance review is initiated by a team of analysts who are paid a few $1,000 to perform a deep investigation, typically taking about a year. But this investigation always takes longer, and cost overruns are to be expected. But I don't need to justify my MBA-induced 50,000 student loan indebted father disappointing existence, so we can just

take a shortcut and just estimate R&D cost as a historic average. So let me just do about 5 to 6 hours of research, coming through government accountability office reports, grant awards, ESPar cont contracts, making a list, checking it twice, converting every amount to $29 and TAA. Okay, so the list actually isn't that long. I was going for at least 100 items spread across as many industries as possible, but it turns out most companies aren't actually that happy to publish R&D numbers. I guess because they want to keep secrets from their competitors or maybe just from me. So most of these are government numbers or values revealed in court documents, but I think it's good enough for our ballpark estimate. I could make it longer, but eh, with 28 items, we get an average yearly cost of 1.658 billion, with an average project duration of 8.1 years, for an expected R&D cost of 13.265 billion. But this is not a good model because things cost less to develop when they're no longer cutting.

Edge, there's a lot of basic research needed between 0 and 0.5. Progress isn't linear; there's a steep initial learning curve. Saturn 5 development began just 5 years after we had put a single satellite into orbit. The Manhattan Project began just barely 3 years after fion was even discovered. We are much further down the development track than that and aren't inventing anything from scratch. Almost everything we are using is derived from existing technology. The most Cutting Edge ambitious thing is the excavator, but excavators and lunar Rovers already exist. We are just combining the technology. So, let's remove the extreme outliers like the Manhattan Project and the Saturn 5 and the International Space Station, which is the most expensive thing ever built in human history, by the way, mostly because the only thing more irresponsible with money than the government is 15 governments. And also, I didn't include anything Boeing, which you won't question if you know anything about Boeing. And our new numbers are much more favorable, with an average yearly cost of 513 million and

an average project duration of 7.66 years for a total R&D cost of 3.92 billion. We might as well just round up to 4 billion over 8 years, so our costs were basically cut in half, but our time remained the same. Now that we have our R&D cost, it's just a simple matter of adding up an estimate for all that equipment we just researched and developed. How much does a lunar ship cost? Well, in this video, we suggested a lunar ship build cost of 50 million, plus a lunar launch cost of 80 million over five launches, resulting in a lunar launch cost of 100 million for the ship's turned shelters that are not returning. Their usable lifespan is not five launches but rather just one. It might be possible to do the retrofitting necessary after it has already flown four or more missions, thus distributing the build cost. However, let's assume this is not the case, and it eats up the entire build cost on its first flight to

the Moon, where it will stay. Also, since it doesn't need to return to Earth, it would need less fuel, and so its flight cost would be less than 80 million. However, we also won't factor this in just to remain on the high end of estimates, so we get a lunar ship turned outpost cost of 130 million per unit. This is not its value, just its cost to build and launch to the Moon. We are maintaining its value by reusing it as a structure rather than a reusable launch vehicle. So, we retrofitted, dropped, flipped, and buried three ships. That's 390 million. We also transported two RSI reactors with other equipment on two different trips, and we transported humans to the Moon once on our journey so far. The engineers who constructed the base but had to leave after 2 weeks due to radiation exposure. After this, another crew will come, and these will be the ones to furnish the place. And since they can shelter in the now-built radiation-protected outpost, they can stay longer and will oversee the installment of the

reactors and the machine shop and whatnot. So, let's add a second trip. Then, let's assume all this takes place over the course of one year and that there is at least one crew change after 6 months. So, adding another trip for three total. Then, let's add a fourth trip for margin's sake, maybe a crew resupply mission or something. So, we have two electrolysis reactor payloads plus four human-oriented trips for 600 million. Our nuclear reactor cost is 10 million, but that was delivered aboard one of these ships turned shelters. To find out how much the two chromium anode reactors would cost, I was going to compare them to the cost of similar reactors used in industrial aluminum production, but I couldn't find this information without paying something like $2,000 for a report. But a quick look at industrial furnace costs shows that they're typically between $10,000 and $30,000. I saw nothing over $500,000, so it's probably safe to assume these reactors will cost tens of thousands.

