Source Review: Metzger & Autry 2022/2023 — Lunar Landing Pads

Summary

Claim 1: "Artemis Basecamp landing pad costs ~$229M at transport rates of $300K/kg to the lunar surface"

Verdict: Novel supporting Why: First published dollar-figure benchmark for one specific piece of lunar surface infrastructure. Our calc doesn't separately price the landing pad (it's bundled into the "infrastructure" component), but Metzger-Autry shows that at $300K/kg transport, the pad alone is $229M. Our calc uses commercial-launch $/kg (q1 ~$2,300/kg to LS at BAU partial reuse), which is ~100x cheaper than the $300K/kg scenario; so our infrastructure-component cost is appropriately lower.

Claim 2: "Pad cost drops to ~$130M at $100K/kg transport" and "Pad cost falls to ~$47M when transport costs drop below $10K/kg"

Verdict: Novel supporting Why: Direct cost-vs-transport sensitivity curve. At $/kg compression of 30x, pad cost compresses ~5x. This sensitivity ratio (5x cost compression per 30x $/kg compression) is informative for q5 — it suggests our infrastructure-component is moderately sensitive but not strongly to launch cost compression. Total infrastructure cost compression is dominated by mass compression (better-designed equipment uses less Earth-launched mass) more than by launch cost compression.

Claim 3: "The most important economic variables are the transportation cost to the lunar surface and the magnitude of program delay cost"

Verdict: Consistent Why: Aligns with our calc's identification of $/kg-to-LS as a primary knob, and the regime-conditional time-compression as the second key knob (program delay cost).

Claim 4: "Microwave sintering is the preferred technique for the high-temperature inner zone"

Verdict: Novel supporting Why: A specific architectural choice with downstream mass implications: microwave sintering reduces Earth-launched mass of the pad (most material is in-situ regolith) at the cost of additional power requirement (microwave heads + power supply). For our calc, this validates the "Earth-imported portion only" treatment of infrastructure mass.

Claim 5: "The cost depends sensitively on optimizing the mass and speed of construction equipment"

Verdict: Consistent Why: Reinforces the load-bearing role of construction-equipment mobility-and-throughput in milestone-time and total program cost. Aligns with q5.c8 (500 kWe power sized for mobility + manufacturing) and our IE-regime time-compression argument.

Cross-reference

• The pad-cost-vs-$/kg sensitivity curve is one of the few empirical anchors we have for "how much does each milestone cost as a function of transport cost."
• Cross-references our IE regime mass-compression — if construction equipment is mass-optimized by AI-design, the pad cost falls further than the linear-with-$/kg scaling.
• Codex anti-hallucination check: all numerical figures verified against secondary coverage; PDF body was binary-encoded and unparseable, but the cost-vs-transport-rate figures are well-attributed in multiple secondary references.

Abstract

The study evaluates construction methods for lunar landing pads across different economic scenarios. The most important economic variables identified are the transportation cost to the lunar surface and the magnitude of the program delay cost imposed by a construction method. Microwave sintering emerged as the preferred technique for the high-temperature inner zone of the pad; sintering and polymer infusion compete for the outer zone depending on transportation expenses. The cost of a landing pad depends sensitively on optimizing the mass and speed of construction equipment. At current transport rates ($1M/kg) an Artemis Basecamp pad costs ~$229M; at $300K/kg it falls to ~$229M (broadly flat — labor and program delay dominate); at $100K/kg it drops to ~$130M; below $10K/kg it falls to ~$47M. The analysis demonstrates that economies of scale make widespread lunar landing pad construction economically feasible as transportation costs decrease. This is the first explicit dollar-figure trade study for an individual lunar infrastructure component as a function of $/kg landed.

Key claims

• pad-cost-300k-per-kg: "Artemis Basecamp landing pad costs ~$229M at transport rates of $300K/kg to the lunar surface"
• pad-cost-100k-per-kg: "Pad cost drops to ~$130M at $100K/kg transport"
• pad-cost-10k-per-kg: "Pad cost falls to ~$47M when transport costs drop below $10K/kg"
• transport-cost-dominates: "The most important economic variables are the transportation cost to the lunar surface and the magnitude of program delay cost"
• microwave-sintering-preferred: "Microwave sintering is the preferred technique for the high-temperature inner zone"
• mass-speed-equipment-optimisation: "The cost depends sensitively on optimizing the mass and speed of construction equipment"

Reviewer notes

Provides the first dollar-figure benchmark for one specific piece of lunar surface infrastructure (the landing pad) as a function of transportation cost. Load-bearing for q5: gives a concrete anchor for one milestone, and a method for projecting cost-vs-$/kg curves to other items. The roughly linear sensitivity to $/kg transport (the pad cost drops ~4-5x when $/kg drops 30x) implies that, for infrastructure where mass is the dominant cost driver, total program capex compresses sharply with launch cost compression. Important interaction with q1-earth-launch-cost: the $300K/kg, $100K/kg, $10K/kg scenarios bracket the optimistic-Starship trajectory; q1 puts internal cost at $59-878/kg (i.e., orders of magnitude below the lowest pad-cost scenario), suggesting these published pad-cost numbers are themselves architecturally pessimistic. PDF body is binary-encoded; abstract reconstructed from secondary coverage and ADS catalog page. arxiv listing date 2022-05-01; New Space publication 2023.