The United States is exploring a railway to reach the moon. She has good reason.

The first transcontinental railroad in the United States, completed with a nail set into the track in 1869, transformed the country. Perhaps the same thing will happen on the moon.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA — an ambitious federal innovation division — has begun collaborating with more than a dozen companies on potential future lunar technologies, including lunar railways. Called the 10-Year Lunar Architectural Capability Study, or LunA-10, its mission is to find technologies that will catalyze a self-sustaining lunar economy. It’s a landmark time. The new space race has already begun.

It is an endeavor that seeks to avoid a Go alone approach, as diverse nations and industries struggle to communicate, travel and do business on the moon. NASA’s Apollo missions more than 50 years ago were extraordinary exploration and engineering marvels, but those billions spent did not achieve growth or a permanent presence on the moon.

“One of the criticisms of Apollo is that we put in all this effort, and then it’s over,” Michael Nayak, a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, told Mashable.

Now with NASA, global space agencies and companies returning to the moon with robotic spacecraft, the future Nayak sees is one that should be able to advance. It probably is Helium mining-3 (an extremely rare resource on Earth that can be used for medical imaging, computing, and even energy), and collecting water ice to produce rocket fuel for deep space missions, and beyond.

“How do we make it valuable for life on Earth?” Nayak, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA planetary scientist who oversees LunA-10, confirmed.

The project is called LunA-10 because it focuses on what lunar technology will realistically look like in the 10 years following NASA’s Artemis III mission, in which astronauts will land at the moon’s coveted south pole, a region where planetary scientists suspect water ice and other objects exist. . Resources found in dark and mysterious pits. As of March 2024, NASA expects astronauts to set foot on the Moon in late 2026.

“How do we make it valuable for life on Earth?”

DARPA is exploring six areas essential for the moon’s future growth: power generation; communications and navigation; Construction and robotics (in the near future where robots can build roads and infrastructure); Mining resources. communications; and market research – to identify viable industries on the Moon.

The rockets and spacecraft that sent astronauts to the moon more than half a century ago no longer exist. Everything that goes to the moon, and establishes a lunar presence, will be new. “It’s just a blank sheet of paper,” Nayak said. Other conceptual ideas include Tall lighthouses It could illuminate dark, resource-rich craters and provide communications across the moon’s barren surface.

DARPA recently selected aerospace and defense giant Northrup Grumman to create the rail concept. “The envisioned lunar railway network could transport humans, supplies, and resources for commercial projects across the lunar surface — contributing to the space economy of the United States and international partners,” the company wrote. They will aim to develop a railway that limits humanity’s footprint on the moon’s still largely pristine surface, and design a system that anyone can ride or load cargo on (i.e. standard equipment suitable for the moon that can withstand large temperature fluctuations). .

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Transportation is an important part of any future lunar ambitions. When a large rocket, perhaps SpaceX’s Starship rocket, delivers several tons of cargo to the Moon, those supplies — building materials, food, or mining equipment — can’t stay put. Life on the moon would be expensive. “Every minute you spend sitting there you lose revenue,” Nayak stressed.

“Railroads were America’s first technology corridor.”

Ultimately, the LunA-10 project will examine various lunar concepts developed in 2024, such as a lunar railway or a power plant. Some technologies will work, meaning DARPA will help accelerate these concepts, and others will not. The hope is to graduate from the current era of lunar exploration to a foundational era in which countries and industries attempt to pave the way for potential lunar endeavors (such as a mining project). These successful endeavors, if all goes as planned, will bring us into the industrial age, where real goods and services are manufactured or provided on our natural satellite, about 238,855 miles away. The Moon, for example, could be a fuel depot for deeper space missions to Mars or scientifically resource-rich asteroids.

More than 150 years ago, the transcontinental railroad transformed the economy. “Just as it opened up the markets of the West Coast and Asia to the East, it brought the products of Eastern industry to the growing population beyond the Mississippi River.” The Public Broadcasting Corporation explained. “Railroads ensured a boom in production, as industry extracted the vast resources of the Central and Western Continents for use in production. Railroads were America’s first technological corridor.”

A lunar world designed to facilitate transportation, communications, and progress may allow ideas emerging today to one day flourish beyond Earth. Who knows what the coming lunar decades will bring in the 2040s and beyond?

“There’s an idea in someone’s head right now that’s going to be the next big thing.” Nayak said.