rather than millions, which makes them basically a rounding error. But to be safe, let's just say they'll cost 1 million each. There should also be more than enough of a margin to cover the cost of all the auxiliary equipment that comes with them, the caster being the most expensive. So, add another 2 million to our scorecard. So, we have three ships, turn shelters for 390 million, two reactor payloads plus four human trips equals six flights for 600 million, one nuclear reactor plus two electrolysis reactors for another 12 million. Total 1.02 billion. So, 1 billion plus our R&D cost of 4 billion for a total of 5 billion over the course of 8 to 10 years. While 5 billion may seem expensive to a peasant like you, let me put it into perspective. We can gain the ability to develop the moon for the same price as 45 F-35 fighter jets, or the Seattle Seahawks, or 25 Marvel movies, or just 2% of the money the government wasted in

2022 alone for comparison. The US government wasted 247 billion in 2022, mostly due to accounting errors. The Department of Defense currently fields 450 F-35s. NASA spent 11.8 billion to develop the SLS, and the Pentagon spends 500 million a year to run Guantanamo Bay, 13 million per prisoner. And as of 2023, humanity has spent about 6.4 billion to produce 32 Marvel movies, with 12 more in development. So, 5 billion to begin developing the Moon is not much, all things considered. Across the Earth, tourists flock to exotic destinations, carrying with them resources and capital, the means to develop untamed land into habitable territory. And what reachable destination is more exotic and in need of capital than the Moon? As travel to the Moon becomes more accessible, people will pay to experience the awe-inspiring views, the thrill of low gravity, and the novelty of being on another world. Like the impact of tourism on the economies of developing countries, the boom in lunar tourism will spur the growth of a

service sector tour guides will be among the first of these service providers, some of the first people to live and work on the moon, leading lunar excursions and providing visitors with a comprehensive understanding of the lunar environment. Once the seed of a space economy has been sufficiently nurtured by tourists, lunar development will grow organically as effects continuously compound, externalities increase, and local advantages layer. So, if we want a self-sustaining presence on the moon, one that justifies itself economically, so humans are kept in the heavens via Rock Solid market demand and not just political forces or ideological aspirations, then we need to host tourists. And to do that, we'll need to have a profitable lunar tourism base, a lunar Resort for lack of a better term, which sounds kind of boring. I don't want to be a moon Hotel, a motel owner as much as the next guy, but the goal here is to just Kickstart a lunar economy, and then we could do a lot more with it later. If a New York City hotel owner can become

president of the United States. Just think what a lunar hotel owner could do. Actually, let's try to estimate profit potential. Our flight cost to the Moon is 100 million, and our internal fairing volume is 1,000 cubic M. SpaceX has said Starship would be able to carry 100 people to Mars, but that is a 7 to 9-mon journey. The Moon is only 3 days away. Considering a Boeing 747 has an internal volume of 876 cubic M, less than Starship, and carries 416 passengers, 200 for a 3-day luners ship journey to the Moon is reasonable. 100 million divided by 200 passengers is $500,000 each for transport. Break-even costs. Unfortunately, even after 42 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, not all 8 billion humans on the earth can yet afford to dish out a minimum of $500,000 for a trip to the Moon. So then, how many humans can? I guess a good place to start is by asking how many millionaires there.

