Architecture

Addition by Isabella Goida

Introduction

My addition to the lunar habitat is the habitat itself. With such an important project as a lunar habitat, the architecture plays a big part in the survival and success of a human colony on the moon. Architecture can dictate how many people are able to live in the habitat and how prepared a colony can be for any possible emergencies.

Summary

Architecture is important to the survival of a human colony, and affects said colony's ability to thrive. The designed gravity tower allows for better conditions for medical services and any equipment that would operate better in Earth's gravity. The moon bubbles serve as storage buildings that can be spread out across the lunar landscape in order to add redundancy and safety in case of emergencies. The underground levels that house the people in the habitat are designed with expansion in mind, and can house up to 300 people. The most complicated part of this design is the gravity tower, as building something that big in order to create Earthlike gravity comes with structural issues.

Description

The gravity tower, marked as Grav Tower in my sketches, is where technologies and equipment will be kept that work better with Earth's gravity. My idea for this is that it would be a good space for medical equipment, hopefully making it easier for treatment as well as helping people keep up their muscle mass while on the moon. The way I imagine how it is accessed is a bunch of airlocks along the inner ring and catwalks that would go from the center to the inner ring in order to make access as easy as possible. These catwalks would obviously be below the spokes that go from the center to the ring for the structure of the building.

The average person eats roughly 1.1 kg of food per day, which was calculated from the values found in the spreadsheet of averages found by the Department of Agriculture [1]. This means that the average person eats roughly 401.5 kg of food per year. Therefore for a population of 150 for 30 years, there needs to be storage for 1,806.76 tons of food. The storage for this food will be split up into amounts of food that are required for 5 years. This is to prevent a major loss of all food in case of emergency. As the moon bubbles are going to be storage buildings, they will have a radius of 35 meters in order to be able to contain this amount of food. By these calculations there will also be 6 separate storage buildings for food alone.

The habitat contains 25 one bedroom units, 25 two bedroom units, and 25 three bedroom units. This supports a population of 150 people if each are filled with minimal occupancy and a population of 300 if each are filled with maximum occupancy. This scenario begins with 100 people who are attempting to live on the moon for 10 years. Since I am looking to have a baseline of 30 years instead for redundancy, I have done the same for the possible occupancy for the habitat. Since the world birth rate is 18.1 per 1,000 people, I calculated the average birth rate for 100 people and using it to calculate how much the population would roughly grow throughout these 30 years and adjusted the amount of units needed accordingly [4]. This means that the residence zone of the habitat takes up 8,325 m^2 with apartments alone. The residence levels under the main building take up more space than this because of walkways and access.

Discussion

The architecture is the beginning of the entire habitat. Without a well thought out structure to the lunar habitat, nothing else can function. There needs to be space for people to live and thrive in order to make a society/colony on the moon. My contribution sets up the colony to have multiple redundancies so that the colony can survive, even if there are emergencies or catastrophes that happen. There is also plenty of space to grow in case the society rules yes on moon babies. The question of how to help keep muscle mass and how health services will work is also helped by the architecture as I made the gravity tower to solve some of those problems. The creation of underground levels and moon bubbles leaves plenty of room to grow. These are things that could be expanded upon fairly easily as you can always create more bubbles or create more underground levels since those structures are already drawn out. For instance, you could create another space similar to the hydroponics in shape in order to house the recreational facilities.

Feasibility

I think the complicated factors for a lunar habitat stem more from survival than the actual architecture specifically, but my designs still prove complicated. The storage buildings and hydroponics are the least complicated as they are already being designed and are very common designs for lunar buildings [3]. The main building doesn't have a specific space or design as it's mostly a place holder as a way to cover the entrance to the underground levels and add access to the hydroponics, so it doesn't come with complications. The structure that brings the complications is the gravity tower. It clearly takes up a lot of space, which brings issues of stability, even with the lowered gravity of the moon. It's functionality and access is also complicated, especially considering transport of patients for medical procedures.

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