Why the First Permanent Colony Should Be on the Moon

The first permanent foothold beyond Earth will not begin with a single glorious landing. It will begin with infrastructure: landing pads fused into lunar soil, power lines stretched across crater rims, robots hauling cargo through abrasive dust, tanks of water and oxygen stored beside buried habitats, and antennas aimed both back at Earth and out into deep space. Three days from home, the Moon is the nearest place where humanity can attempt something harder and more important than exploration: permanence. It offers a stable surface to build on, weak gravity that makes movement and launch easier, polar regions that may hold usable ice, a far side uniquely suited to radio astronomy, and a position at the center of the growing Earth-Moon transportation system.…