are in 2022. The world's millionaire population amounted to 59.4 million adults. Credit s forecast that the number of milliones will still grow to 86 Million by 2027, a 45% increase from 2022. But not all people with at least $1 million will buy a ticket. Some don't care, some aren't healthy enough to make the trip, some people will buy multiple tickets, while others will buy just one, and many will buy none. But I think we have a metric that already exists involving people who have money, health, and an interest in things like space, science, and technology, something that would correlate well with potential ticket buyers' general aviation. But we need to count aircraft, not pilots. There are way more pilots than there are aircraft, and like potential ticket buyers, some people have one aircraft, other people have many aircraft, and some aircraft are owned by many, such as in flight clubs. But all aircraft have owners with money to spend on an interest that should overlap with lunar tourism, so not pilots.

but aircraft equal tickets. Now we cannot just count the number of aircraft in general aviation as most aircraft costs less than $200,000 and most general aviation aircraft are over 50 years old. And the price of aircraft has risen significantly over the past 50 years, even adjusting for inflation. So really, we need to limit our data to aircraft costing over 500k that were sold recently. This limits us to turboprop airplanes, helicopters, and business jets sold within the last 5 years. This gives us a range from about 500k to several million. According to data released by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, the total number of worldwide aircraft that fall into this category is 10,763. Since Credit Suisse estimates a 45% increase in millionaires over the next 5 years, I think it's safe to just round up to 11,000. That's nearly 11,000 purchases of at least 500k in the last 5 years in a market that would likely align with lunar tourism. So we have our target.

market and our transport break-even costs. But what about our build and labor break-even costs? To estimate both of these costs, we need to know how long our guests are staying. Let's say we send up 200 guests at a time, and they stay for an average of 2 weeks. Why 2 weeks? Well, it doesn't have to be, but I think it makes sense because of the lunar cycle, moon walks during the day, stargazing at night, and it's actually kind of long. Don't you get tired after 2 weeks abroad? Also, a higher turnover rate actually means less capacity, so it also helps us remain on the high end of a conservative estimate. So, 200 guests every 2 weeks would be 5,200 a year, meaning we would be able to serve our entire target market in 2 years. Some of the best-rated cruise lines have a crew-to-passenger ratio of 1 to 12, while the lowest-rated ones have ratios around 1 to 25. But since we're serving the ultra-rich, let's

use a ratio of 1 to 10 again. This helps us stay on the conservative high end of the estimate. Also, borrowing from Cruise Lines, typically employment contracts last 6 months. Due to the low gravity causing bone and muscle atrophy, 6 months on the moon is a long time. Although many astronauts have stayed longer on the International Space Station, which has basically no gravity, so it's totally doable. This means we'll have 20 employees living and working on the moon for 6 months at a time, or 40 employees a year, 80 contracts over 2 years. If each contract pays $100,000, then we'll need to spend 8 million in wages, which would add $727 to each ticket. One luners ship can carry enough food to feed 626 people on a $3,000 calorie diet continuously for one year. Since we are hosting 200 people plus 20 staff, 220 continuously, a single launch worth of food over the course of 2 years is more than enough.

adding another $99,000 to each ticket. We also need to add the cost to launch the staff to the Moon to each ticket, which would be 8 people or 40% of a launch, 40 million. So, add another 3,636 to each ticket. How large do we need to build to host 220 people at a time? Well, cruise ships have about 122 cubic m per passenger, and the International Space Station has about 130 per astronaut. We could obviously go lower, but let's go with the high-end number of 130 cubic m per head, which would result in us needing 28,600 cubic m of habitable space. Let's round up to 30,000. To build this large, we must deliver another nuclear reactor since the first one only provides enough power for 20,000 cubic m, and we need 30,000. Two reactors would provide enough power for 40,000 cubic m, and with our first outpost and the machine shop and the first 1,600 cubic met building plus the

