China plans to build egg igloos on lunar surface

Science fiction portrays man’s colonisation of space as a vision of almost magical modernity, in which humans oblivious to the airless, low-gravity environment glide through futuristic, dream-built cities.

The reality, at least according to the projections of scientists working on China’s mission to the moon, may be more prosaic, at least in the early stages.

Their first mock-up of a moon colony shows a handful of egg-shaped grey igloos, with Lego-like spacemen bouncing between them and their space-rovers through piles of moondust.

Creating the model was not child’s play, despite appearances. It was the result of careful examination of lunar conditions — a lack of raw materials, extreme temperatures fluctuating within a range of 300C and cosmic radiation, Ding Lieyun, the head of the team responsible, told Chinese state television.

“These factors make lunar construction an exceptionally challenging super-engineering endeavour,” he said.

The model reflects the toned-down expectations of space colonisation the closer it comes to reality. Both China and the United States are planning to put manned spacecraft on the moon in the near future. For China it will be for the first time.

At the moment, it is ahead in the race. China has landed four spacecraft on the moon in the past 11 years, while the US has landed just one, earlier this year, and that stopped working days later.

Whether Beijing will be able to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2035, as it hopes, is another question, but it is developing detailed plans accordingly.

The first artist’s impressions and “concept animation” of what the technical set-up might look like, including telescopes, rocket launchers and even a possible futuristic city of the science fiction variety, were released earlier this year.

The “sandpit” model is the more practical version.

China has a supply of moon dust brought back from previous landings, including from near the moon’s south pole, which has more water and thus has been chosen as the most likely venue for the base.

This dust has been crafted into bricks, which are currently being taken by the Tianzhou 8 spacecraft to the Chinese space station Tiangong, to see if they withstand conditions there. If so, they could be the first building blocks of our new space civilisation.

Ding said his team, at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, one of China’s leading scientific research centres, had experimented with various forms for space brick houses, including domes and columns.

Eventually, he said, they came up with a “double-layered dome structure” — basically, an egg shape standing on a flat end. Each “egg” would be divided into a living and working area. The structures could be built by robots and 3D-printers working together.

The model assumes that for the most part, the first space town would be recognisable to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men on the moon, as it shows humans wearing similar spacesuits to the first moon-landings.

The sandpit has one clear difference to the famous photographs of that first moon landing however, the only colour apart from white and grey is the red flag of the People’s Republic, not the Stars and Stripes.