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.

Lunar probes in the last decade have revealed a great deal of new information about the Moon’s polar regions, and what might be found inside the deeper craters where sunlight hasn’t shone for millions of years. Ice crystals left behind by cometary impacts may have accumulated inside these pitch-black polar deep freezers. Enough ice to sustain colonization and exploitation of the Moon as a space exploration staging point.

Peary Crater is a prime candidate for permanent settlement, as it has a rare set of environmental resources that can be tapped by colonists.

• The north-west rim of the crater (seen above along the 30 degrees-west meridian) is high enough and close enough to the pole to be bathed in sunlight every hour of the Moon’s 27 day, 7 hour and 43.2 minute day. Nearly every other site on the Moon must contend with at least a portion of the Moon’s two-week darkness.
• Constant sunlight can be counted upon as a reliable energy source, as well as maintaining a constant temperature on the surface at the colony site.
• The south-east region of the crater, and some of the smaller craters inside, are permanently dark and -173 degrees C. Billions of cubic meters of water ice crystals are lying just under the regolith in thousands of square kilometers around the polar region.
• Rover harvesters can process the first few meters of the crater’s soil, extracting water ice crystals and other volatiles. The chemical makeup of this material will provide invaluable clues to the early history of our solar system.
• Water ice can be processed into potable water, converted to oxygen and hydrogen gas through electrolysis, and for reaction mass in rocket boosters. It cannot be overstated how valuable a local source of water is to a colony.
• Unoccupied dark craters provide an excellent platform for astronomical observation, thanks to low temperatures and low solar interference.

http://www.spudislunarresources.com/moon101/moon_101_polar.pdf

In the next few days we’ll be putting together the first primitive model of one of these colonies, stay tuned!