THE ARLO — LUNAR STATION DESIGN BASIS v0.1 | 23 OCTOBER 2026 Concept and feasibility brief; not construction or flight-qualified instructions. THE MISSION The ARLO is Metric Flight’s concept for a modular research station on the Moon. Start small. Establish dependable services. Earn the next expansion. A first foothold, designed around people Our reference mission is four crew members living and working on the lunar surface for 30 days. This is a proposed sizing case, not a booked mission. The first occupation would follow robotic reconnaissance, cargo delivery, systems commissioning and an uncrewed endurance demonstration. A suitable return vehicle must remain available throughout the visit. No crew launch date, landing site, transport contract or completed flight hardware is claimed. Research that can grow into infrastructure The station is intended to support geology, dust characterization, instrument testing and investigations of how people and equipment perform in lunar gravity. A compact initial outpost creates a manageable engineering problem: keep a small crew safe, maintain a repeatable science schedule and return samples and operational evidence. Additional laboratories, resource demonstrations and longer stays would follow successful missions. The architecture starts with known physics Conventional launch, transfer, landing and ascent are the transport baseline. Pressure vessels retain a breathable atmosphere; electrical systems run life support; external radiators reject waste heat. Metric Flight’s optical-force research and Alpha 1 hypothesis are separate investigations. ARLO does not depend on them delivering propulsion, gravity control or free energy. What must be true before anyone goes The full mass and power budgets must close against selected hardware and contracted transport. The chosen terrain needs a verified illumination history, communications coverage and a safe landing approach. The complete station must survive credible failures with enough independent life support, power and consumables for the actual evacuation timeline. This website is the starting design brief and an invitation to qualified engineering review. CHOOSE THE GROUND The lunar south pole is a candidate region—not a selected site. Light, terrain, communications and access must be assessed together. Follow the light across time A bright ridge in one image is not a continuous power supply. At polar latitudes, low sunlight interacts with local relief, mast height and shadows cast by the station itself. Build a time-resolved horizon model from terrain data, evaluate multiple seasonal conditions, and identify the longest credible interruption. Our 72-hour outage calculator is a sensitivity example; it is not a measured blackout at an ARLO site. Keep the landing problem separate Landing zones need bearing strength, acceptable slopes, hazard clearance and a surface interaction model for the selected lander. Exhaust can mobilize regolith and threaten habitats, radiators and optics. The tour deliberately shows landing infrastructure outside the habitat cluster. It specifies no safe separation distance: that number must come from plume, ejecta and trajectory analysis, including future arrivals. Water is an investigation, not a utility Ice in some permanently shadowed terrain is scientifically and commercially interesting. Extraction requires prospecting, excavation, energy, processing and contamination control. The first ARLO crew carries its water and contingency supply from Earth. A future pilot could establish recoverable concentration, variability and production energy before resource extraction joins the survival chain. The site-selection deliverable Compare at least three candidate locations using a consistent matrix: illumination gaps, local slope, boulders, soil properties, line of sight to Earth or contracted relays, science value, traverse difficulty and landing hazards. Carry uncertainty with every score. Select only after orbital mapping is supported by in-situ observations and the power, communications and transport teams agree on one operating envelope. EXPLORE THE STATION Navigate the conceptual station plan. Select a destination to see what it does, what it connects to, and what must be proven. A layout you can understand The plan groups clean habitation, a laboratory, life-support services and a refuge around short pressure-tight connections. A dirty entry zone keeps external suits and tools away from sleeping and food preparation areas. External utilities connect through isolatable feeds; maintenance access stays visible. The diagram shows functional adjacency, not surveyed coordinates or construction dimensions. Two ways to survive a bad day Closing a hatch can contain a leak or contamination event only if the remaining volume has independent support. The safe-haven concept therefore needs separate atmosphere monitoring, emergency carbon-dioxide removal, water, communications and an isolated power source. A common cable, cooling loop or contaminated air path must not quietly defeat the redundancy. Exact refuge capacity follows evacuation analysis. Outside is part of the station Solar arrays, energy storage, radiators, antennas, robot work areas and a landing corridor occupy terrain outside the pressure shells. Their placement must consider shadows, dust, cable losses, maintainability and collision hazards. The visitor map is intentionally schematic so attractive artwork cannot be mistaken for a validated site plan. Use the tour as a review interface Each location links to a deeper chapter. Reviewers can follow a