Moon Dialogs Research Salon: The Implications of Dust for Resource Contention and Lunar Policy

The Moon Dialogs project, a partnership between Open Lunar Foundation, Arizona State University, Secure World Foundation, MIT Space Exploration Initiative and For All Moonkind, is holding a series of online research salons targeted at advancing interdisciplinary lunar policy thinking, relevant to near term lunar activity. The seminars will focus exclusively on the Moon.

The topic of the May 7 salon was “The Implications of Dust for Resource Contention and Lunar Policy,” featuring discussant Phil Metzger. 

Participants were invited to consider the following prompts prior to the discussion:

• How might dust create contention for locations or for assets themselves?
• How might blast effects become an issue in the short to mid term and for who?
• How might the specific behaviour of dust (longevity, global & local effects, particle size, types of damage from mechanical to coating effectiveness) might each raise different kinds of policy questions?

Dr. Philip Metzger is a planetary physicist with the Planetary Science faculty at the University of Central Florida, developing what he calls “Economic Planetary Science” to help humanity’s expansion beyond Earth. He has 30 years’ experience at NASA first as an engineer and then as a physicist, developing and operating spaceflight technologies. While at NASA, Phil led the Agency’s work in rocket blast effects for human-class missions. He participated in architecture studies for the Lunar Architecture Team, the Mars Architecture Team and the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, and he helped develop NASA’s technology roadmap for planetary surface technologies. He convinced NASA to develop guidelines for protecting the historic sites on the Moon, and he wrote a large portion of that work. He also led projects to develop lunar ice extraction, regolith conveyance, lunar and martian landing pads, and lunar energy storage. He co-founded NASA’s biannual Workshop on Granular Materials in Lunar and Martian Exploration and is a founding member of the ASCE Technical Committee for Regolith Operations, Mobility and Robotics. Phil received the astronaut’s Silver Snoopy award in 2010. He was selected as the Kennedy Space Center’s NASA Scientist/Engineer of the Year for 2011. He received the NASA Silver Achievement Medal in 2014 for technological innovation. In 2016, he was selected for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Aerospace Outstanding Technical Contribution Award.

Video

More about the Series

The Moon Dialogs Research Salons seek to cultivate thought leadership on lunar surface coordination mechanisms to accelerate peaceful and sustained presence on the Moon. The initiative will focus on advancing concrete approaches to operating standards, norms, and economic foundations, with an emphasis on applied and bottom up approaches, creating opportunities for voluntary coordination between and amongst industry, government and academia alike.

Download the event report