Six Reasons Why Humans Should Return to the Moon
"That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."
This July 20th marks fifty years since Neil Armstrong, mission commander of NASA's Apollo 11, uttered those famous words. Much less discussed is how Project Apollo shifted lunar science into high gear, ultimately teaching scientists just how valuable the Moon could become.
A lunar-based solar power system would actually be cheaper than Earth-based solar power implemented on a global scale.
During the six missions that landed humans on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972, Apollo astronauts collected some 842 pounds of lunar rocks and dirt. Analysis of these materials has provided us with major clues about the origin of Earth's celestial companion 4.51 billion years ago, but also has revealed the Moon is a treasure trove. Lunar rock contains a plethora of minerals with high industrial value. So let's take a look at some prime examples of how humanity's expected return to the lunar surface in the years to come could help life here on Earth.
24/7 solar energy for Earth
During the 1970s, scientists began examining the Apollo lunar samples to study how the lunar surface could be used as a resource. One such scientist was physicist David Criswell, who has since shown that a lunar-based solar power system would actually be cheaper than Earth-based solar power implemented on a global scale. Whoa! How is that possible, given the high cost of launching people and machines into space?
The key is that it would be enormously expensive to scale up enough Earth-based solar power to supply all of humanity's electrical needs, since solar power on such a scale would require a lot of metal, glass, and cement.
But the Moon's lack of atmosphere and weather means that photovoltaic cells built by robots from lunar materials can be paper thin, in contrast with the heavy structures needed in Earth-based solar arrays. Ringing the Moon, such a system would be in perpetual sunlight, making it cheaper to collect solar power there and beam it down to Earth in the form of microwaves.
A source of helium-3 for clean, safe nuclear fusion power and other uses
The gas helium-3 is extremely rare on Earth, but plentiful on the Moon, and could be used in advanced nuclear fusion reactors. Helium-3 also has anti-terrorism and medical uses, especially in the diagnosis of various pulmonary diseases.
A place to offload industrial pollution
Since there are minerals and oxygen in lunar rocks and dust, and frozen water in certain locations, the Moon is an ideal home for factories. Thus, billionaire Jeff Bezos has proposed relocating large segments of heavy industry there, reducing the amount of pollution that is produced on Earth.
The Moon could be a place for colonists to get their space legs before humans put down roots on more distant locations like Mars.
Radio Astronomy without interference from Earth
Constructed on the Moon's far side (the side of the Moon that always faces away from Earth), radio telescopes advancing human knowledge of the Cosmos, and searching for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, could operate with increased sensitivity and efficiency.
Lunar Tourism
Using the Moon as a destination for tourists may not sound helpful initially, given that only the very wealthy would be able to afford such journeys in the foreseeable future. However, the economic payoff could be substantial in terms of jobs that lunar tourism could provide on Earth. Furthermore, short of actual tourism, companies are gearing up to provide lunar entertainment to fun-seekers here on Earth in the form of mini lunar rovers that people could control from their living rooms, just for fun.
Lunar Colonies
Similar to lunar tourism, lunar colonization sounds initially like a development that would help only those people who go. But, located just three-days' travel from Earth, the Moon would be an excellent place for humanity to become a multi-planet species. The Moon could be a place for colonists to get their space legs before humans put down roots on more distant locations like Mars. With hundreds or thousands of humans thriving on the Moon, Earthlings might find some level of peace of mind knowing that humanity is in a position to outlive a planetary catastrophe.
When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.
Twenty-eight years ago, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar woke to the sound of her daughter, two-year-old Savannah, in the midst of a medical emergency.
“I entered [Savannah’s room] to see her tiny little body jerking about violently in her bed,” Tracy said in an interview. “I thought she was choking.” When she and her husband frantically called 911, the paramedic told them it was likely that Savannah had had a seizure—a term neither Tracy nor her husband had ever heard before.
Over the next several years, Savannah’s seizures continued and worsened. By age five Savannah was having seizures dozens of times each day, and her parents noticed significant developmental delays. Savannah was unable to use the restroom and functioned more like a toddler than a five-year-old.
Doctors were mystified: Tracy and her husband had no family history of seizures, and there was no event—such as an injury or infection—that could have caused them. Doctors were also confused as to why Savannah’s seizures were happening so frequently despite trying different seizure medications.
Doctors eventually diagnosed Savannah with Lennox-Gaustaut Syndrome, or LGS, an epilepsy disorder with no cure and a poor prognosis. People with LGS are often resistant to several kinds of anti-seizure medications, and often suffer from developmental delays and behavioral problems. People with LGS also have a higher chance of injury as well as a higher chance of sudden unexpected death (SUDEP) due to the frequent seizures. In about 70 percent of cases, LGS has an identifiable cause such as a brain injury or genetic syndrome. In about 30 percent of cases, however, the cause is unknown.