chain from energy generation to storage, from cabin heat to rejection, or from returning astronauts to dust containment. The complete design must ultimately replace these illustrative interfaces with controlled drawings, loads, connectors, isolation logic and verification records. INSIDE THE HABITAT Compact modules, private sleeping spaces, maintainable equipment and an isolatable refuge form the habitation concept. The shell and the shelter are different structures The pressure shell carries cabin pressure loads. An external protective canopy or retaining structure carries any regolith shielding load. Dumping soil onto a lightweight pressure vessel is not a design solution. Support reactions, differential settlement, seismic loads, thermal movement and inspection access must be resolved before selecting a shielding geometry. Size the volume before styling the interior For a simple cylindrical envelope with a 4 m diameter and 8 m straight section, the cylindrical volume alone is about 100.5 cubic metres. Endcaps, structure, equipment, internal partitions and circulation change usable volume substantially. This is a geometry study, not a selected flight module. Launch fairing fit, landed mass, centre of gravity, deployment clearances and available transport may force a different size. Make ordinary life work Four people need sleep privacy, acoustic control, exercise, food preparation, hygiene, sanitation, medical access and a place to work. Scientific racks should be removable without blocking exits. Stowage must be restrained and traceable. Full-scale mockups should test reach, emergency egress, crew congestion and maintenance tasks before internal layout freezes. Pressure and fire are design decisions Cabin pressure and oxygen fraction must be selected with physiology, fire safety, structural mass and suit operations considered together. ARLO has not selected an atmosphere. The qualification plan needs leak checks, proof and burst rationale, materials compatibility, combustion controls, detection, isolation and repair procedures. A beautiful cutaway cannot establish human safety. AIR & WATER Atmosphere control and water recovery reduce resupply demand. Stored reserves and replaceable hardware keep a failure from becoming a crisis. Air is more than oxygen A viable cabin must control carbon dioxide, humidity, trace contaminants, temperature and pressure as well as oxygen. Sensors need calibration and cross-checking; fans and ducts must prevent poorly ventilated pockets. The concept separates routine regenerative equipment from contingency supplies and emergency scrubbing. Consumable quantities require a defined crew workload, leakage allowance and suit-operation schedule. Water recovery needs a complete balance NASA’s ISS experience provides valuable hardware heritage, but its demonstrated recovery performance cannot simply be assigned to a lunar habitat. Water use, recoverable waste streams, processor losses, brines, cleaning, hygiene and stored emergency reserves must all enter the balance. Commissioning also requires initial fill water. Our baseline takes no credit for mining lunar water. A transparent screening calculation For illustration only, four people using 4 kg per person per day for a limited potable-water allowance consume 480 kg over 30 days before recycling. If 90% of that exact stream is collected and recovered, the ideal makeup is 48 kg. This excludes hygiene, food preparation differences, oxygen generation, leakage, EVA, startup inventory and contingency. It is a teaching calculation, not the mission manifest. Test the integrated loop Ground demonstrations should combine representative metabolic loads, humidity, contaminants, fluid handling and maintenance. Lunar gravity changes phase separation and other fluid processes, so space heritage alone is insufficient. Tests need failures: stuck valves, bad sensors, loss of power, microbial contamination, cartridge exhaustion and repair while the crew relies on the refuge. POWER & HEAT Generation, storage and thermal rejection are one engineering problem. Explore the consequences of a longer outage or a larger station load. A reference load, not a vendor specification The first power trade uses 20 kW average electrical demand and a provisional 30% allocation margin, giving 26 kW for planning. Actual loads must be built from equipment duty cycles, startup surges, EVA operations, science and contingency modes. Separate essential loads from equipment that can be shed. A single average cannot establish bus, inverter or cable sizing. Darkness makes storage large At 20 kW for 72 hours, delivered energy is 1,440 kWh. At 90% discharge-path efficiency and 80% usable depth of discharge, nominal battery capacity would be 2,000 kWh before aging, temperature effects and reserve. At an illustrative pack-level 150 Wh/kg, that is about 13.3 tonnes of batteries alone. These assumptions reveal why site choice, shorter crew visits, lower loads, fuel cells and eventual fission deserve a formal trade. Solar first does not mean solar only Tracking arrays need an illumination and shading model, dust allowances, thermal derating, deployment reliability and recharge time. To recover energy after a blackout, generation must serve the live load and charge storage. Fission is a credible development direction, but an ARLO reactor is neither procured nor qualified. No reactor output is counted as available station power. Radiators close the energy balance Most electricity used inside ultimately becomes heat. In vacuum, external heat rejection relies primarily on radiation. A screening