It'll probably be centuries before we need more than a couple of giant lava tubes or craters, both of which are almost inexhaustibly abundant on both the Moon and Mars.

Yeah, that makes sense. We could have specific areas for colonization while keeping others untouched for research might turn out positive.

Stackernerd

I'm not sure if it's particularly tricky. There's a lot of real estate and, outside of highly modified protected environments, there don't seem to be any places where life would easily spread.

My sense is that we can basically just pick a few places to try to colonize, which will require isolation from the outside environment, anyway.

science

Some Earth microbes could survive on the Moon

I'm not sure if it's particularly tricky. There's a lot of real estate and, outside of highly modified protected environments, there don't seem to be any places where life would easily spread.

My sense is that we can basically just pick a few places to try to colonize, which will require isolation from the outside environment, anyway.