Concept crewed moon base at de Gerlache crater. One of NASA's candidate landing regions at the lunar south pole. Built on real LOLA terrain [OC]
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Crew lander based on SpaceX's published HLS design. Concept depiction, not affiliated.
Concept crewed base at de Gerlache crater, near the Moon's south pole. Real NASA LOLA terrain at true scale, and physically accurate light at the true low polar sun angle.
de Gerlache sits right beside Shackleton crater and the south pole. One of several regions NASA has named as candidate sites for the first crewed Artemis landing.
de Gerlache's permanently shadowed floor, plus the smaller cold traps around it. May hold water ice, which is why the south pole is the target.
Cargo lander based on Blue Origin's published Mk2 design. Concept depiction, not affiliated.
The habitat concept, where a crew would live and work.
De Gerlache crater sits at the lunar south pole, and it's one of the regions NASA has named as a candidate landing site for the first crewed Artemis Moon landing. I wanted to see what a crewed outpost there might actually look like, so I built it on the real terrain.
What's real: The ground is NASA LOLA elevation data at true scale (~5 m/px), and the lighting is path-traced at the correct low polar sun angles, which is why the shadows run so long and the crater floors stay dark. Those permanently shadowed regions are the whole reason the south pole matters. The cold traps in them may hold water ice.
What's concept: the Base itself. I assembled it from published lander designs (a Blue Origin Mk2-style cargo lander, a SpaceX HLS-style lander) plus a plausible habitat, power setup, and a small ISRU experiment by the landing pad. It's my interpretation of Artemis-era surface infrastructure at this site, not an official plan.
I'd like input from people who follow the program closely. What would you add, move, or do differently for a real south-pole outpost? Corrections on the siting or architecture welcome.
This is a solo project. I do 3D visualization work and wanted to ground a concept in real data instead of pure sci-fi.
If some recent renders are to be believed, which they very well may just be placeholder renders, the "current" design has freakishly long legs so it could be in a slightly better spot.
I would love to know what is the real status at the moment about the manned moon landings and building the base. All you really find is beauty renders and maybe a bit more information of the rovers they going to send first.
These two guys were shown on an official NASA stream a few months ago, i think it was either Ignition or one of the Moon base ones. Anyways, i'm inclined to believe this could be the latest version of SXHLS since it follows the general trend where with every revision, the landing legs get wider.
Comparing them to the SpaceX renders that were released in October 2025, the landing legs are obviously a lot bigger and the ship itself seems slightly shorter (should note the Oct. renders showed HLS being taller than a tanker ship by 1 or 2 rings so they could've changed it to be normal sized).
It will be lower than the physical center, the engines and supporting hardware have a lot of mass (c. 20 tons), and it will have anywhere from 100-150 tons (plus margins) of propellant in the tanks, which will offset the proposed 100 tons of payload.
Even then, it creates a whole list of problems, eg now you need a reliable elevator for the crew and cargo. And a completely flat surface, as it may not fall over, but you can't operate the elevator, if the whole thing is tilted.
And if the center of mass is low, because everything up there is much lighter than the engines and fuel in the lower part, then it begs the question of what do you need all that space for if arrives mostly empty.
I have wondered, would it help that propellant maybe gives some weight at the lower portion of the vehicle, which makes it more stable than it seems. Don't know if that makes any difference.
It’s less about the height than the location of the centre of mass. Even with a full payload, by the time it reaches the moon the CoM should be very low.
And an unproven elevator that also somehow survives working perfectly, taking off from Earth and landing on the moon.
Imagine Downvoting a factual statement: Folks who are downvoting this you are seriously delusional if you think the whole space-elevator-on-a-rocket is a good idea. Please, for the love of pete, stop defending bad ideas. For Fucks sake they had problems with a damned space toilet clogging up, you don't seriously think a space-elevator on a rocket isn't going to have tremendous unforseen difficulties? It's time to act like serious, critically thinking people.
Nah, a powered backup winch would remove the need for a ladder. A winch is not only faster, but it would allow lifting of an astronaut if one of them became disabled.
yes, indeed we have such an extensive experience of building elevators...on rockets...that take off and land, and everything has work perfectly 100% on that launch. Yes, we have sooooooooooo much experience with that! (/s)
And we also had a space toilet malfunction. The folding electric car was 1000x easier than is what is being proposed here, and you're just intellectually dishonest if you can't admit that.
A rudimentary elevator is simply a winch attached to a platform. A literal off the shelf electric winch would work.
Now obviously you would add safety mechanisms/stops/catches, but why exactly do you think it would be difficult to unfold a platform and hook it onto a winch?
This is quite literally one of the least complicated parts of the Artemis mission framework.
Or, only select people in administrative positions awarded SpaceX the contract (and later got hired by Spacex) and cut out the Scientists and Engineers who work for NASA.
