Scientists argue that large lunar cities are likely unsustainable because there is not enough water ice in the Moon’s polar cold traps, even though power would be plentiful from near-permanent sunlight on crater rims. A new analysis estimates that even an optimistic 1 billion tons of ice would support a million-person settlement for only a bit more than a century with ISS-like 98% recycling — and far less if the true ice reserve is closer to 30 million tons — while a much smaller outpost of about 1,000 people could last centuries. The study, published in Frontiers in Space Technologies, says bigger cities or heavy industry would therefore require far better recycling, water-saving methods such as vertical farming, imported ice from asteroids, or the discovery of substantially more lunar water than current shallow surveys have confirmed. (The Fremen also had a solution….)
https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cities-moon-isnt-scientists.html
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