We Can Colonize the Moon by 2022—and for Less than the Cost of an Aircraft Carrier

By 2022 (that’s just six years from now), and with $10 billion—which is cheaper than a single US aircraft carrier—the Earth could already set up a small colony on the moon.

“The big takeaway is that new technologies, some of which have nothing to do with space—such as self-driving cars and waste-recycling toilets—are going to be incredibly useful in space, and are driving down the cost of a moon base to the point where it might be easy to do,” Chris McKay says in a Popular Science issue.

Existing innovations available today, such as self-driving vehicles and waste-recycling toilets, can also be used in space, and continue to drive down the costs of creating a colony on the moon. Furthermore, a synergy of technologies and partnerships, including the use of 3D-printed buildings and materials, space-ferrying using SpaceX rockets, and modifications of Bigelow Aerospace’s inflatable habitats, would make the process streamlined and more efficient than those ham-fisted and expensive government programs that continually redesign the wheel.