Dr. Patrick Suermann stood on the tarmac of a military base in Afghanistan, overseeing the construction of infrastructure to support U.S. Air Force operations, when it struck him: the logistics puzzles he was solving looked startlingly similar to the ones humanity would face in building settlements on the moon. Today, as a professor of construction science at Texas A&M University, Suermann has transformed that insight into a national mission—one that could fundamentally reshape how humans inhabit space.
The challenge is deceptively simple: the moon's surface isn't covered in soil. It's a fine, lethal abrasive powder of shattered rock and jagged glass called lunar regolith—material that shreds gaskets, corrodes seals, and hangs in airless environments blasted by unfiltered radiation and temperature swings that can warp steel. For centuries, this substance would have seemed like an obstacle. To Suermann and his colleagues at Texas A&M, it's the raw material for humanity's permanent lunar settlement.
The economics tell the story. Shipping materials from Earth to the moon costs roughly $1 million to $1.3 million per kilogram. But propellant produced on the moon—using local regolith and resources—could cost just $500 per kilogram, according to a 2018 lunar architecture report. That's almost 20 times cheaper than launching from Earth. "The high cost of shipping to the moon is the million-dollar problem," Suermann said. "Every time you can cut the mass of a payload, you save a fortune. That's why the future depends on building infrastructure from resources already on the moon."
With NASA's unveiling of its new Lunar Innovation Park, Texas A&M has emerged as a key player in solving that problem. The university, backed by a historic $200 million investment from the Texas Legislature and positioned next door to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, is home to the Texas A&M Space Institute. Led by Dr. Robert Ambrose, a professor of mechanical engineering, the 240-acre facility includes two-and-a-half-acre testing areas—one replicating the moon's surface, the other Mars—where researchers can simulate the brutal realities of extraterrestrial construction.
But the real innovation lies in how humans and machines will work together. The Construction Automation, Safety and Education (CASE) Lab, led by Dr. Gilles Albeaino, is pioneering the use of mixed reality and semi-autonomous systems. Future lunar construction sites may look like science fiction: rovers hauling regolith across the surface, robotic arms printing walls layer by layer, and engineers on Earth overseeing operations through VR headsets working alongside machines as partners, not remote-controlled tools.
Suermann frames this shift in mindset as fundamental. "We are moving past the era of 'flags and footprints,'" he said. "We have to stop thinking like explorers and start thinking like settlers. That means building with what's underneath our boots." This isn't just an engineering challenge—it's a civilizational one. For the first time, humanity is preparing not to visit another world, but to live there. And it's Texas A&M leading the charge.