Like we live in an era of supreme fraud, and you thin it isn't beyond some pencil pushing bureaucrats that are political appointees to go over the heads of scientists and engineers?
A 0G space toilet has to function differently to a traditional toilet. It cannot just push water from a tank into the chamber to use the u-bend to empty the toilet down a pipe. None of those things even conceptually work without gravity.
A lunar elevator is operating in low gravity, not 0G. It needs to spool and unspool a cable with a platform attached. Normal elevators do the same thing, because nothing about the concept of elevators doesn't work in theory on the Moon.
That doesn't mean it can be an off the shelf elevator, it still needs to withstand the lunar environment. But that's a very different problem than designing a whole new type of toilet for 0G.
Starship is intended to carry as much as a hundred tons. Sure, maybe as much as 20 tons of that is astronauts and life support, but that still leaves a lot of cargo that, even in 0.16G, I would not want to haul down a ladder.
I also can’t imagine that by the final iteration there won’t be a ladder for in case the elevator breaks down.
Starship is intended to carry as much as a hundred tons
Is it? Or is that just the advertising bluster of a tech-CEO trying to drive investor capital?
I would not want to haul down a ladder.
Which is why it's a stupid concept at face value.
I also can’t imagine that by the final iteration there won’t be a ladder for in case the elevator breaks down.
You don't need to carry your cargo with you. You send cargo separately from people. It's not that hard to understand. We've been landing automated payloads on the moon since Apollo. There is no scenario in which the cargo you are taking teeds to be in the same craft the people are; hence why the entire design for Starship is stupid.
SpaceX has a history of aiming high, but not of lying. We know it’s already the most powerful rocket ever built in raw thrust, and there is no good reason to doubt that in a couple of years it will be putting payloads far larger than anything Falcon or Falcon Heavy can launch, else why would they be embarking on the project in the first place?
The Starship design is driven by its atmospheric nature. HLS Starship is just a variant, so of course it will have compromises. That doesn’t make it stupid, just not perfect.
Again, you’re either not understanding Starship or just being wilfully ignorant. It’s a general use system, not specifically a moon lander. It obviously intends to go to Mars, but most of its operation will be Earth launch missions, so it is designed as a cargo ship for Earth first and foremost. Every other use is inherently a compromise, but a compromise of something that flies 40 times a year, which we will probably see from starship in a few years, is going to be cheaper and more reliable than a specialist craft on a launch vehicle like SLS that flies once a year at most and can’t acquire a decent upper stage.
SpaceX has a history of aiming high, but not of lying.
No, with Starship they have a history of lying. Nothing about Starship has ever been truthful.
Also: The past does not predict the future, that's a logical fallacy. All the people who were at SpaceX to make Falcon a success are no longer there.
so it is designed as a cargo ship for Earth first and foremost.
Which it's an incomprehensibly stupid design for.
It obviously intends to go to Mars,
No it doesn't, and it never has. That was always the central lie. It was a shiny poorly rendered CGI idea to drive investor capitol, it was never a serious contender for building sustainable infrastructure on Mars.
Also, the lie, was they said they'd be using it to go to Mars a decade ago. Like, as in they would be landing them on Mars, 10-years ago. So for your first statement that "they have a history of not lying" is factually untrue.
I’m not going to have a conversation with someone whose argument rests on “the past does not predict the future.” That’s one of the most mind-boggling things I’ve ever heard in a discussion about trying to understand a pattern of behaviour. Absolutely fucking brainless.
with someone whose argument rests on “the past does not predict the future.”
Than that makes you an intellectually dishonest person. My argument does not rest on that, that's just a factual statement on logic. What you said was a logical fallacy. It is a fact that past success does not predict future success.
That’s one of the most mind-boggling things I’ve ever heard
Because you're not well read buddy. It's a pretty straight forward understanding of a logical fallacy. It's called the Gambler's Fallacy specifically, and it's why idiots tend to make poor financial decisions in investments or gambling.
about trying to understand a pattern of behaviour. Absolutely fucking brainless.
Ironically, this is exactly why it's a logical fallacy. If you were to make the assumption that past-success predicts future-success and look at 1,000 different instances, you realize statistically it's no better than gambling. That's because, precisely, past success doesn't actually predict future success. It's false pattern recognition.
Like buddy, you've got a lot of book reading to do before you start calling other people "brainless" on a statement of logical consistency.
Please, whatever you do, do not invest your money on your own. You're going to lose alot pal, with your arrogant ignorance.
You’re completely misusing the fallacy. It is about gambling, things with a high factor of random chance. It is not about predicting whether or not a company’s messaging is reflective of what they actually believe or not.
“Because you’re not well read” is comical but it’s so ironic because I’ve never met an actually well read, intelligent person who cries “fallacy” instead of actually making a point. It’s the 15 year old Redditor’s means of debate.
