What will it take to not only get back on track with human exploration of space, but with its settlement as well? Is this a goal which can be accomplished to any significant extent during our own lifetimes? This paper makes specific recommendations about the possibility of such an accomplishment, re-considers the conventional recommendations for an infrastructure to support lunar exploration, and argues for several changes in the program as it is generally proposed.
Even with the great new information coming in from the Clementine mission, we have scarcely begun to develop a real program which will actually allow us to develop a permanently inhabited facility. A whole collection of U.S. and Soviet unmanned explorers, mappers, and probes, supplemented by the Apollo program, have provided us with literal tons of information. We have an ever-growing collection of information about lunar geology (selenology), terrain, radiation exposure and other environmental issues. We have concepts and, in some cases, plans, for habitats on lunar orbit and on and within the Moon itself In various nations around the world, there exist detailed studies of construction techniques adapted to 1/6G, factory concepts and plans, mining recommendations for the collection of Helium 3 and endless amounts of speculation about everything from the possibility of diamonds to evidence of former habitation on the moon. Despite all that, there are no funded programs for the return of human beings and the establishment of a permanent facility on-the Moon