30,000 cubic M we intend to build. We'd have 33,600 CB M needing power, so let's deliver the second reactor with a second excavating rover aboard a ship that will land sideways, open like a cargo plane, and unload the rover, then close and be buried to serve as the reactor housing, same as we did with the first one. This whole process adds another 140 million, 10 million for the reactor and 130 for the ship. Our steel production rate is unknown, but 30,000 cubic M isn't a small project, and we still have a bunch of empty space in the rear of that second ship, so we might as well send up another two electrolysis reactors for an additional 200 million. Now we've essentially doubled our build rate capacity, which is unknown, for an additional 340 million, adding $30,000 to each ticket. As for construction labor costs, well, we don't really know if most of this can be done remotely using something like Boston Dynamics robots or if humans need to be present fully or

just partially this cost could only be estimated by simulating the entire build process from start to finish and finding the optimal strategy first but let's just assume 2 years of build time involving four flight missions and a team of 20 robots and humans being paid 150,000 a year uh the Boston Dynamics Atlas costs about 150,000 so this accounts for wages and purchasing cost this would total 106 million or $3,533 per cubic meter adding a final 9,636 to each ticket our final ticket Break Even cost is $552,500 importantly we did not push our 4 billion R&D cost onto our 11,000 consumers for several reasons first it is safe to assume much of this cost would be subsidized by grants from Uncle Sam second even if that were not the case the R&D cost directly translated into the ability to build on the moon this is very powerful and can generate Revenue in many different ways outside of Tourism I'm sure NASA and Isa and jaxa and CERN and all the other acronyms

and the Pentagon, and many other private corporations will be lining up to pay you to build them a habitat. Our tourism analysis is just to get a very narrowly defined conservative baseline estimate of earning potential to prove the viability of being a lunar hotel owner. We only added up the ticket cost for things directly related to tourism. So, with a $553,000 break-even ticket cost, the only question now is how much should we charge for a profit. The higher the ticket price, the more people will be priced out, lowering our earning potential, but we also have to consider demand as the first trips will be worth much more than later trips, and the best way to do that is to auction off the tickets, letting the market decide. However, just to get an idea, if the average ticket sold for $600K, we'd profit about $517 million in 2 years, not revenue profit. All right, in this video, I'm going to tell you how to make billions of dollars in profit by building a giant nuclear-powered

vehicle that will make conventional rockets obsolete. So here's our treasure map, a Delta V map of the solar system. Using this, we can tell how much faster a certain spacecraft needs to go in order to reach a certain destination. How much faster something goes is a change in velocity, the v in Delta V. And here is the rocket equation, which tells us how much fuel we need to burn to reach a certain Delta V. The higher the Delta V, the more energy we need to use. Now look at this, here's the Earth, and here is low Earth orbit where the International Space Station is. Delta V is 9.3. Now here's the moon. Delta V from the Moon surface to lunar orbit is 1.6. From the lunar orbit to geostationary transfer orbit is also 1.6. And from geostationary transfer orbit to low Earth orbit is 2.5. If you add them all up, we get the Delta V from the lunar surface to low Earth orbit. 1.6 + 1.6 + 2.5 is 5.7, which is

more 9.3 or 5.7. In other words, it requires less energy to fly to the International Space Station if you start on the moon, 3 days and 384,000 km away, than if you start in Florida, 6 hours and 400 km away. This is partially because the moon has lower gravity, but it's mostly because the moon lacks an atmosphere. Now, don't get me wrong, atmospheres are great. I feel really privileged that I get to swim in this nitrogen soup with all of you, just 8 billion strangers, all constantly inhaling and exhaling the exact same medium as each other, swapping organic particulates from one set of lungs to the other, from one mouth to the next, just one big happy family eating from the same wet trough. I love that every time I step outside, my DNA doesn't get shredded by ultraviolet radiation, or that temperatures don't fluctuate by orders of magnitude every night and day. So, we are lucky. Earth has an atmosphere. It's why life exists, but like an

