>>1291516Space suits have terrible mobility and if you fall and start to leak you are basicly fucked, you don`t want to ride in one outside.
First bases will probably have internal corridors where you can walk, an electric vehicle for expeditions and a capsule for orbital and suborbital flight.
At later stages the bases will grow far enough that cycling inside of them might get usefull.
Since a large part of them will be underground, some kind of metro/light rail system might develop between them.
The train itself will probably exposed to the vacuum, have its own life-support system and batteries.
The real questions are:
>wich ressources will be mined>will there be manufacturing>will there be manufacturing for export>what layout will be chosen for the moon basesBased on analysis of moon regolith we can assume a decent supply of:
>siliconeYou can make glass, semiconductors and solar cells with it.
>aluminiumYou can build bikes, bases, trains and pretty much anything with it, also usefull for ceramics.
Very usefull stuff.
>ironGood for rails, bearings and highly stressed components.
>magnesiumUsefull for very lightweight structures.
>Helium 3Maybe usefull as fuel for nuclear fusion, assuming they finaly build a working reactor.
These metals could not only be used to build a larger moon base without hauling shitloads of material to the moon, but also for building new ships and habitats.
The Helium 3 could be used as fuel for fusion powered engines for longer missions to Mars and beyond.
The great advantage of the moon for this is its lack of athmosphere and low gravity, making it pretty easy to launch stuff into orbit there.
I wonder what mix they`ll use as athmosphere on the moon bases, nitrogen is in short supply up there and there is plenty of oxygen in the regolith.
200 hPa of oxygen alone are surviveable, but I`m not sure about long therm effects.
