The Moon may contain up to one billion tonnes of water, mainly at its poles. This discovery has fueled speculation about the possibility of building lunar cities, industrial districts and permanent colonies where people can live and work.
However, a new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies by Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell analyses whether this amount of water would actually be sufficient to sustain a permanent human presence on the Moon.
The researchers did the calculations and reached a concerning conclusion. A city with one million inhabitants would exhaust all the water available on the Moon in just over a century, even considering the most generous estimates of existing water and the highest levels of efficiency in its recycling.
The article thus leaves a fundamental question: will it be viable to establish permanent lunar colonies when water resources are so limited?
