Chris Biru

Happy Sunday and welcome to this bonus episode of The Briefing.

I'm Chris Biru.

NASA this week revealed its first detailed blueprint for long-term life on the moon.

We're talking robotic landers, high-tech moon buggies and tech to harvest lunar ice for water and rocket fuel.

They say the project will unfold over decades and will eventually evolve into a continuously occupied base starting in 2032.

But NASA isn't the only one trying to plant a flag on the lunar surface.

China has its own rival lunar-based project in the works alongside Russia, while private space billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are aiming even higher.

In fact, the last time we did a deep dive on the race to colonise the moon specifically was back in February when Elon revealed his ambitious plans to get a massive self-sustaining city up there within the next decade.

I spoke with my fellow

favourite space person on this earth, ANU astrophysicist and associate professor Brad Tucker about it all at the time.

And here is that chat for you now.

Brad, welcome back to The Briefing.

Let's start with this city that Musk wants on the moon.

What exactly is it and what would it look like?

Okay, so are we talking like factories, high rises?

Are we talking about all of this sort of stuff?

Okay, so not like Star Wars.

None of this like flying around between buildings.

Is there anything out there in space at the moment that kind of looks like the infrastructure you're talking about?

The only thing that's coming to my mind at the moment is like the International Space Station, but that's