The first objective is to transport equipments on the Moon’s surface with a vehicle placed in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) by Ariane 64.

The second objective is to reduce transport costs by producing in situ propellants, and focus on technologies such as electric propulsion:

Production of LOx / LH2 propellants from lunar water ice.

Moon-LLO Shuttle re-fuelled on the Moon, able to deliver multiple return trips. The shuttle takes off empty from the Moon, joins the LLO, takes the payload delivered by a conventional launcher and brings it back to the Moon.

Reusable electro-solar inter-orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) for transportation between Earth Orbit (EO) and LLO. The OTV takes the payload delivered on the EO by a commercial launcher, bring it to the LLO where it is picked up by the lunar shuttle and then returns empty on the EO.

> Land / LLO transport and return with the STS heavy launcher and the Orion vessel.

> Landing on the Moon and back on Orion, in an Altaïr-type vehicle.

> An alternative would be to use as a relay station the DSG (Deep Space Gateway) lunar orbital station envisaged buy NASA as part of the project of Mars-inhabited mission.

For short distances (<100 km): a fully robotized container transport system, which do not need ground facilities,

For long distances (1000 km): ballistic flights of the lunar shuttle (cargo transport only),

On the technological basis of electromagnetic guns (railguns), which are currently being tested for military applications, electromagnetic catapults for small and compact payloads could be possible.

With promising materials such as carbon nanotubes, the futuristic concept of space elevator acquires new credibility. On the long-term, it could be one day an effective solution for space transportation, not only to send freight and passengers in space, but also to bring back on Earth high-value added materials and equipements produced by space industry.

In order to breath, drink, eat and, generally live in a nominal way, Man is still completely reliant on Earth biosphere. Some essential conditions must be given for his life support:

            - Preservation of gut microbiota
            - Daily supply of O2, water and food
            - Daily recycling of CO2, faeces and water

Currently life support technology is mainly based on water recycling, food and O2 supply from Earth, and wastes rejection. All of these methods can prove to be insufficient, too costly  or too heavy for long duration stays in space. The creation of closed eco-systems seems to be the best answer in this case. 

Various types of closed ecosystems has been tested on Earth, in ships and in the ISS. But many difficulties remains such as:

            -Autonomy of the systems
            -Viability in time
            -Space adaptation (micro-gravity, radiations…)
            -Species choice for a well balanced gut microbiota and protein supply

The area where the first village will be set up has to be on the near side of the Moon in order to maintain permanent links with the Earth, close to one of the lunar polar regions, in order to benefit from large periods of uninterrupted sunlight while being near region of water ice that have been identified at the bottom of some craters in the polar regions.

The main advantage of such a location is that it is quite easy to switch from a place permanently lit by the Sun to another one in a permanent darkness. The ice extraction site can thus be a few kilometers apart from permanently lit solar arrays and the shelters for protecting the crew from solar radiation in a crater close to the village.

The setting up of a Moon Village raises a number of legal and ethical issues which should be dealt with in due time. The most relevant legal texts for the Moon Village are:

- Some of the Space treaties i.e. The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies in force since 1967 (the "Outer Space Treaty",, The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects  in force since 1968 ("Liability Convention") and The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies in force since 1984 ("Moon Agreement") and 

- National Space Laws.

The Outer Space Treaty is the Magna Carta of Space Law; all other Space Treaties are derived from it.

The Outer Space Treaty contains not only legal provisions but also some that can be qualified as ethical. This is already the case in Article 1 of the Treaty; According to this article the exploration and use of Outer Space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.  There shall moreover be free access to all areas of celestial bodies. 

Modular architectures, inflatable structures, habitats in lava tubes, activity zones protected by dome shells or large flat shields ..., lunar architecture refers to a multitude of concepts yet to be developed, analyzed, and compared in order to identify best fitting solutions  for each development phase of the Moon Village.

First, the question is to identify and prioritize constraints responding to each concept. These constraints can be classified into three main categories:

            1 - Constraints related to the activity of the village,

            2 - Life Support Constraints,

            3 - Construction Process Constraints.

Space Industrialization must be seen as a « Grand Project », aiming to facilitate space activities by freeing them, as far as possible, from Earth. This should take several decades, according to a program involving first a permanent settlement on the Moon.

During this development phase, science and technology should progress considerably in almost all fields, and bring to this Grand Project new means and resources for its completion.

Beyond its obvious scientific interest, the Space Industrialization program will be a response to strategic issues like depletion of terrestrial mineral resources (rare metals for instance), energy production, or research on sustainable industrial solutions.

For these reasons, it must no longer be seen as an utopia, but as a necessary endeavor for the future of the planet and for humanity.

