Building a Lunar Science Program

Think in terms of the development engine:

Our goal is to establish a self-supporting lunar community. We can define the requirements from that:

1. Industries that earn a profit on Earth so we can import what we must
   • Profitable industries, such as tourism, exporting lunar material, and supporting scientific investigations (radio astronomy, etc.) fit here

2. Industries that close the life support loop on the moon as much as we can
   • Lunar-based manufacturing and agriculture fit here

But we won't know for sure what branches of science apply to each of those two basic requirements until we've done all the studies.

So, instead of trying to break things down into their utilitarian categories at the top level, do it at the lowest level. Create a form for the Lunar Science community to use, a "Proposed Investigation" form, perhaps. That form describes the investigation to be done; what facilities (housing, equipment) and resources (man-hours, indvidual expertise, power, data, heat rejection, material) are required to do the job; scientific disciplines affected; applicability to each chunk of the lunar community's habitat systems (including entertainment); potential customers for the results. There are probably more things to keep in the data base.

As we build the data base, we have the expanding-the-lunar-base folks working on a model of what resources will be available, and when. Merging the two tells us what we can do, and when we can do it. It will be up to the program managers to decide which ones get done first. We can expect that the primary criterion they will apply for the decision is that priority goes to investigations which increase the lunar community's economic position.