undiagnosed Oedipus complex. It can make leaving home somewhat tricky. In order to get something off this primate-filled public pool of a planet, you have to package it in an aerodynamic structure and then apply tons of force from behind and really shove it up there until eventually it pops out of the atmosphere. Then we have to go really, really fast to keep it up there. Leaving the Moon is much easier. All you have to do is go really, really fast, and you don't need to be aerodynamic at all, which removes a ton of constraints, allowing you to scale structures up to be extremely large, achieving huge, huge cost reductions. So, it makes sense that in a future in which Humanity inhabits giant space stations and zips around the solar system on nuclear-powered starships, those platforms and vehicles would have been built on the Moon. That's why the Moon is considered Humanity's stepping stone to the stars. If you're following the series, we currently have a lunar base capable of hosting 220 people at a time, but the

goal is not to host tourists or even to develop a lunar economy. The goal is to become a solar system-spanning civilization, and we do that by building the kinds of massive spacecraft, orbital stations, nuclear tugs, factories, and mining systems that allow us to access the vast resources of the heavens. The most logical place to build these things is on the moon, at least at first. But needless to say, these things require a lot of capital and resources to build. So, to build them on the moon, we need some development, and for development, we need a local economy. And now we actually have that—a measly little thing, sure, but it's a start. So now the question is, how do we grow this seed from what is essentially a small lunar hotel to a full-blown shipyard, from Plymouth to Charleston naval yard? The answer: nuclear-powered ferries. They're as magical as they sound. Currently, our lunar economy's growth is stifled not by the amount of people interested in becoming a lunar tourist, but by the amount of people who

can actually afford a $550,000 ticket, and much of the cost associated with that ticket is due to the fact that once such a large and heavy rocket like Starship reaches low Earth orbit, it has exhausted most of its fuel. SpaceX's solution to this is to perform orbital refueling maneuvers, whereby a moon-bound Starship full of people or cargo is sent into orbit first, and then 5 to 8 ships whose payloads are fuel are sent up to rendezvous with the moon-bound ship, where they offload their fuel directly into it, juicing it up before it leaves. So, for each trip to the moon, 5 to 8 fuel launches and orbital docking sequences have to be performed, making up the vast majority of launch cost. To put numbers on it, $80 million of our $100 million cost to Luna comes from these refueling missions. If we could remove those, it would reduce costs to the Moon significantly and greatly open up our addressable market, meaning we could host tons more people, generating much more revenue, and in fact

We can remove this orbital refilling constraint by building a spacecraft, a large spacecraft whose sole purpose is to transit back and forth between the Earth and Moon. Instead of refueling in low Earth orbit and then making the journey to the Moon and back, the outgoing lunar ships will just rendezvous with this giant orbital station and offload their people and cargo, then dip back into the atmosphere. And this is amazing because it means we have a reason to start building spacecraft on the Moon that directly plays into our pre-established business model. It is not some random thing we decide to branch out into later; we actually have a connection for this that directly serves our tourism-based business model. And I haven't even mentioned the best part: we can power it using open cycle gas core rocket engines. For brevity's sake, I'm not going to go into exactly how these work, but what's useful to know is that these are nuclear fission-powered rocket engines that use vaporized uranium with unparalleled energy density to generate orders of magnitude higher specific

impulses than the most powerful rocket engines currently used on Earth, with high impulses ranging from 2,500 to 7,000 seconds and high thrust ranging from 20,000 to 400,000 Newtons. Also, I'm not talking about hypothetical tech like warp drives or even theoretically possible but far-flung like fusion drives. This is established technology, as designs for these already exist and have been worked on since the 1960s. When it comes to well-established near-term rocket engine tech, nothing beats the open cycle gas core engine. There's just one catch: the exhaust they spew all over the place contains vaporized uranium gas, which is radioactive, poisoning everything within a 10m radius, making it a war crime to ever use one of these on Earth. But they can totally be used in already highly irradiated space. This is why it makes sense to build a ferry that transits to and fro rather than building some permanent orbital infrastructure like a fuel depot that just harnesses economies of scale to reduce costs. This