_{In order to ensure that the Moon Village will reach some level of autonomy and sustainability, if not a total independence from the Earth, some key premises and interconnections have to be defined for shaping a core infrastructure:}

_{The space port :
A lot of spaceflights will be needed to deliver on the Moon the necessary material. So the first facility to be set up is the lunar spaceport. It is not intended to be man tended. Its main functions will be to provide navigation support for landing and take-off, transport and storage capacity for the payload delivered from Earth, refueling services, energy storage and delivery, connections to the village, communication with the Earth. This imposes to establish the spaceport on the near side of the Moon, at latitude less than 80°, ie about 300 km far from the pole. It will be preferably on a flat surface, where the regolith is as firm as possible.}

_{The village 1.0
For the same reasons as for the space port (visibility of the Earth), the village will be established at latitude less than 80°. It should be a few kilometers apart the space port and close to a crater that could be used for sheltering the villagers from solar storms. The proximity to one pole (South or North) will improve the possibility to take advantage of solar energy collected from peaks of eternal light.}

_{For all the above mentioned reasons, the privileged sites are areas close to Shackleton crater at the South Pole or Peary crater at the North Pole.}

In 50 years the world has changed, and nowadays a program such as Apollo should have to demonstrate its necessity and usefulness in order to gain acceptance and mobilize public support. On the other hand, global warming, climate change, resource exhaustion and global damaging of Earth biosphere threaten directly human existence with urgencies. 

For these reasons, we believe that space economy will develop in the near future an unprecedented range of activities to support Earth and solar system exploration. One can think about Solar Power Stations (SPS), radio telescopes, Electro-Solar space tug, etc. The use of extraterrestrial resources to build infrastructures in space would become more and more evident, and quite naturally, launching resources from Earth at high cost could be seen as a pure economical and ecological non-sense.

Such perspectives could lead to a real « Space Industry », which, over the long-term, would be no longer dependent on Earth. This could result in the achievement of two main objectives:
                -  Supplying Earth with extraterrestrial material, and
                -  Creating added value in space towards a whole new branch of economy.

However, it is unrealistic to pretend that the close link with the Earth could be rapidly broken. First steps of Space Industrialization should take place in Earth’s vicinity, exploiting in particular resources from the Moon’s surface. Extraterrestrial minerals could indeed become a primary objective for space industry :
                - Ore processing factories could produce huge quantities of iron, aluminum, titanium, oxygen and silicon extracted from lunar regolith,
                - Concrete can be manufactured from lunar regolith and become the raw material for human habitats and infrastructures,
                - If the presence of water ice is confirmed, it could provide for all domestic or industrial usages. Electrolysis could be used to extract oxygen and hydrogen, giving the possibility to manufacture high thrust rocket propellant. Water could either be used in protection shields against Solar Particles Events (SPE).

Beyond these raw material production, processing industry should be set up to provide alloys, metal products, glass products, propellant, breathable air, solar cells, etc… Means to built consistent infrastructures could be then quickly needed for further development. Designed as smart factories and powered by the Sun, all these lunar installation should be as automatized and robotized as possible.

Space Industrialization has to be developped. Prototypes and pilot plants must first be built and installed for demonstration and process development before moving to the industrial stage, with preliminary researches and preparation on favourable sites.

Our proposal is to consider this program as a component of the Moon Village project, within an international cooperation spread over several decades, also constituting a common resources base for further developments (energy, raw material mining, means of transport, robots, etc.).

Fast progresses in robotics and Artificial Intelligence suggest that the presence of astronauts on the Moon is not an absolute necessity, given the cost and constraints of manned missions. However, we must consider too that activities on the Moon Village will not only be simple systematic or repetitive processes, but all kind of innovative, complex and sophisticated activities requiring a human supervision.

In this context, a structuring objective of the Village will be to learn how to live and work in a reduced gravity (g/6) and, first of all, in a certain self-sufficiency, in contrast to the ISS closely dependent on Earth. 

Today, we do not know much about long-term living on the Moon, and under which conditions. Low gravity could limit stays to only a few months, and ionizing radiation prevent any prolonged EVA. Not to mention the psychological problems of confinement and isolation. That is why only reduced crews of professional astronauts will be able first to occupy the base, with regular rotations, like Antarctic stations, nuclear submarines and, of course, the ISS. 

In the short term, the objective is to use, for the construction and operation of the Moon Village, the regolith dust and, if its presence is confirmed, water ice remaining in the frozen shaded depths of polar craters.

For the regolith :
        - collection, transport and storage of this very fine dust, very dirty, abrasive and allergenic,
        - for block construction (« regolith concrete ») and GCR radiation protection of inhabited areas and sensitive equipment,
        - production of  breathable oxygen by heating (solar ovens).

For water ice :
        - search for extractable deposits,
        - extraction, treatment and purification (production of drinking water for instance),
        - SPE radioprotection of inhabited areas and sensitive equipment,

In the medium term, from the technologies previously developed, it is necessary to produce in sufficient quantities :
        - metal alloys of iron, aluminum and titanium for the construction of structures, manufacturing traction cables (steel) and electrical cables (aluminum),
        - silica for reinforced concrete, thermal insulation, wall glass and fiber optics,
        - silicon for photovoltaic energy,
        - liquid oxygen and hydrogen as propellant for lunar shuttles.