model uses Q = emissivity × Stefan–Boltzmann constant × area × (radiator temperature⁴ − effective sink temperature⁴). The calculator assumes a cold idealized sink and emissivity 0.9. Real design must include terrain infrared, sunlight, view factors, dust, fluid loops and failure isolation; effective radiating area is not necessarily panel footprint. DUST & PROTECTION Radiation, regolith, vacuum and extreme thermal conditions shape the station long before the first crew arrives. Protection starts with a threat model Solar particle events and galactic cosmic rays require different analyses. Shielding performance depends on material, geometry, particle spectrum and secondary radiation. A chosen thickness of regolith is not a universal safety guarantee. Establish dose criteria with the mission authority, model exposure in habitats and on traverses, and verify dosimetry and storm-response procedures. Give the crew a usable refuge A localized shelter can place water, supplies and appropriate shielding around a small occupiable volume. It still needs ventilation, carbon-dioxide removal, temperature control, sanitation and communications. Solar-weather alerts are helpful but not a substitute for shelter. The protection model must include time outside and the distance an EVA crew must travel to return. Keep the dust at the threshold Regolith can damage seals, wear joints, foul radiator surfaces and contaminate cabin equipment. The concept uses a dirty vestibule, controlled tool transfer, cleaning provisions and monitored filtration. Suitports and electrodynamic dust removal are options to evaluate, not assumed solved hardware. Ground testing needs representative dust properties, electrostatic behavior and repeated cycles. Inspect what you rely on External cables, plumbing, connectors, radiators and pressure shells need accessible inspection and repair paths. Micrometeoroid protection, fire response and leak localization should be planned together with module isolation. Long-duration operation depends as much on spare parts and maintenance procedures as on the initial protective structure. BUILD SEQUENCE Deliver capability in stages. Each stage must produce evidence strong enough to justify the next. 01 — Reconnaissance and site confirmation Map terrain and illumination, characterize soil and dust, verify communications and survey landing hazards. A robotic campaign should measure the properties that most strongly change the design. Do not commit habitat foundations or landing corridors from a rendering. Establish a controlled site model with uncertainty bounds and the responsible owner for each assumption. 02 — Utilities and cargo Land communication, power and mobility equipment before crew occupancy. Demonstrate deployment, fault isolation, navigation, cold-start recovery and remote maintenance. Logistics need compatible mechanical handling points and a transport plan for each package. Every landed component contributes to a mass ledger including packaging, propellant interfaces, deployment equipment and spares. 03 — Assemble and commission Position modules, connect services and verify mechanical, electrical, thermal and pressure interfaces. Commission atmosphere control and external heat rejection with representative loads. Demonstrate safe modes through the worst modeled environmental interruption. Regolith works must protect hardware from burial, settlement and dust contamination while remaining inspectable. 04 — Demonstrate, review, then occupy An uncrewed integrated endurance run must precede independent mission-readiness review. Entry criteria include closed transport budgets, verified life support, communications, safe-haven endurance and return capability. The first crew mission should be deliberately bounded. Expansion requires observed reliability, documented maintenance burden and a funded resupply and end-of-life strategy. SCIENCE & OPERATIONS Prioritize research that benefits from the lunar environment and can operate within a small outpost’s real limits. Measure the place we are entering Early payloads can investigate dust transport, surface charging, thermal cycling, regolith mechanics and the local radiation environment. These observations also improve station design. Requirements should state measurement uncertainty, contamination limits, time resolution and calibration needs rather than promising discoveries in advance. Keep industrial ambitions on a separate branch Water extraction, oxygen production from regolith and construction-material demonstrations may become valuable. They require their own mass, energy, thermal and safety budgets. Initial tests should run as bounded payloads that cannot compromise survival services. Production enters the mission baseline only after independent measurements establish yield, reliability and maintenance demand. Operations are part of the experiment Track every maintenance hour, spare consumed, dust intrusion and interrupted science run. Plan crew schedules around exercise, inspection, rest and contingency tasks. Robotic operations can extend the scientific return between crew visits, but only with verified power, communications, environmental survival and remote recovery capability. A research interface for real partners A useful payload proposal defines dimensions, mass, average and peak electrical demand, heat dissipation, data volume, external field of view, crew time, sample handling and hazards. ARLO has no reserved payload slots or operational services for sale. We are seeking requirements and engineering review to establish which investigations deserve