Luna 2076 – The Geopolitics of Lunar Colonization

Telling Time on the Moon

August 17, 2026

It wasn’t easy for earthlings to devise a uniform system for telling time around the world in the 19th century, and it may not be much easier on the Moon in the 21st. Tom Brown writes in Space that the U.S. and China don’t agree on how to do it.

Telling precise time — not in minutes and seconds, but in microseconds — is deemed critical for coordinating satellites and spacecraft using GPS, which works by broadcasting time signals. On Earth, we’ve resolved the challenge by using “atomic clocks” based on the oscillations of cesium atoms. But even atomic clocks, which are infinitely more precise than the industrial-era system built around Greenwich Mean Time, have their limitations. Time is relative. It is affected by gravity. And Earth has stronger gravity than the Moon. The consequence is that clocks on the Moon run faster than clocks on Earth by about 1 to 2 microsecond per year, according Copilot AI.

The challenge of space-faring powers is to translate Moon time into Earth-based Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

NASA is working on establishing a Coordinated Lunar Time (CLT), which could set the standard for the U.S.-based LunaNet satellite system. But China, which already has active lunar relay satellites capable of communicating with the far side of the Moon, has its own protocol. Will one standard prevail over the other? I have no idea.

But I do have a question that the article does not address. How will people living on the Moon tell time? Humans are diurnal creatures that evolved over millions of years to adapt to the 24-hour cycle of the Earth’s rotation. They will construct habitations that mimic that 24-hour cycle, not the Moon’s 28-day cycle. much less oscillations of the cesium atom. They also will have to interact with people on Earth, with whose societies and economies they will be inextricably linked.

In “Dust Mites,” I assumed that that the U.S. lunar colonies time is synchronous with Earth’s Eastern Standard Time because that’s the time zone of Washington, D.C. Although I did not address the point in the novel, it seems plausible that a European, Chinese or Indian colony based near U.S. colonies would calibrate their time configurations to optimize interaction with Brussels, Beijing, or New Delhi. On the other hand, if the colonies come to be connected by MagLev trains, the demands of commerce would push for a uniform system. What would that look like?

I asked AI.

Copilot proposed a three-tier model for tracking time on Galileo Station, the largest lunar colony in the “Dust Mites” universe. The schema pays special attention to the implications for bots, which play an elevated role in the upcoming “Trogs” and an unnamed sequel.

Money, Power and the Struggle for Liberty… on the Moon

August 8, 2026

I was interviewed recently about my novel “Dust Mites” for Book Talk Central, a YouTube book-review channel. I had no idea what to expect. But the host, Barley James, dug deep into the major themes of the book. I found the interview enjoyable and thought-provoking, and I hope readers will too. You can listen to the interview here. Or you can read a lightly edited transcript of the interview below. — JAB

Barley James: Hello everyone, and welcome to Book Talk Central, where we bring you compelling conversations with today’s most thought-provoking authors, the stories that challenge the way we see the world. I’m your host, Barley. And today, we’re delighted to welcome James Bacon, journalist, commentator and author of “Dust Mites, A Second American Revolution,” set decades into the future on America’s lunar colony. “Dust Mites” blends political intrigue, high-stakes conflicts, and philosophical questions about freedom, governance, and the future of humanity beyond Earth. While the novel unfolds in a future setting, it speaks directly to the challenges and debates shaping our world today. James, it’s a real pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for joining Book Talk Central.

James A. Bacon: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here with you.

Barley: Amazing. Now, James, I think I should dive in by asking you a question. I’d like to know the inspiration behind the story. What first sparked the idea for “Dust Mites?” Were there specific moments, historical events, or political issues that inspired you to imagine this future conflict on the moon?

JAB: Yes, actually there was a very particular moment. It was maybe 10 years ago. I was at a cocktail party at a friend’s house and we got into a very lively conversation, and right there on the spot in the middle of this conversation I had this germ of an idea. Wouldn’t it be cool to explore the idea of American colonies on the Moon growing rebellious and restless against the tyrannical rule of the mother country back on Earth? It popped in my head just like that. It took me several years before I actually sat down and started to write it. Once I started with that premise, the next step was, well, how do I turn this into a page turner? Then I devised a plot, which I hope is pretty compelling, in which the U.S. marshals are ordered by the Attorney General of the United States to send an elite squad of commandos to the Moon to arrest the governor of the largest colony, called Galileo Station. Things go awry. The rest of the novel explores a lot of ideas and philosophy and things like that, but it really revolves around the marshals trying to get the governor out of the city — it’s an underground city — to where they can hold him up for trial, and how the inhabitants of Galileo Station, who I call Galiletians, try to get him back. That’s the spine of the novel.

