Any colony on the Moon (outside the rare “mountains of eternal light” on the poles) will have to address the long 14-day lunar night. In addition, the lack of an atmosphere means that temperatures swing widely from a bubbling 200C in the glare of the Sun to a -100C deep-freeze at night. Temperature management will rank high on a colony’s list of essential services.

Solar energy must be stockpiled to last through the dark period. Liquid sodium is much less of a hazard in the vacuum non-atmosphere on the Moon, so great quantities of thermal energy could be stored in insulated reservoirs buried below the regolith to minimize radiative heat loss. Stirling and other thermal engines could tap the molten reserves as necessary to generate power. The system could also function as part of the colony’s heat management system, absorbing excess heat during the 200C days and maintaining livable quarters in the -100C black.

Energy may also be stored in massive flywheel systems. Advances in materials science may yield substances capable of withstanding tremendous kinetic energies, allowing great quantities of power to be stored in spinning disks.

Fuel cell technology has already made great strides from its Apollo days. This last summer I interned for a local firm whose small cartridges — as large as an LP record and an inch thick — could each output a few hundred watts. Provided a reliable source of hydrogen can be established, it’s an attractive technology since the only byproducts are heat and pure water. This April the latest NASA orbiter around the Moon will reveal whether the permanently-dark acreage near the poles contains water ice crystals.

Longer-term, uranium ore may be extracted from the rich maria regions on the Moon’s near side. Future fusion reactors may run on Helium-3, which exists in small quantities embedded in the top few meters of regolith. This may ultimately eclipse any other available resources in terms of value.

Geothermal energy could be tapped if an adequately deep hole could be bored down into the warm mantle.

Ultimately I want to explore all of these technologies in the game. Each advance will come with its own price, however. Rare-but-hilarious disasters will remind the player that science is a double-edged sword. Nanotech gray goo might gobble your left arm off while some engineered genetic bacteriophage soups up your guts.