It will then be possible to produce on the Moon all kinds of « second level » manufactured products, such as pressurized inhabited modules, agricultural greenhouses, rail tracks, telecommunications networks, solar power stations, metallurgical factories and launch bases.
 
The objective is to significantly reduce the cost of space equipments by overcoming the constraints imposed by terrestrial launchers (high transport costs, limited mass and volume, severe environment) and reliability requirements (high maintenance-free lifetime ).

A first significant step would be, for instance, to reduce today’s cost of a payload placed on the Moon, to that of the same payload placed on Low Earth Orbit.

The next step takes place  in Space. Rocket-propelled shuttles,  electromagnetic launchers, maybe one day a space elevator, send into lunar orbit the equipment necessary first for the construction: Solar Power Satellites (SPS), logistics bases, solar-powered tugs (OTVs) and  different kind of networks (telecom, location, surveillance) with the perspective of the development of a real space infrastructure able, in the long term, to operate throughout the solar system.

The objective of this infrastructure is twofold:
            - facilitate missions to distant planets. First of all, of course, manned missions to Mars. As to missions to satellites of the giant planets, one can hardly imagine them without previously “colonized” space beforehand.
            - to explore asteroids, and exploit their scarce  raw materials, becoming too difficult or impossible, to extract on Earth.

Another useful role of these installations could be to counter the threat of a Near-Earth-Object (NEO), with a space monitoring system and possible defense measures more or less far from the Earth.

Advanced production units of closed ecosystems are still to be invented. They shall be soilless, with controlled atmosphere, controlled illumination, CO2 enriched, controlled dissolved minerals, production and wastes managements by robots, protection against radiations. Furthermore, critical components must be under strict surveillance where humidity and/or concentration can quickly develops uncontrolled microbial species. These particular places are extremely sensitive and can be infected in no time by dangerous micro-organisms. Such systems as a whole remain fragile and sudden uncontrolled drifts may occur. We may even assume that the more control is given to the closed ecosystem and the more exposed it is to complete collapse. Redundancy and size adaptation will be a must in order to avoid catastrophic situations.

The lack of knowledge about gut microbiota is a major drawback. This is essential to have a good understanding of how it works, and its relation with the Earth biosphere, to grasp the idea of how this complex world can be isolated and/or re-created. In a perspective of long duration stays on the Moon, as the Moon Village may suppose, this aspect is particularly crucial and research in that matter are still ahead. We may assume that regular contacts with Earth at the beginning will facilitate life support and will provide the opportunity of long development researched in this field.

The setting-up and running of a Moon Village will require the exploitation of water (ice) resources on the Moon which is believed to exist in permanently shadowed areas but at the same time sources of sun energy will require locations which are permanently exposed to sunlight. It is obvious that these areas are limited in number and that by using these resources others will be prevented of doing so. 

Intensive and as wide as possible international cooperation could be an answer. 

Ethical issues should not be underestimated more and more people consider that nature has its own rights e.g. Ecuador and Bolivia recognized the rights of nature. Similar is “SOS TREATY (The Safe Operating Space Treaty) advocating a new approach to managing our use of the Earth System. Although these issues are for the moment more linked to our planet attention to the “rights of Outer Space” is gaining interest.  Experiences carried out show that even in extreme conditions life can exist and it should therefore not be excluded that life exist within the permanent ice deposits. 

What is the purpose of the village and the motivations of residents (exploration, scientific activity, industrial activity, tourism, ...) ? These constraints will determine the equipment associated with the habitats , their location, their dimensioning (for a small crew like in the ISS, or for dozens of people, or even more?), ...

What infrastructure and equipment are necessary/sufficient to ensure the life support system? Constraints related to protection against lunar environment (micrometeorites, SPE, GCR, space vacuum, regolith dust); constraints related to the development of a sustainable living environment (closed biological systems; water resources, ...); energy production ; modes of communication and transport; ...

What are the constraints related to the construction process of the lunar village? If the village "1.0" is constructed primarily from Earth imported equipment, next steps should prioritize exploitation of local resources: producing a "regolith concrete"? In this case, what are the construction tools to first import from Earth ? 3D Printers, Excavators, terracing machineries? Can we develop a lunar proto-metallurgy ? Example: Production of aluminum for the manufacturing of metallic structures, …

As an example, an architectural solution could be based on Parabolic Dome Shells of biomimetic structure, using automated additive layer printing and regolith fusion for construction, with 2 types of modules :
            - Domes for multi-purpose activities, or habitat,
            - Corridors along the domes which serve as circulation, and facilitate modular development.

Another solution could be the  Flat Shield  Concept, covering activity and living aeras under large flat horizontal shields - built with simple metal wire mesh structures covered by regolith – protecting from the three main risks coming from the sky : SPE, GCR and micro-meteorits.