Watching her daughter struggle through repeated seizures was devastating to Tracy and the rest of the family.
“This disease, it comes into your life. It’s uninvited. It’s unannounced and it takes over every aspect of your daily life,” said Tracy in an interview with Today.com. “Plus it’s attacking the thing that is most precious to you—your kid.”
Desperate to find some answers, Tracy began combing the medical literature for information about epilepsy and LGS. She enrolled in college courses to better understand the papers she was reading.
“Ironically, I thought I needed to go to college to take English classes to understand these papers—but soon learned it wasn’t English classes I needed, It was science,” Tracy said. When she took her first college science course, Tracy says, she “fell in love with the subject.”
Tracy was now a caregiver to Savannah, who continued to have hundreds of seizures a month, as well as a full-time student, studying late into the night and while her kids were at school, using classwork as “an outlet for the pain.”
“I couldn’t help my daughter,” Tracy said. “Studying was something I could do.”
Twelve years later, Tracy had earned a PhD in neurobiology.
After her post-doctoral training, Tracy started working at a lab that explored the genetics of epilepsy. Savannah’s doctors hadn’t found a genetic cause for her seizures, so Tracy decided to sequence her genome again to check for other abnormalities—and what she found was life-changing.
Tracy discovered that Savannah had a calcium channel mutation, meaning that too much calcium was passing through Savannah’s neural pathways, leading to seizures. The information made sense to Tracy: Anti-seizure medications often leech calcium from a person’s bones. When doctors had prescribed Savannah calcium supplements in the past to counteract these effects, her seizures had gotten worse every time she took the medication. Tracy took her discovery to Savannah’s doctor, who agreed to prescribe her a calcium blocker.
The change in Savannah was almost immediate.
Within two weeks, Savannah’s seizures had decreased by 95 percent. Once on a daily seven-drug regimen, she was soon weaned to just four, and then three. Amazingly, Tracy started to notice changes in Savannah’s personality and development, too.
“She just exploded in her personality and her talking and her walking and her potty training and oh my gosh she is just so sassy,” Tracy said in an interview.
Since starting the calcium blocker eleven years ago, Savannah has continued to make enormous strides. Though still unable to read or write, Savannah enjoys puzzles and social media. She’s “obsessed” with boys, says Tracy. And while Tracy suspects she’ll never be able to live independently, she and her daughter can now share more “normal” moments—something she never anticipated at the start of Savannah’s journey with LGS. While preparing for an event, Savannah helped Tracy get ready.
“We picked out a dress and it was the first time in our lives that we did something normal as a mother and a daughter,” she said. “It was pretty cool.”
A sleek, four-foot tall white robot glides across a cafe storefront in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, holding a two-tiered serving tray full of tea sandwiches and pastries. The cafe’s patrons smile and say thanks as they take the tray—but it’s not the robot they’re thanking. Instead, the patrons are talking to the person controlling the robot—a restaurant employee who operates the avatar from the comfort of their home.
It’s a typical scene at DAWN, short for Diverse Avatar Working Network—a cafe that launched in Tokyo six years ago as an experimental pop-up and quickly became an overnight success. Today, the cafe is a permanent fixture in Nihonbashi, staffing roughly 60 remote workers who control the robots remotely and communicate to customers via a built-in microphone.
More than just a creative idea, however, DAWN is being hailed as a life-changing opportunity. The workers who control the robots remotely (known as “pilots”) all have disabilities that limit their ability to move around freely and travel outside their homes. Worldwide, an estimated 16 percent of the global population lives with a significant disability—and according to the World Health Organization, these disabilities give rise to other problems, such as exclusion from education, unemployment, and poverty.
These are all problems that Kentaro Yoshifuji, founder and CEO of Ory Laboratory, which supplies the robot servers at DAWN, is looking to correct. Yoshifuji, who was bedridden for several years in high school due to an undisclosed health problem, launched the company to help enable people who are house-bound or bedridden to more fully participate in society, as well as end the loneliness, isolation, and feelings of worthlessness that can sometimes go hand-in-hand with being disabled.
“It’s heartbreaking to think that [people with disabilities] feel they are a burden to society, or that they fear their families suffer by caring for them,” said Yoshifuji in an interview in 2020. “We are dedicating ourselves to providing workable, technology-based solutions. That is our purpose.”
Shota Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy. Ory Labs, Inc.
Wanting to connect with others and feel useful is a common sentiment that’s shared by the workers at DAWN. Marianne, a mother of two who lives near Mt. Fuji, Japan, is functionally disabled due to chronic pain and fatigue. Working at DAWN has allowed Marianne to provide for her family as well as help alleviate her loneliness and grief.Shota, Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy, agrees. "There are many difficulties in my daily life, but I believe my life has a purpose and is not being wasted," he says. "Being useful, able to help other people, even feeling needed by others, is so motivational."