This is John Batchel, a conversation with Professor Hyme Ben-Roy of Rutgers University's Department

of Mechanical Air Engineering and Aerospace Engineering about habitats on the Moon. He's written

two or three excellent books on habitats on both Moon and Mars. Right now we're sticking to the Earth-Moon system

and why the Moon and what is to be done,

especially about water.

Here's Heim Ben-Iroya, the Earth-Moon system,

the future of space travel,

and the solar system is not big enough to hold us back.

More of this tonight.

There are all kinds of technologies, chemical and other kinds of technologies that can access that.

Of course, that's very energy intensive.

And if we're basically harvesting molecules, we're looking at a long haul before we can have enough water.

But for example, Lockheed Martin published something called a water-based lunar architecture,

where they show basically a series of structures and an infrastructure whose sole purpose is for water harvesting.

So it's possible that there will be something available to us in that rain.

But I think that it's always longer, it always takes longer than we think or wish.

And I think that we have to sort of be prepared for the long

haul if we're really going to capitalize on the moon at first, for its minerals, for

growth in the economy, for the science. And as we all know here, that the science really is an

economic development engine as well. So by doing science, there are a lot of benefits

that we can't predict all the engineering.

A lot of it will cycle back to Earth.

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