The Integration of Terrestrial Extreme Environment Design Concepts to Lunar Base Designs

This paper discusses the analogies between habitable terrestrial structures in extreme conditions and Lunar habitats, which are in an even more unforgiving environment. Terrestrial structures like manned military or utility machines (submarines, zeppelins...) and facilities functioning in extreme environments (oilrigs, polar outposts, underwater facilities...) are good examples to be studied in order to consolidate the design effort on the next target of the human settlement in Space, on the Moon. To highlight architectural qualities and to integrate them within a functional environment, like Moon Bases, is the task of the space architects. This task can be achieved by studying the human activities in various types of extreme environments. Understanding these designs and their features, concrete relations can be constructed, evaluated and then applied to Lunar Base design concepts. The presented work proposes a structure to transfer the concepts of the past, existing and planned terrestrial extreme environment designs to the lunar base designs. Using the proposed method the design principles, functions, operating conditions and the environment of the terrestrial designs can be evaluated to identify the relevant transfer candidates.