While NASA and other space agencies intend to leverage local resources as much as possible—a process known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU)—creating lunar bases will still require lots of materials and machinery to be shipped from Earth. In a recent study, Philip Metzger and Greg Autry reviewed the cost and energy consumption of building landing pads on the lunar surface. After considering various construction methods, they determined that a combination of additive manufacturing and polymer infusion was the most efficient and cost-effective means.

Philip Metzger is an associate scientist with the Florida Space Institute (FSI) at the University of Central Florida (UCF), a former senior research physicist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and the co-founder of the KSC Swamp Works. Greg Autry is a clinical professor of Space Leadership, Policy, and Business with the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University (ASU) and the Chair of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) Safety Working Group at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

For their study, Metzger and Autry examined different methods for building landing pads on the lunar surface. Each method was evaluated based on three major factors: the need to ship large amounts of mass from Earth, the level of energy consumption on the lunar surface, and the time it would take to finish construction. Each of these factors contributes (directly or indirectly) to the overall cost of lunar activities.