Big Ideas

This article is a topic of debate.
Please feel free to jump in with a constructive contribution.

It is not hard to come up with raw ideas, but it is very hard to figure out which one-in-a-hundred will really fly. The process seems to be quite random. About the only thing we can do is to take the risk of putting lots of ideas out there and push them for a while to give each their chance to get off the ground.

Here are a number of big ideas currently under testing on Lunarpedia.

Lunarpedia Ideas

Lunar Encyclopedia: Provide a central source for the data we will need to return to the Moon.

Lunar Research: A place for original research to be performed in the open where anyone can contribute.

Lunar Web Community: Provide a strong and active anchor for a web community of people supporting lunar return.

Synergy: ...with communities with related objectives (such as orbital habitats, asteroid and comet mining, and Martian colonization efforts) with an interconnected wiki community. This community already includes Marspedia and Scientifiction.org and will soon include Unnamed Space Dictionary Wiki and Pending General Space Wiki, neither of which yet have names. Historically, the Lunar and Martian development communities have often been hostile to each other. This hostility is counterproductive for both objectives and needs to be set aside. The correct answer to 'Moon or Mars' is YES.

Ideas currently under test

These are medium sized ideas intended to support the big ideas:

Support for Students: Provide support to the people who will actually end up doing the job. See Student Projects List.

Oral Histories: Record the personal stories of people who have worked in space exploration for the benefit and amusement of the next generation to do so. See Oral Histories List.

Short Stories: Provide stories providing a positive vision of what it will be like to live in a settlement on the Moon. See Story List. These will be relocated to Scientifiction.org

Purposes for Lunarpedia: Develop clear ideas of our purposes and how we can achieve them. See Purposes List.

Big Ideas for Space Societies

Video News Releases

Public awareness Video News Releases highlighting areas of interest in Lunar development as well as keeping the public interested and aware of information they would not be exposed to otherwise (such as Lava Tubes as places to build settlements and why domes aren't what Lunar Colonies will be structured as.

Research Grants

Areas of research directly relevant to Lunar development are left unexplored by Earth-centric interests. Where is the research on carbon and hydrogen free silicones, for example?

Technical Big Ideas

Landing Sites

Promoting a specific site can help to make it happen. For more details see Site Selections.

Hardware Specifications

What space hardware do we need to create? The Artemis Project created a solid reference mission for returning to Luna in the 1990s, but is too centered around the soon to be retired Enterprise Class orbital vehicle and hardware designed for use with it. With several new designs in the works from multiple sources, as well as legacy Lunar hardware still in use (Soyuz), several possible designs can be described and elaborated upon here.

The space hardware do we need to create depends on what the mission is we are trying to achieve. Some believe that the biggest economic purpose for lunar development would be to supply energy to the terrestrial market, such as via Solar Power Satellites.