“Space gardens” are one of the most advanced frontiers of the progressive colonisation of Space by sapiens who – as Roberto Cingolani observes – have “nomadism” and the need to know what surrounds them in their DNA. An intrinsic desire to explore, driven by the need to know what lies beyond every boundary that is crossed and by the need to find new solutions for their own survival.
Today – continues Cingolani – human beings have occupied the entire planet Earth and are looking to Space, both to find new resources and to prepare for the next migration, to find new habitable spaces. The most accessible objectives? The Moon and Mars. A real Space economy is, therefore, developing, mainly linked to the search for precious minerals, but also to the continuous development of many technologies, linked both to satellites in orbit, which provide downstream services (geolocation, land observation, telecommunications, just to name a few), and to the construction of vectors and launchers that, in addition to carrying satellites into orbit, will in the future carry new “migrants” to the Moon, Mars and beyond. With the corollary of technological developments in adjacent sectors, such as rovers, robots, cybersecurity, electronics. It is – continues Cingolani – an economy that is expected to exceed a trillion dollars in 2030.
But what does it mean, in concrete terms, to create a lunar base? What advantages will it bring to humanity? As Cingolani explains, sapiens will arrive on other worlds, perhaps as early as the next decade – and will face multiple challenges: creating an atmosphere and the right microclimate, building a habitable village, having connection and communication services, producing food and recycling resources. All this will transform a hostile environment into an incubator of technologies, which will look forward to other destinations, but will also return to Earth, to improve the lives of its inhabitants.