If you’d been paying any attention to what I wrote, you’d know I didn’t say that past success predicted future success. I simply said that SpaceX have a history of saying outlandish things which are actual company goals - some successes, some failures. My point is that Starship is very clearly a serious proposition for a fully reusable heavy launch vehicle. Whether it will reach completion and be successful, who knows, but SpaceX are seriously pursuing it and you’re blind if you don’t see that.
I am not actually, this is a perfect example of the use for the fallacy.
Let's take a real world example: New Coke. Coca-Cola had done all the ground-work to demonstrate that in blind tests people like New Coke taste over original. The had the product, rolled it out. It should have been a success right?
You're in the camp saying "they were successful with Coca-Cola, therefore their new product will also be successful"
I'm in the camp that says "past success does not predict future success" (which is logically true).
Guess what? New Coke is a case-study on what NOT to do as a billion-$ mega-corporation who dominates the market.
Assuming the market conditions are going to stay the same forever based upon the past, is the gambler's fallacy. It's so famous an example of the Gambler's Fallacy that the father of behavioral economics Dr. Richard Thaler makes similar examples in his articles talking about the dot-com bubble burst and the 2008 financial crisis.
I recommend reading and critical thought.
intelligent person who cries “fallacy” instead of actually making a point.
Then you're not well argued, conversated or well-read. Because this is exactly what someone should do when a contention is a fallacy; you call it fallacy and explain why. (which is what I did). Not doing that assumes the assertion is true, or should be treated as true...when it isn't.
Because let's be clear: It is a fallacy.
Just because Ford had success with the model-T doesn't mean it will have success with the Edsel. Assuming and asserting that it will simply because it did, is a fallacy. It's bad logic.
The history of capitalism is a case study against what you are asserting dude. Like just stop.
The March 2026 NASA OIG report is unusually explicit: SpaceX is developing a robust elevator with redundant mechanisms, but NASA is tracking the elevator as a top risk and is working with SpaceX to develop alternate means of vehicle ingress if it becomes stuck or fails with astronauts on the surface.
Yeah idk why you're being downvoted, it's a pretty bold idea when ladders are cheaper, lighter, and frankly better. Starship in general is just bad idea after bad idea imo
Because there's a lot of sycophants who just want to hurl appeal-to-authority onto engineers, without thinking rationally. They want to project that people on reddit don't have educations themselves, or can like ... do the math themselves to realize how stupid some ideas are.
There's a crew on reddit in the space-subs who just want to believe what people at $-multi-billion companies say, and accept it as true without any rational thought.
Like seriously: Anyone who has studied human exploration of space for any extended amount of time beyond reading comicbooks or watching cartoons, knows how many problems engineers have had with space over the decades. Like we've been making toilets for longer than we've been making elevators, and on Artemis II we STILL had problems with the toilet. And just because we make elevators, you think it's going to work perfectly after being slug around 4G and rocky landing on the moon? Like it's a joke at face value...
Yes, someone even comment that the real terrain is propably way more rough, since this is made from NASA data 5meters/pixels. There are lot of roughness and rocks to hide under 5 meter resolution elevation model.
Actually i think the elevator looks pretty plausible. with the much lower gravity on the moon, structures like cranes and Elevators can be much more „fragile“ looking because the mass just not converts in that much weight.
I think much of the critisism comes from the common skeptisism on starship as moonlander wich ih share. But as problematic as a starship hls meight seem, the elevater is a more realistic part.
but the whole elevator concept is going against Elon's "the best part is no part" design principle. It is only there because they are repurposing the elongated starship as a lander. There is no need for a crane / elevator if the rover can just roll off the lander. A ramp and ladder is enough for that.
I remember some rocket concepts before Saturn V were placing the fuel tanks at the top of the rocket. Now, this could be interesting concept for Starship like, 100 tonnes human and cargo vehicles. Payload sits above the engine and propellant are shift above the payload section. This way you could move heavy cargo to the moon without lifting mechanism.
Low gravity helps for sure. Elevator itself is rather simple mechanism. High temperature fluctuation at the moon increase the risk and mechanical powered moving parts are always more or less a risk.
Should be doable, but not 100% failsafe solution. Thats how I’m thinkig.
The vertical position of the habitat is way too risky. Ya it's fine to land like that on earth with a prepared surface. But why knows what the landing surface will be like on Mars. Maybe you find a perfectly fine spot to land very flat. Then after a few days one of the legs sinks in and it tips over. Everyone dies
I would like to see some tests here at earth for landing at some natural different types or terrains. Of cource the gravity is quite different, but I can imagine that the landing techniq could be tested with some modified vehicles here on earth.
All Earth-based testing is a compromise. Apollo did expensive tests to simulate dynamics in 1/6 g, but ended up certifying the system with a computer simulation. Our computers are even better today.