would apply those same economies of scale to an even greater degree and also couple them with the raw power of nuclear fission. Anyway, by this point, we're already good at making big steel, hermetically sealed, life-support-equipped structures on the moon, which is just a hop and a skip away from making spacecraft, and in some ways, it's easier. We don't have to dig and bury the whole thing, for instance, but we probably should make it somewhat spherical, although it doesn't have to be aerodynamic. We still want to account for pressure bulging. We also need to figure out the whole strapping a giant Vision-powered rocket engine to it thing, but nothing about this plan is technically insurmountable once you've gotten to this point in the lunar development phase. So, I guess the last thing to do is try and put some numbers on it. How much would this reduced launch cost, and how much more revenue could we generate from it? Well, as these things go, there's no way to know for sure, but we can

guesstimate keeping our Starship flight numbers. We'd have a low earth orbit flight cost to rendezvous with this ship of about 20 million. Then an unknown cost from low earth orbit to the Moon using this nuclear ferry. In other words, we do know how much it cost to get from the ground to low earth orbit, but we don't know how much this thing costs to fly from low earth orbit to the Moon. How much did it cost to research and develop and build? How large is it, and how many trips can it make during its useful lifetime? Fortunately, we do know each flight would be at least less than 10 million, which is the marginal flight cost from the ground to low earth orbit, which it is not doing. That's the whole point. In all likelihood, it would probably be less than 1 million per trip because it should have a very long lifetime since, again, it's not getting beat up flying through an atmosphere. It just peacefully floats between the Moon and low earth orbit. But let's just go

with 1 million per trip as a conservative estimate to account for amortized R&D and build costs, this would result in a transport cost to the Moon of 21 million using our aircraft data. Once again, this would open up our target market to include piston airplanes and would increase from 11,000 to 18,000. But the only reason we used aircraft data in the first place was because we wanted a correlating interest with space flight and a market where people could afford the outrageous price of a ticket. So, we counted recent sales of $500,000 aircraft. This is why we didn't just count millionaires, because even they couldn't afford a ticket; only the ultra-rich could. Also, we limited our number of people per flight to just 200 since it is a 3-day flight. But if we are able to accommodate many more people on the nuclear ferry, then we can reduce ticket costs even more. We could build this thing to carry a th000 people, but if it

just carries 400, which is still less than a Boeing 747. Then the cost per ticket would be reduced to just over $50,000, which means that actually we can just count millionaires. Polls have shown that 35% of US adults say they would be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft. So if 35% of people with at least 1 million opted to purchase a ticket, the serviceable market would be over 30 million people. With 30 million people purchasing a $50,000 ticket, if we just add a 1% profit margin, which would only add $500 to each ticket, then we'd have a profit, not revenue, but profit potential of over 15 billion. I do believe in nuclear-powered space. At this point, our development potential would actually run into hard physical limits like launch frequency. If you launch one ship to low Earth orbit a day with 400 people aboard, which one launch a day is ambitious as hell, to put it into perspective, the record number of launches a year is 96, which is basically

one launch every 4 days as you have to consider weather and logistics and whatnot. But anyways, if we could hypothetically launch one ship 8, we could serve 146,000 people a year, and we'd still have a 205-year-long wait list. Two centuries. So what this means is we can have a much greater profit margin than 1% per ticket, and if we just auction off tickets, letting market demand decide, then there's no telling how much we could earn. Interestingly, by this point, Starship-like rockets will now be relegated to the role of low Earth orbit transfer vehicles, using their non-nuclear ancient metho engines to carry supplies from the ground to orbit without polluting the atmosphere. The first step in a beautifully efficient logistic chain binding together the Earth, orbital, and lunar economies. Wait, that sounds familiar. Once you've gotten to this point where you're regularly building massive lunar habitats and nuclear-powered fairies, it's not hard to then move onto building massive orbital stations, factories, and all those other

Things we dream about. Well, that's the short version, my elevator pitch on how to develop the moon. Shout out to new Patron supporter Rick and channel member Steven Reed. And as always, many thanks to continued support from Brandon Hicks, Jonathan Cron, and Mustafa M. It's been a long journey. Thanks for sticking with me.

