Architectural design and construction methods for Russian lunar habitation base

In any way the future of the human civilization will be attributed to space expansion, which will begin with exploration of circumlunar orbits and Moon’s surface. Despite of half a century calm period in the Moon exploration, lunar bases may appear in the next two or three decades. It is expected that initially these will be small compact habitable stations, which will be primarily designed to study effects of hypogravity on a human body. The construction of such stations shall be based on application of robot-assisted construction machinery and construction material available on the Moon, regarding requirements for protection against environmental effects, primarily space radiation and meteorites. The follow on construction shall integrate all previously built facilities, namely be carried out according to a long-term master plan, which will call for supply of a lunar settlement with required resources. Lunar settlements are a new area in designing residential and public spaces, radically different from traditional terrestrial principles of architectural design existing on Earth for centuries. However, the use of new construction, engineering and the IT industry technologies will enable to solve many technical and technological issues resulting from the Moon specifics. This offers great challenges for lunar construction, architectural design and modeling of the interior space. The article discusses fundamental principles of creating a lunar base called Permanent Lunar Station (PLUS), describes some construction technologies for habitable stations being developed in Russia, and critically evaluates the existing projects.