Barley: That’s a fascinating origin story. Now, James, you described the novel as future fiction rather than science fiction. Could you explain that distinction and why it is important for readers to understand your vision in that way?

JAB: There’s an important distinction between science fiction and future fiction. In science fiction, even though Earth may be a character or a place, it bears no recognizable resemblance to any countries or nations or institutions or cultures on the Earth today. The authors tend to have other things they want to explore. I’m trying to project what it will be like 50 years from now. What will the Earth be like? And one of the core premises, which when I first started writing didn’t seem obvious to many people but maybe does now, is that the Moon will be colonized. It’s going to be just a year or two before we get the first permanent human presence on the Moon. The date keeps on getting pushed back and pushed back because NASA seems to have its problems. But we’re almost there.

Crucial for Lunar Development: the Right of First Possession

August 3, 2026

If we’re serious about settling the Moon and exploiting its resources for the benefit of mankind, it will be crucial to secure property rights.

Nations can’t create a self-sustaining lunar economy through government procurement, argue John Chisholm and Dan Garretson in today’s Wall Street Journal. They will need entrepreneurs and investors. And entrepreneurs and investors will need assurances that the improvements they make won’t be stolen or expropriated.

To be self-sustaining, a lunar economy needs paying customers beyond the governments footing today’s bills, along with entrepreneurs to serve those customers and investors to fund the entrepreneurs. All need assurance that what they buy, build or fund remains theirs to use or transfer. At the lunar south pole, mines may someday harvest ice for rocket propellant, avoiding Earth launch costs. To attract investment, miners will need legal acknowledgment of first and continuous occupation, control over land use, the ability to exclude others and assurance that land and improvements can be sold or transferred. In short, ownership rights to lunar real estate.

The existing patchwork of treaties and statutes, write Chisolm, a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute, and Garretson, president of the nonprofit Orbital Progress, is inadequate. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA) provide some protection. But the 1979 Moon agreement — admittedly, never ratified by a major spacefaring nation — specifically disallows lunar land rights. The 2020 Artemis Accords’ “safety zones” guarantee the principle of “free access to all areas of celestial bodies” — the opposite of private property exclusion.

Economics and Earth’s Eighth Continent

August 2, 2026

Isaac Arthur gets it — he really gets it. He understands how economics — not the romance of exploration, or the nobility of science — will be the driving force behind the settlement of the Moon. I came across his recent post, “The Great Lunar Boom — Building a Civilization on the Moon,” and I recommend it highly for anyone seeking insight on how the population and development of the Moon as Earth’s “eighth continent” will unfold.

Many people view the Moon as a steppingstone — a kind of cosmic gas station where rocket ships can fuel up for trips to other planets and the stars. Arthur, president of the National Space Society and producer of the popular “Science and Futurism” YouTube channel, sees Earth’s satellite as an integral part of a larger Earth-Moon economic system.

“The Moon isn’t important because it helps us leave Earth,” he says. “It’s important because it’s the first place where leaving Earth actually starts to make economic sense.”

We tend to picture a space settlement as something driven by bold explorers and big destinations. But civilizations don’t grow that way. They grow because moving goods gets cheaper, energy becomes more abundant, infrastructure starts paying for itself, and people actually want to live there.

The first stage of lunar exploitation will be undertaken mainly by machines and robots. Human settlement will follow.

Nominated!

July 22, 2026

I am delighted to announce that my soon-to-be-published novel, “Trogs” has been nominated for the Prometheus Best Novel Award. Established in 1979, the Prometheus Awards recognize the best in libertarian-oriented science fiction and classic fiction.

“Trogs,” the sequel to “Dust Mites,” is scheduled for release Sept. 8. Set in the year 2075, both novels chronicle the stirrings of a second American revolution in colonies on the Moon.

There are several steps on the way to winning the award. I’ll keep readers posted as to my progress — assuming I progress, that is. (If I don’t make the cut, I’ll just drop the subject!)

Learn more about the Prometheus Awards here.

How to Blockade the Moon Without Really Trying

May 6, 2026

An illustration of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS), a spaceflight experiment designed to keep track of objects entering, operating in, or leaving cislunar space. (Image credit: U.S. Air Force Capt. David Buehler), by way of Space Insider.

To the layman, there looks to be a lot of wide-open space between Earth and the Moon, so the idea of someone conducting a Straits of Hormuz-style blockade of transit between the two is not a possibility that comes readily to mind. But Leonard David writing in Space Insider warns that it’s an all-too-real possibility.

