Oxygen is a hot commodity in space. It will be vital not only for potential human settlements to breathe, but also to enable the combustion processes needed to propel rockets to and from celestial bodies.
Nowadays, it’s often the case that 70 per cent of a rocket’s cargo consists of the oxygen needed to launch the spacecraft, which must be carried with it from Earth.
“One of the main challenges is the extraordinary cost of sending anything from Earth to the Moon,” Jonathan Geifman, the co-founder of Israeli company Project Helios, told Euronews.
If you’re gonna need a lot of supplies and fuel and bulk materials to go to Mars, you’re much better lifting them off the Moon than you are lifting them off the Earth.