Desktop Manufacturing is the logical development of rapid prototyping technology and provides the ideal solution to one of the key problems of any Moon Base, the storage of spare parts.
Any Moon Base is going to need a lot of machinery to run it. Machinery that is essential to the health and well being of of the people such as essential life support equipment, as well as as host of other equipment ranging from communications to personal entertainment. All this machinery and equipment is going to have to be maintained and repaired. The cost of transportation from Earth of replacement parts and new equipment is going to remain astronomically high for the foreseeable future so one of the key decisions affecting the success of any Moon Base is going to be the list of spare parts that are brought along.
On a finite budget we will not be able to bring a replacement for every part of every machine to the Moon. And while we will be bringing sturdy and robust equipment with us we do not know what will break until it breaks. But by designing our equipment to be made from parts that can be replicated by a Desktop Manufacturing system we eliminate the need to, and the expense of, bringing every spare part for every machine from Earth. Instead of shipping completed spare parts from Earth we can ship the materials needed to manufacture which ever spare part needs to be made. We will need to bring essential parts that can not be manufactured on the Moon. And we will need a store of spare parts that will need to be replaced immediately upon failure, as it can take some time to manufacture spare parts using Desktop Manufacturing techniques.
However by designing our equipment using parts that can be manufactured on the Moon by DeskTop Manufacturing equipment we will eliminate the need to ship parts from Earth and also enhance the security of the Moon Base, most especially in it’s early days.