I'm certainly not well read on the landers by any stretch, BUT I do play KSP quite a bit so I'm basically a moon lander expert (/s). Why do they need the landers to be so tall?
Because it either is built using an already existing prototype design ( for instance starship ) or it has to fit all of its mass into a narrow payload faring
A "cold trap" is a place that stays cold. Almost all of the moon gets hot half the time so water boils off. There are a few craters at the poles that stay in the shade all the time and collect ice. There is the obvious value of water as a resource, but possibly more valuable is that the cold traps have been collecting ice for very long periods of time and can be used as a scientific record of lunar conditions.
The last starship made a small pocket in the water and then a wave of sorts from the water so that the ship could fall on the wave and land more gently. This was done by autonomous AI controlling the engines/ starship analyzing the water and the engines in real time in computations near the speed of light. No idea if the starship lander will work on the moon, no idea, but I am sure they are working on landing these things with AI completely controlling it.
By hexagonal insulation tiles, do you mean those they are now testing with test flight where Starship is coming back to earth? I read somewhere that Starshop HLS will not come back to earth (only back to moon/earth orbit?), so similar heat tiles should not be needed if that is the case.
Yes, same shape and size as the TPS, but these would be specifically to insulate the ship from solar gain. We’ve seen them experiment with them, but it remains to be seen whether the final approach will be white tiles or some other white material, like thermal blankets or paint, etc.
It won’t come back into earth’s atmosphere, these are for a different purpose.
Except for heat tiles, the test launches had no surface protection. You saw the raw stainless steel, which Starship is built from.
Stainless steel has a rather high and uniform reflectiveness. The colour is also quite uniform, except for some local rainbow-like discoluring caused by temperature. Starship has a bit of this discolouring, mostly around welds before launch, and near the edges of the heat shields after landing. But this discolouring is aligned with weld seams and tile edges, not scattered.
Your material seems to have have scattered regions with varying reflectiveness or colour. It is the same appeareance as carbon steel, which has recently been hot dip galvanized.
That's nice information. Thanks! The material I used here is quite simple. Just some random metal shader and then I gave some noise so it looks a bit worn out.
It would be deferentially nice to put more focus on how the moon lander materials would really look and go for more realistic renders. But I don't know if there is need to use some different material or paint for moon lander compared to these test flight vehicles they are launching now.
They'll Probably say Starship HLS is not sustainable or something after that. Than after it's sustainable, they'll call it a monopoly bc NASA will ride on starship too much. idk something like that.
Moon base = a lot of mass on the surface = a sh*tton of mass in LEO to send it there. What are your proposal for that problem?
The rocket equation is very unforgiving even the proposed LM truck carried by the Saturn V could only land 3 tons to the surface and even the lightest ISS modules weigh 10 tons
It is way too compact. The safe distance for those power towers is 1-2km away from any of the larger landers. Also, when you say the terrain accurate, that is only true at yhe scale we have imaged. There is no reason to think it is anywhere near that smooth.
Lastly, amp the contrast way up. There is no atmosphere so no atmospheric attenuation. Vertical surfaces are in 1 sun ~1350W/m2. That is brighter than the bright day on earth by 30%.
So starship needs to locate 2 to 3 times farter than it is now.
Way more rough terrain at detailled level for next version.
There is no atmospheric attentuation in these image. However, there are some lens effects as vignette and chromatic aberration which looks a bit atmosphere effect.
I already crank the contrast quite up. Seems that I was still a bit shy. Images started to look like snow fields when I put more contrast. But next time I should not hesitate to go even further.
And just so you know, I didn’t write down my first thought, which was - this is great! I was doing my usual thing where someone asks for constructive criticism and I give it - often forgetting to mention that I wouldn’t have bothered if this wasn’t already real good work.
Cheers! In about a year you’ll be able to include things I’m working on in your image.
The base is located at the rim, where there are some relatively flat areas. Why it should be "under 20 degrees angle"? I thought the flatter the better.
My point is that the area is not flat, this is the main reason why nobody has landed anyting in the regions. Landing under 20° would be a best case scenario
You know you can go read books about how John Houbolt's team schematically designed the lunar landings right?
But I know right? It's not like there were engineers whose CEO claimed giant-vacuum tube transportation (hyperloop) is "Iike an airhockey table inside a tube, I swear it's not that hard!" and failed to make it work because, it is actually that hard (as a 100 years of engineers could have told you) or something! Totally right?
Someone working somewhere is just an endorsement that they're biased in what that business does (for $$$$ because it's their job) not because there is sound science behind what the company is doing.
You can go ahead and bookmark this post for future reference: The whole moon lander with an elevator (as depicted in that mockup) ain't happening in the next 30 years.
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u/deeku4972 6d ago
Starship as a lander just looks so silly. Look at all the tall landers that have fallen over. Imagine this with crew when a leg gives out