With all the madness taking place on earth, with wars sweeping across Europe and Asia, China looks to the heavens for its future. The moon has always fascinated man and peaked its curiosity, and “now major spacefaring nations have proposed plans for middle- and long-term human presence on the moon, sparking a new wave of lunar exploration enthusiasm,” according to the Global Times, China’s leading newspaper.
According to the Chinese scientists, China plans to push forward its ambitious lunar plans, including placing taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) on the moon by 2030 and building a lunar research station by 2035.
The Chinese have created a laboratory sandbox simulating a future lunar base scenario has been set up at the national digital construction technology innovation center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province.
“With simulated lunar soil bricks sent to Chinese space station aboard the Tianzhou-8, the development team responsible said in an interview on Monday that it is considering shaping the bricks into mortise and tenon joints — a traditional Chinese construction technique — to build an egg-shaped house on the moon,” according to China Central Television (CCTV).
Academician Ding Lieyun, chief scientist at the center and leader in the development of lunar soil bricks, said in an interview with CCTV that his team has been conducting various experiments on the shape of China’s future lunar base.
“Initially, they explored dome structures, arch shapes, and columnar designs, repeatedly testing different forms to ensure they would be suitable for the moon’s surface environment and easy to construct,” said Lieyun.
Lieyun told reporters “That constructing on the lunar surface presents enormous challenges due to extreme environmental conditions, including limited in-situ materials, the absence of liquid water, low gravity, temperature fluctuations exceeding 300 C between day and night, approximately 1,000 seismic events of two to three magnitude each year, strong radiation from cosmic rays, and the moon’s complex topography and geology. These factors make lunar construction an exceptionally challenging super-engineering endeavor,” Lieyun said. 
