Building Habitats on the Moon: Engineering Approaches to Lunar Settlements

by Haym Benaroya

Designing a habitat for the lunar surface? You will need to know more than structural engineering. There are the effects of meteoroids, radiation, and low gravity. Then there are the psychological and psychosocial aspects of living in close quarters, in a dangerous environment, far away from home. All these must be considered when the habitat is sized, materials specified, and structure designed.
This book provides an overview of various concepts for lunar habitats and structural designs and characterizes the lunar environment - the technical and the nontechnical. The designs take into consideration psychological comfort, structural strength against seismic and thermal activity, as well as internal pressurization and 1/6 g. Also discussed are micrometeoroid modeling, risk and redundancy as well as probability and reliability, with an introduction to analytical tools that can be useful in modeling uncertainties.

328 pages, Paperback

Published January 22, 2018

About the author

I am a faculty member in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. I specialize in the analysis and design of structures for the aerospace, ocean, space and lunar environments. My recent book is a "history" of the space age written in the year 2169 - and recounts how we became a spacefaring civilization ."

Reviews

[Brahm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep dive into moon habitats, as the title clearly explains.

Very interesting overall. I am not a space professional (so folks reading this review should not consider this an authoritative review or rating) but I love these types of technical books. I learned a lot about what the constraints and challenges would be, from vacuum (obvious) to major dust concerns (maybe less obvious to a casual like me) to radiation mitigation (e.g. permanent structures will need to be underground or buried under 2+ meters of regolith to prevent damages to long-term humans).

One weird thing about this book is Benaroya "interviews" people via email and simply reprints these email conversations in full. The depth of the answers varies but I would have liked for this knowledge to be synthesized into the content rather than just reprinted word-for-word. This ended up being quite amusing as a few of the interviewees took (hopefully good-natured) snipes at the Benaroya's questions and seemed to poke fun at him in the process - so kudos to the author for not editing that out!

The level of detail and technical depth was inconsistent, which bugged me. The first ~200 pages were accessible to almost any reader (in my opinion) but the last few chapters were peppered with complex equations and derivations that did not really flow (to this reader). I suppose I can't complain buying a book titled "engineering approaches...".

3.5 stars, and I'll add (because I am only one of 2 reviews on this book) I rate based on personal impact, not on any kind of objective quality criteria.

[Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too speculative to be of real use and too into internal NASA politics and cheerleading to be an engineering perspective. The main takeaway is that building habitation on the moon is a really dumbass idea.