Taking in the Moon on a Gondola Ride

A team of NASA engineers at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, describe the gondola and other downright practical ideas in a white paper, or Technical Memorandum, published in May 2024 titled “LuZip: Lunar Zip-line, Gondola and Cable-based Transportation for Artemis Moon Missions Mobility and Dust Avoidance.”

Those last two words—dust avoidance—comprise the key concept that will drive much of what humans can do on the Moon. Dust is a poor description of this stuff, actually. The so-called dust consists of razor-sharp grains of regolith chiseled over eons by cosmic and solar radiation. It clings to equipment and spacesuits; abrasive like asbestos, it can slice through lung cells if inhaled, causing a sort of lunar regolithosis, if I may coin a term.

Eugene Cernan, the last man to have walked on the Moon, captured the enormity of the dust problem in a 1973 technical debrief of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission: “I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the Moon. I think we can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems except dust.”

The dust even jammed the astronauts’ zippers, jeopardizing the integrity of their spacesuits. Spacesuits and equipment might have failed if he and Harrison Schmitt, his partner on the lunar surface, had stayed on the Moon for a little longer.

With a gondola system, we would be above the dust. These need not be very high—just a few feet above the lunar surface would suffice. Less infrastructure is needed for gondolas compared to rails. While the NASA white paper doesn’t go into specifics, the low gravity on the Moon means that posts could be placed farther apart than they would need to be on Earth. They could be connected by lightweight cable. The lack of air resistance means the gondolas could move quite rapidly, too.

Although far less glamorous, a zipline—perhaps more like a clothesline—would be even more practical. In this scenario, astronauts connect themselves to the cable to be towed while dangling safely above the dust.

Then there is the plan to move cargo around. In May 2024, NASA publicized a wholly different idea for a cargo train on the Moon: called FLOAT, or Flexible Levitation on a Track, the concept had been discussed for several years. In this system, robots unroll a magnetic carpet upon which small cargo containers could float, analogous to a maglev train.

These ideas may sound fantastical, but they offer practical solutions to the unique challenges posed by the harsh lunar environment. Indeed, such imaginative yet practical designs could be the key to unlocking the Moon’s potential as a platform for further exploration of our solar system.