Abstract
How do we begin to expand our civilization to the Moon? What are the technical issues that infra-structural engineers, in particular, must address? This paper has the goal of providing an overview of this fascinating area of structural engineering. Published work of the past several decades about lunar bases is summarized. Although many hundreds of papers have been written on these subjects, and only a few tens of these have been referred to here, it is believed that a representative view has been created. The paper is organized as follows. An overview is provided of possible structural concepts, including some details on the new lunar environment that engineers must design against. This is followed by a preliminary design study of a simple surface lunar structure for manned habitation. Concluding the paper is an introduction to construction issues that face the designed.