Blockading cis-lunar space is not a problem we’ll need to worry about in the short term. But with the space economy on a geometric growth track, the Moon is destined to become an integral extension of Earth’s economy. Satellites, He-3 mining, solar power, data centers, chip fabrication and pharmaceutical manufacturing — you know the drill.

“Just as the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway, cislunar space, though seemingly large, actually contains a few unique and exclusive points of transit through which all lunar travel must pass,” David quotes Marc Feldman, executive director of the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy & Governance, as saying.

The article does not elaborate on what those choke points might be, However, CoPilot suggests the following:

The key “choke points” in cislunar space are the Lagrange points and the narrow gravitational transfer corridors that spacecraft must use to move efficiently between Earth and the Moon. These are the few stable or semi‑stable regions where traffic naturally concentrates, making them analogous to maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz.

Second Edition

May 5, 2026

I’ve just published a second edition of Dust Mites. It’s got a snazzy new cover, it’s about 5,000 words tighter, and a cleaner layout means fewer pages.

The original sub-title was “The Battle for Air Lock Three.”

That fit the central drama just fine, but it didn’t do justice to the broader theme, which I’m developing in the sequel, “Trogs.” Both are/will be sub-titled “A Second American Revolution,” parts I and II in the Dust Mites saga.

Look for “Trogs” this summer.

An Exclusive Interview with the Author of “Dust Mites”

June 9, 2022

Bacon’s Rebellion was lucky enough to snag an interview with “Dust Mites” author Jim Bacon. As he is the blog contributor most familiar with the book, Bacon interviewed himself. — JAB

JAB: Thank you so much for granting this interview, Mr. Bacon. First, let’s dispense with formalities. Do you go by James?

JAB: Jim would be fine.

JAB: Your novel is set in the year 2075 when there are numerous American colonies on the Moon. The colonies — one in particular, Galileo Station — is chafing under the imperial rule of an out-of-touch Congress and imperial presidency in Washington, D.C. Do you think that’s a plausible scenario?

JAB: I picked the year 2075, only 50 years from now, for literary reasons. I was deliberately playing on the parallels with the American Revolution. The incident that precipitates the action in the novel — the dispatch of the U.S. Marshal’s Special Operations Group into the underground city of Galileo Station to arrest its governor to stand trial — plays a role analogous to the events at Lexington and Concord in sparking a rebellion.

While the date may be arbitrary, let me advance a few propositions: (1) human exploration of the Moon will be commonplace by the end of the decade; (2) colonization of the Moon for scientific, military and economic imperatives will soon follow; and (3) tensions inevitably will arise between the U.S. colonies and the imperial power. It is not implausible to think that the central government in Washington, D.C., will continue to accumulate power over the next half century and become more assertive and more authoritarian than ever.

The Most Fuel-Efficient Route to the Moon May Not Be a Straight Line

May 26, 2022

NASA soon will test a circuitous route to the Moon that takes its microwave oven-sized CubeSat satellite nearly a million miles into deep space to take advantage of gravitational forces that will allow it to reach the Moon with less expenditure of energy, the space agency reports.

The route, called a “near rectilinear halo orbit” (NHRO) works well in NASA’s computer simulations. CAPSTONE, short for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations, will provide the first real-world test of NRHO dynamics. The mission is intended to support NASA’s Gateway, a multipurpose outpost that will support long-term lunar missions under the Artemis orbit.

While the gravity-driven track will longer to reach the Moon — four months — NASA says it will “dramatically reduce the amount of fuel this pathfinder CubeSat will need to fly there.” more “The Most Fuel-Efficient Route to the Moon May Not Be a Straight Line”

Data Centers in Lava Tubes — an Economic Driver for the Moon?

May 26, 2022

Lonestar Data Holdings, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., is closing $5 million in seed funding toward its goal of creating the ultimate in data-storage disaster recovery — with server farms located in lava tubes on the Moon.

The company has signed contracts to launch prototype demonstrations of its capabilities aboard lunar landers by the end of 2022. Lonestar will run a software-only test, storing a small big of data on an Intuitive Machines lander under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The mission is expected to last one lunar day, or two Earth weeks.

A second launch scheduled for 2023 will send an Intuitive Machines lander to the Moon’s South Pole to drill for ice. Included in the package will be Lonestar’s first hardware prototype: a one-kilogram storage device, the size of a hardback novel, with 16 terabytes of storage, reports The Register. more “Data Centers in Lava Tubes — an Economic Driver for the Moon?”