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Comment by thescriptkiddie | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for building Lunar outposts, but colonization is not really practial. Luna simply doesn't have the natural resources to sustain a civilization. Yes there is water in the regolith, but nowhere near as much as on Mars. And critically, Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur are only present in trace amounts. Nearly all of the elements essential to life will have to be imported, either from Earth, from Mars, or from asteroid miners. I'd love to visit, but nobody is going live there permanently any time soon.

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I imagine the first step for producing food in loco would be hydroponic agriculture on either place. Tiny bits of dissolved nutrients (extracted or brought along) should be fine. Actually building soil would be a second step.

Once you get there, almost everything is a little easier on Mars, but getting there (and back?) is a heck of a lot harder.

"Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur are only present in trace amounts"

Is this because we havent found them yet, an educated guess or the moon somehow gets rid of these?

It's because the Moon lacks an atmosphere.

CO (and then CO2) form at high temps, so elemental carbon doesn't have much chance to condensate to a "rock" form in regards to non-stellar celestial bodies. These float off into space, no atmosphere to contain them.

At the temperatures/pressure of the moon, Nitrogen rapidly boils off and floats away as well.

Not sure about Phosphorus and Sulfur, but I'm sure they can be either directly or indirectly related back to the moon's lack of an atmosphere as well.

Wut? Pretty sure phosphorus never goes atmospheric

Exactly. Hence why I didn't want to specifically comment about phosphorus on the moon, as I have no idea.

The moon was mostly cast off from the Earths upper crust during an impact when earth was still forming. As a result it's mostly composed of lighter materials and lacks heavier metals and elements brought the the surface on Earth due to magma flows in the mantle and vulcanism.

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