One of the key goals of the Artemis program is to build a program that is sustainable with an eventual permanent human presence on the Moon. For that to succeed we’ll need to use local resources which will mean starting lunar surface manufacturing operations.

In today’s Space Economy podcast, the last of our Winter Series which has been focussed on NASA’s return to the Moon with the Artemis program, we look at one company that wants to do lunar surface manufacturing operations.

So far in our Winter Series we’ve discussed the NASA VIPER robotic precursor mission to Moon’s South Pole, the Lunar Gateway’s first habitable element, the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, originally known as HALO but which has been combined with Maxar’s Power and Propulsion Element to create what is now being called the Comanifest Flight, and in our last episode, a look back to help us with the way forward where we heard about Increasing Science-Operations-Engineering Synergism in the Apollo Lunar Exploration Program: Perspectives for the Artemis Program.

Today, we’re going to look forward in time. We’re going to learn about one company’s ideas of using lunar resources for in-situ manufacturing. The ideas presented here are going to take some time to develop. Hence, why this episode is a look forward to when the Artemis program has progressed much further than what we’ve discussed so far.

The presenters are Ron Polidan and Alex Ignatiev from Lunar Resources, a startup formed three years ago. Their presentation is available below.

Listen in.