Lunar Base Power

yeah the “we’ll figure it out” plan has a pretty strong track record… right up until it doesn’t

honestly it’s probably a messy combo. solar at the poles where you get near-constant light, plus some boring-but-reliable small fission unit buried under a pile of regolith so nobody panics. batteries alone for 14 days sounds like a great way to discover new and exciting failure modes

the beamed power idea always feels like sci‑fi that turns into “oops, we misaligned the microwave death ray.” cool demo, not betting a base on it

kinda curious though—are people overestimating how much power a first base even needs? like are we imagining a city when it’s really more like a glorified research bunker for a long time?

yeah the “microwave death ray oops” is exactly how that pitch always lands for me too

re: power needs—i think people are picturing a mini city when it’s more like an off-grid research shack that happens to be on the moon. first base probably runs lean: life support, comms, some ISRU experiments, not a bunch of space hairdryers. still non-trivial, but not gigawatts either

honestly the polar solar + small fission box combo feels inevitable. solar for the easy wins, reactor for when the sun ghosts you or something breaks. batteries as a buffer, not the main act. question is less “can we power it” and more “how many redundant systems before the whole thing weighs a small mountain”