How To Develop The Moon ALL PARTS

AnthroFuturism

Building a Lunar Outpost: A Step-by-Step Plan

A third ship, a human lander, arrives on the Moon to construct a permanent outpost, with the mission lasting only 14 days due to radiation exposure.

The engineers work on removing the nose cone, off-gassing fuel tanks, and creating a flat surface for habitation, while also planning to import carbon and alloys from Earth.

The profit potential for transporting humans to the Moon is significant, but the high cost of $500,000 per ticket creates a long waitlist, leading to a strategy of auctioning tickets to maximize earnings.

Building a Lunar Colony: From Outpost to Settlement

A lunar facility is equipped with a CNC machine and 3D printer to produce essential structures and amenities from steel.

The plan involves using local resources to build moon structures, reducing the need for imports and lowering flight costs.

The development process includes retrofitting and burying ships, transporting reactors and equipment, and conducting research for cost estimation, with the goal of establishing a fully-fledged lunar colony.

Developing the Moon: A Strategic Approach

The development of the Moon is linked to the existence of Starship-like launch vehicles, which have multiple justifications beyond lunar development.

SpaceX's orbital refueling depot and a giant spacecraft for Earth-Moon transit are key components of the proposed lunar development strategy.

The potential market for lunar tourism is significant, with a projected 30 million people interested in purchasing tickets, offering a profit potential of over $15 billion.

Building a Lunar Economy: A Step-by-Step Plan

The plan involves multiple trips to the Moon, with a total of four human-oriented missions and two electrolysis reactor payloads, costing around $600 million.

The nuclear reactors for chromium anodes are estimated to cost tens of thousands, while the nuclear ferry's flight from low Earth orbit to the Moon is expected to be less than $1 million per trip.

The lunar outpost will be constructed by excavating 14,700 cubic meters of regolith, with the goal of creating a habitable environment and ultimately spurring the growth of a local lunar economy through tourism and resource development.

Cost Breakdown and Strategy for Lunar Development

The total cost for the lunar development plan is estimated at $5 billion over 8 to 10 years, covering various components like ships, reactors, and auxiliary equipment.

The plan aims to reduce ticket costs for lunar transport by accommodating more people and reusing the ships for multiple functions.

The lunar development phase is expected to generate revenue and facilitate the construction of spacecraft, making the overall plan technically feasible.

Targeting Lunar Tourism: The Role of High-Value Aircraft and SpaceX's Starship

Recent data shows 11,000 general aviation aircraft costing over $500k were sold in the last 5 years, aligning with the potential market for lunar tourism.

SpaceX's Starship is designed for orbital refueling, with 5 to 8 fuel launches needed for each moon-bound trip, making up $80 million of the $100 million cost.

The plan for a lunar outpost involves sideways landings, burying the structure for radiation protection, and using a micronuclear reactor for power, with the first unmanned ships arriving to establish the base.

Building a Self-Sustaining Lunar Presence

The project involves constructing 30,000 cubic meters of space on the moon, with a second reactor and two electrolysis reactors planned for delivery, doubling the build rate capacity.

A lunar tourism base is essential for a self-sustaining economy, with steel production from lunar regolith being a key factor.

The goal is to host 220 people at a time, with a conservative estimate of serving the target market in two years through a high turnover rate of guests.

Developing the Moon: A Profitable Venture

The electrolysis reactors on the Moon can produce oxygen for habitats and rocket fuel, while also cleaning up Earth's steel-making industry.

The estimated cost for building a lunar ship and launching it is $100 million, with the potential to profit $517 million in two years from ticket sales for lunar tourism.

The Moon's low gravity makes it easier to scale up structures, potentially reducing costs and making it a key location for Humanity's future space exploration.