a place in the first mission. ENGINEERING & PARTNERS A public design brief, an open risk register and a practical route to review. ARLO is at concept stage; the flight system remains to be engineered. What is defined today The website defines a reference mission, functional station layout, initial trades, visual explanations and sample sizing equations. These are planning artifacts. They are not qualified hardware, a completed preliminary design review, a launch commitment or proof of a commercially viable station. No total program price is quoted without transport and supplier bids. The five closure packages First: mission and site requirements, including environment and abort timeline. Second: a mass ledger matched to specific delivery and return services. Third: time-resolved electrical and thermal models with degraded modes. Fourth: integrated life-support, pressure, fire, radiation and dust safety cases. Fifth: a costed verification campaign with independent technical authority. Each needs a named accountable lead, configuration control and pass/fail criteria. An engineering team with a concrete assignment We seek expertise in systems engineering, lunar operations, pressure structures, ECLSS, thermal control, electrical power, robotics, radiation transport and crew safety. The first deliverable is a reviewed feasibility package, not an announcement of construction readiness. A partner should challenge assumptions, identify unsupported interfaces and specify the smallest test that can resolve each major uncertainty. An honest investment proposition Early funding would support requirements, modeling, independent review and ground demonstrators. Later milestones require supplier quotations, transport agreements, licensing analysis and a credible mission authority. Novel intellectual property may emerge from specific inventions; the station concept alone does not establish patentability or exclusive rights. No agency affiliation, customer contract or funding commitment is implied by citing public research. REPRODUCIBLE SCREENING EQUATIONS Storage kWh = load kW * interruption hours / (0.9 * 0.8). 20 * 72 / 0.72 = 2000 kWh nominal. Mass kg = nominal kWh / 0.15 kWh/kg = 13,333 kg. Radiating area m2 = Q W / (0.9 * 5.670374419e-8 * (T K ^4 - 3^4)). For Q=20000 W and T=300 K: 48.38 m2. These are idealized, exclude critical real-world allowances, and are not hardware specifications. VISUAL DESIGN Graphite, pale teal and copper accents; sans-serif type. Cinematic exterior for the vision, labeled vector schematics for functional relationships. Images are AI-generated concept art. Films are silent original animations with captions and transcripts. All functional maps are not to scale. SEO Ten distinct static HTML pages under /arlo/moon/, descriptive titles and descriptions, canonical URLs for metricflight.com, Open Graph imagery, breadcrumb JSON-LD, normal crawlable chapter links, updated main sitemap, accessible image alternatives. No ranking guarantee. Upload to the real domain before requesting indexing. OPEN BUDGETS Delivered mass: NOT CLOSED. Total cost: NOT ESTIMATED. Launch count: NOT SELECTED. Refuge duration: NOT CLOSED. Continuous power source: NOT SELECTED. Atmosphere: NOT SELECTED. Site: NOT SELECTED. Transport and return: NOT CONTRACTED. NEXT ENGINEERING DELIVERABLE Appoint a systems lead; freeze mission requirements; compare sites; request transport interface data; create subsystem mass/power/thermal/consumable ledgers; commission hazard analysis and an independent feasibility review. Do not order flight hardware from this concept. SOURCES Lunar south-pole environment | https://www.nasa.gov/reference/moonbase-environment/ | NASA; terrain, illumination and environmental constraints. Regional information does not select an ARLO site. South-pole illumination visualization | https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5228/ | NASA Scientific Visualization Studio / Ernie Wright, 2024. Low solar elevation and changing shadows. Life-support architecture | https://www.nasa.gov/reference/environmental-control-and-life-support-systems-eclss/ | NASA; air revitalization, oxygen generation and water recovery heritage. Lunar performance remains to be qualified. Water recovery demonstration | https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/nasa-achieves-water-recovery-milestone-on-international-space-station/ | NASA, 2023. ISS milestone; not an ARLO recovery specification. Fission surface power | https://www.nasa.gov/exploration-systems-development-mission-directorate/fission-surface-power/ | NASA development program; cited as a technology direction, not an available ARLO product or partnership. Moon water and ices | https://science.nasa.gov/moon/moon-water-and-ices/ | NASA Science; evidence for water does not establish accessible reserves at our unselected location. Human-rating guidance | https://www.nasa.gov/human-rating-guidance/ | NASA requirements portal; applicability and current revisions must be established by the mission authority. Lunar thermal analysis guidebook | https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210010030 | NASA HLS guide; thermal environment and analysis methods. Lunar habitat structures study | https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20205008605 | NASA technical report; precedent for habitat structural trades, not validation of this concept. People-first search content | https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content | Google Search Central; editorial basis for distinct, useful chapters rather than repeated keyword pages.