Lunar Base Point Design and Logistical Analysis

With the ever-changing universe that we live in, NASA would like to lead the United States into a new era of space exploration throughout the 21st century. One of the steps involved with accomplishing this mission is to develop a lunar base that can provide a leaping point to planets such as Mars. NASA has solicited the assistance of our USMA capstone group to help with the development of a lunar base design and resupply model that might help them meet their proposed completion date of 2020. Our capstone group´s primary resource is The Lunar Base Handbook by Peter Eckart. We have also utilized information from Human Spaceflight: Mission Analysis and Design by Wiley Larson and Linda Pranke, as well as Peter Eckart´s Parametric model of a lunar base for mass and cost estimates. We have broken down the system into four major areas of functionality: life critical, live support, living conditions, and maintenance. We then researched our fields and alternatives available, taking into consideration the technology, economics, transportation and logistics, infrastructure, and environment involved with establishing and maintaining a lunar base. We created some major comparison and analysis factors to include cost/mass, technology requirements, modularity, complexity, and reliability. We finalized the design by valuing and selecting the best alternatives and established a model of the system. We followed this up by completing a sensitivity analysis and implementation plan of the system. We have identified the most promising design decisions and started bringing them together to create our lunar base. We have also developed a parametric spreadsheet model to aid in implementation of possible resupply needs