Floating in the Sea of Tranquility

Why we should build a swimming pool on the Moon

We choose to build a pool on the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

A recent special issue of the New Space journal reported on the reasons and methods for constructing a permanently inhabited lunar colony, and that it could be done within the next few years and for around $10 billion.

A lunar colony would provide invaluable experience and technological development for future missions to Mars and beyond, as well as being extremely scientifically useful. The only reason moon colonization missions are not on the cards is because NASA believe they have the budget to get to the Moon, or Mars, but not both. However, as the contributors to the New Space journal have argued, thanks to developments in 3D-printing, life support systems, and reusable launch vehicles, this is no longer the case.

While we’re building that moon colony, we should equip it with an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

That would be really cool

As already demonstrated by Randall Munroe of xkcd What If, a swimming pool on the Moon would be really cool. Due to the low gravity a swimmer wearing fins could leap 4 or 5 metres out of the water. The shear awesomeness of this endeavour would stimulate great interest from the public. A pool would also be a huge morale boost to the crews of the Moon base during their long missions.

Thanks to reusable vehicles such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon, the cost of a flight to an established base on the Moon would fall to a few tens of millions of dollars, putting it in the price range of space tourism trips for eccentric billionaires, and providing a supplementary source of funding.

It would also provide scientists with an opportunity to categorically prove whether or not a human can run on water in low-gravity as predicted by this paper.

The technological challenge has massive benefits

Building a swimming pool on the Moon, especially an Olympic-sized one, would be an immense technological challenge, but the technologies developed and lessons learned during this program would kick-start deep space exploration and industries such as asteroid mining.

An Olympic-sized pool of water would be too stupidly expensive to transport to the Moon, even assuming the most optimistic forecasts of SpaceX’s launch cost reductions. The materials to build the pool and the water to fill it would have to be mined from the Moon itself. The tools and techniques developed to mine these resources would have direct application to asteroid mining, an industry that promises to supply huge quantities of rare and valuable minerals without destroying ecosystems back home on Earth. Obtaining resources in this way is a necessary precursor to humanity establishing bases on other worlds.

Mining huge quantities of water from celestial bodies is a necessary step in the production of rocket fuel to support manned missions into deep space. The surest way to reduce the effects and risks of space flight to humans is to reduce the flight time. To do this, we would need refuelling stations at strategic points throughout the solar system. Also, permanent human habitation will require colonists to work to reduce their dependence on supplies from Earth, and this means obtaining huge quantities of water to grow the food necessary to sustain a colony. The Moon would be the first small step of humanity’s giant leap out into the cosmos.

The structure required to house an Olympic swimming pool and protect it from the vacuum of space would be far larger than anything currently envisioned for missions to the Moon or Mars in either the short- or mid-term. However, if humanity is really going to colonize Mars, or other bodies in the solar system, then we are going to need large spaces such as this to play and exercise. If we can’t build large recreation spaces like this one, permanent human habitation of deep-space colonies will not be a realistic goal.

As with humanity’s other forays into space, the technologies developed during the project will have useful, important, and lucrative spin-offs on Earth. For example, waste management and resource recycling systems, of critical importance to a Moon colony, would be applied on Earth to reduce our environmental footprint and improve sustainability.

Building a swimming pool on the Moon will hone the tools and techniques that humanity needs to develop if we are going to expand into deep space and reap the benefits of becoming a truly space-faring race, while the scale of the goal will inspire scientists and the public alike. Big goals spur big leaps in technological and scientific progress, and I think you’d have to agree, this would be pretty cool.