From 'Starfield' to Artemis: designing moonbases in games and reality

NASA's Artemis program is the space agency's plan for returning humanity to our closest cosmic neighbor, the moon. This time, though, the idea isn't just brief contact and exploratory surveys, but a sustained lunar presence, and the agency recently announced a long-term roadmap for building a $20 billion permanent lunar base . Artemis II just circled the moon and returned home safely, paving the way for future missions to our natural satellite and the introduction of permanent infrastructure alongside Artemis V in 2028. They may not be directly correlated, but alongside humanity’s increased interest in reaching for the stars, we've also seen a spike in popularity in base-building games in space. There's a spate of dedicated builders like Space Engineers and Oxygen Not Included, and base building has also been cropping up in larger RPGs like No Man’s Sky and Starfield. Article continues below The lunar surface is a perfect setting for a base-building sim. After all, you don't need to introduce artificial challenges when you're already grappling with isolation, resource scarcity, engineering constraints, and environmental extremes. …